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She likes my journal !!

They have better beds on the A ward.

   
In front of the Oakland City Hall

January 21st, 2001

Black and White
Saturday evening, no great urge to write, just get out of the house and do something or stay here and do something, but do something, OK? Friday, three of us went to Emeryville (MRH, MSJ and myself, to be accurate), which is just north of here off Highway 80 bordering on Oakland and Berkeley, to pick up some computer supplies and eat lunch inside a large building called the Emeryville Public Market which houses a large Border's Books and an open area under a high ceiling filled with walk up food stands selling every sort of cuisine, from hot dogs to Indian (foreign and domestic). We had Indian food that was cheap and excellent. I ended up there again today, had lunch, ran into one of my work mates (MSP with her husband and family), said hello and then walked over to the cineplex and almost went inside to see a movie. Heavy stuff and it's only Saturday.

Tomorrow there's a photography show opening, also in Emeryville, which I plan to attend. As I mentioned, a photographer, whom I've come to know a bit, is having her first show (along with a number of her fellow photographers) and I'm thinking it can't hurt to go over and see what's up. See what the youngsters are doing, what's hot and what's not. I will not show up packing a camera. That would be, um, tacky.

Finally got well into Jung's Memories, Dreams, Reflections. No more flippant remarks. I've been told as you get older you get back in touch with your unconscious mind and desires or you go nuts. More nuts than even I can conceive and I'm pretty good with nuts, less good with soup, pretty good with introspection, spectacular with procrastination and fair to middlin' at run off at the mouth.

Sunday morning. I read more of Memories, Dreams, Reflections last night, Dancing at Oakland City Center getting through concepts of dreams and their meanings. I thought, OK, this is good, let's see if I can remember a dream when I wake up this morning, and I did. Just the end of a dream, a single scene where a small Tyrannosaurus Rex (a ten or twelve inch little adult Tyrannosaurus Rex) had a fork being pressed against his tongue, someone's hand and arm holding the fork from above, the Tyrannosaur dancing half off balance around in a circle under the fork, mouth open, wresting with the fork and the situation. A silent little wrestling match of a dance. I thought, well is someone trying to feed it something, but no, the fork tines were actually pressed against his tongue and there was no food involved.

OK.

Then I thought "fork-tongue". Actually I thought a couple of other things first, but they led to "fork-tongue", then "forked-tongue". Jung talks about levels of the subconscious, the lowest levels being the oldest and most primitive where the imagery often consists of prehistoric elements. He also says that dreams are not tricks meant to deceive, but a straight forward statement done in its own language.

My thought is the image was a statement telling me my subconscious would not speak with a "forked-tongue", since the image was acted in absolute silence. A bit of a stretch? Well, yeah. None of this comes with an operating manual and the story Jung tells is just that, a story, an analysis framework to look at the subject. The result wasn't so much a great illumination as a fun little deal that came out of the reading last night, the remembrance of the dream pinned by the flicker of the thought "I want to remember this" before it faded into the morning. I'll put a pad next to the bed this evening and write the next one down.

Back from the photography show. I arrived a little early, the reception starting at two in the afternoon, but the photographs available for viewing from eight til five. People setting up trays of food in a long hallway, my photographer friend standing by her photographs before the crowd arrived, kindly walking me through the entire show. Her own series of photographs were centered around a common theme, photographs of people holding photographic prints in their hands up against their stomachs, cropped so you saw the photograph, the hands and perhaps the person's lap. Each had a caption, the photographs the subjects were holding ranging from Marilyn Monroe to Jesus Christ. Nice. She's been shooting them with a view camera using 4" x 5" black and white.

 
The banner photograph is another from the past, taken across the street from the office at the Oakland City Center. The second was also taken at the Oakland City Center during a concert, both, I think, about two years ago. The quote is by Shirley Temple Black.

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