Weird Dreams: Bryn Athyn College, Obama Shoes
I had weird dreams last night. In one dream, I was visiting a building. It was actually the same building from a previous dream. In the previous dream, it had been connected directly to a subway station or underground transit station, and I had arrived to it by train, and then climbed by stairway to an entrance on the 2nd or 3rd floor...
In this dream I drove to the building and parked in a lot; the lot had free parking after a certain hour, and I was well past this hour so I didn't worry about parking. The building housed a library, which was apparently part of the campus of Bryn Athyn College. The rest of the building had a dining area and I think a bookstore and other semi-public spaces.
For some reason, I really wanted to go THROUGH the library and into the other spaces of the building. I had the idea that it would be difficult and perhaps impossible, but I wanted to try to do so, because I liked the idea of buildings being open and connected in different ways. I think in some senses, this is actually a metaphor for how I think about life in general, I like things to be connected and integrated and I am willing to put out considerable effort to bridge gaps between things that might not seem related or connected to other people. But it's also directly true in my real life--I like buildings to be fully connected so you can easily travel between different parts of them.
I went into the library...it had an automated entry gate and you had to put an ID in a slot. I pulled out a student ID I had for Bryn Athyn College. In the dream, I was a student there, even though I had already graduated Yale, UD, and Oberlin, like in real life. In the dream, having the active ID at Bryn Athyn gave me a sense of pride that I didn't feel about the other three schools. The slot was old-fashioned and I remember thinking that they were using outdated, archaic technology, and that most schools would use smart cards. However, I kinda liked the throwback technology. I think this is also symbolic of the New Church community in Bryn Athyn, PA, which is very archaic and old-fashioned in some ways, but still very functional.
The machine then printed out a parking ticket receipt, so that I could get free parking in the lot. I remember thinking that I didn't need it, and liking that. I think this is symbolic of the fact that in Philadelphia, I have found the little details of getting around to be abundant...I have a parking lot for my car, parking in west philly is easy, I can walk everywhere so I don't really need the car, public transit runs very frequently, etc.
I then walked past an area that had lots of office equipment...everything from staplers supplies like paper, clips, tape, to scissors, all sorts of other random things. I remember feeling a sense of comfort and security at having access to these resources. I think this highlights the security that I feel when being part of a larger organization, and my desire for and comfort in communal resources, something that I do not get to enjoy while being self-employed.
I then walked to a main entrance to the library and an information desk...where I asked the people at the desk if it was possible to go through to the other part of the building. I received a bunch of different answers, including some negative ones--"You can't do that." But I was somewhat persistent and expressed that I really wanted to go through to the other part of the building. One person said: "You used to be able to go through, but it has been sealed off." I then said something to the effect of: "I want to at least see the area where it has been sealed off, can you take me there, as far as it's possible to go, so I can at least see it?"
I think this exchange symbolizes an experience that I often have in life. Often, when I express something I want to accomplish, or some sort of change I want to effect in society or in an organization, people will initially express negative sentiments: "You can't do that". However, when I'm persistent in expressing what I want, people often agree to help me to the degree that they can. Often, people can think of ways of "going part of the way" or getting me closer to my goal, even if they still believe that the goal itself is impossible. If I ask people to help me as much as they are able, often I'm able to go the rest of the way on my own.
So the dream proceeded...one of the guys working the desk in the library led me back through the library and he explained to me that there actually was one way to get into the other part of the library, but it was somewhat difficult and involved some climbing. I was kinda excited, as I like climbing things and I feel relatively comfortable with my ability to climb things. He then showed me a strange ...I don't know how to describe it. It was like a big chute with a funny sort of textured thing made of carpet, with strange rungs attached to it at various increments. It wasn't immediately intuitive to me how to climb it, but he showed me where to place your feet, climbed down a few feet, and then back up. He said that this would lead me down into the dining hall. I think this is also symbolic as dining halls are a place in my life that I tend to love very much, a source of great joy and a feeling of belonging, and it symbolizes a goal or what I want out of life.
There were a group of four older people who shouldered their way ahead of me while I was thinking about climbing down, and they situated themselves at the top. But they seemed hesitant. They kept delaying, and were blocking the entrance to the downward thingy. They were discussing how they weren't physically fit enough to climb down, but they didn't move and they just kept hanging out, blocking the top. It was starting to annoy me slightly, but I decided that rather than be annoyed, I would just ask them if they could move so that I could climb down, so I politely told them that I'd like to climb down, and that if they didn't want to climb down immediately, I would prefer to go first. They responded by immediately saying that they did not intend to climb down, and they cleared out of the way. I think this part is also symbolic, as it's a struggle I've been having lately about being assertive and direct, speaking up immediately rather than letting myself be annoyed and saying nothing.
Lastly, I was ready to climb down, but I thought for a second about whether or not I was wearing the best shoes to climb down. I was wearing a black pair of sneakers with soccer cleats on them. I thought of changing shoes (I had at least one other pair in my bag--this is probably because, now that I dance so much, I often carry an extra pair of shoes for dancing, and with the crazy rain lately I had been carrying an extra pair too in case mine got wet). But I decided that the shoes I had on were actually the best shoes with which to climb down in. I think that this symbolizes intuition, how our default approach or intuition is often the best way to approach a problem or approach life in general: it's good to think through all available options and think creatively, but much of the time it's best to trust our hunches and proceed naturally.
Someone, another guy who hadn't been present earlier, was wanting to join me to climb down with me. I was happy about this. I was looking at my shoes though and I noticed something about them...they were black but they had a red, white, and blue area around the laces and tongue. I also noticed a very subtly, almost disguised Obama logo, which occurred twice, once at the front of the shoe near the toe, and once at the top of the tongue. This surprised me and I remembered having a lot of different reactions. It was funny, because I hadn't noticed it, and the way it was disguised was humorous. It was artistic, as it showed artful design. But I also was somewhat unhappy with it, because, although I did vote for Obama, I do not feel like I unilaterally support Obama and I would not necessarily always want to be advertising support for Obama on my shoes. I also found additional humor in the fact that the aesthetic of the shoes (which I can't describe easily) seemed more like the sort of thing that African-American men would wear than what white men would wear, and I made a mental note that this was perhaps deliberate marketing by the makers of the shoe, to appeal to a black audience who would be proud and more likely to sport an Obama logo. I was thinking about how I loved the aesthetic in general that black people in America seem to embrace (musically, visually, etc) and I was proud to wear the shoes to express this aesthetic, but had reservations about the political logo. I think this whole thought process was also deeply symbolic:
I think that it symbolizes the way I feel about black culture in America, and Obama. I love black culture and I feel like black people have contributed very richly to musical, artistic, and intellectual tradition in the U.S. And I like a lot of what Obama stands for, and am also happy that we finally were progressive enough to elect a black president. But I do not like the marketing and branding aspect of politics, and I think there is a large degree to which Obama succeeded not because he was a good candidate, and not because America was "ready" for a black president, but rather, because Obama's campaign was marketed in the right way, it had a catchy logo, a catchy slogan, good rhetoric. And this makes me uneasy with Obama. I want to support a good candidate but I don't want to support marketing or support politics which is driven by marketing.
I also think I had this dream because I'm thinking extensively of branding and marketing with respect to my tea site, RateTea.net, and I'm currently having the same struggle: I want the site to focus on quality content, accuracy of information, functionality. And I've made the site very high-quality with respect to these measures. Yet it's not taking off as much as I would imagine, and I see a lot of other sites which are much sloppier which are succeeding. People seem to fairly consistently give me the feedback that the site looks unprofessional or the design or look and feel strikes them as poor. So I'm forced to put more energy or effort into presentation or branding. I think on some level I feel a bit ambivalent about this. I want people to like the site and use the site, and I do want the site to look good. But I want people to like the site because it is an accurate source of information, a reliable resource, not because it looks good. I think on some level I harbor some resentment and frustration towards people in general for looking at appearances rather than looking deeper...which is the whole point of the site, the whole point of RateTea.net is to get people thinking about and paying attention to how their tea tastes, and learning about how their tea is produced, rather than just be sucked in by branding and marketing. As someone who believes deeply that the ends do not justify the means, I think I have this deep, intuitive, gut-level sense of uneasiness with the idea of using branding to defeat branding.
The dream ended there...I did not get to descend, I did not get to see or feel how difficult it was, and I did not get to see what was at the bottom. I think this is symbolic of where I am in my life. I think that I have not yet truly embarked on the biggest projects that I am going to undertake during my life. I don't really know how difficult they will be, I do not know if I will succeed or fail, and I don't really know what "success" will look like if I do succeed...nor do I know if I will lose something valuable in the process (symbolized by the fact that the "task" in the dream was climbing down a very steep incline which could cause serious injury if one fell). But I guess that's what life is about, right?
In this dream I drove to the building and parked in a lot; the lot had free parking after a certain hour, and I was well past this hour so I didn't worry about parking. The building housed a library, which was apparently part of the campus of Bryn Athyn College. The rest of the building had a dining area and I think a bookstore and other semi-public spaces.
For some reason, I really wanted to go THROUGH the library and into the other spaces of the building. I had the idea that it would be difficult and perhaps impossible, but I wanted to try to do so, because I liked the idea of buildings being open and connected in different ways. I think in some senses, this is actually a metaphor for how I think about life in general, I like things to be connected and integrated and I am willing to put out considerable effort to bridge gaps between things that might not seem related or connected to other people. But it's also directly true in my real life--I like buildings to be fully connected so you can easily travel between different parts of them.
I went into the library...it had an automated entry gate and you had to put an ID in a slot. I pulled out a student ID I had for Bryn Athyn College. In the dream, I was a student there, even though I had already graduated Yale, UD, and Oberlin, like in real life. In the dream, having the active ID at Bryn Athyn gave me a sense of pride that I didn't feel about the other three schools. The slot was old-fashioned and I remember thinking that they were using outdated, archaic technology, and that most schools would use smart cards. However, I kinda liked the throwback technology. I think this is also symbolic of the New Church community in Bryn Athyn, PA, which is very archaic and old-fashioned in some ways, but still very functional.
The machine then printed out a parking ticket receipt, so that I could get free parking in the lot. I remember thinking that I didn't need it, and liking that. I think this is symbolic of the fact that in Philadelphia, I have found the little details of getting around to be abundant...I have a parking lot for my car, parking in west philly is easy, I can walk everywhere so I don't really need the car, public transit runs very frequently, etc.
I then walked past an area that had lots of office equipment...everything from staplers supplies like paper, clips, tape, to scissors, all sorts of other random things. I remember feeling a sense of comfort and security at having access to these resources. I think this highlights the security that I feel when being part of a larger organization, and my desire for and comfort in communal resources, something that I do not get to enjoy while being self-employed.
I then walked to a main entrance to the library and an information desk...where I asked the people at the desk if it was possible to go through to the other part of the building. I received a bunch of different answers, including some negative ones--"You can't do that." But I was somewhat persistent and expressed that I really wanted to go through to the other part of the building. One person said: "You used to be able to go through, but it has been sealed off." I then said something to the effect of: "I want to at least see the area where it has been sealed off, can you take me there, as far as it's possible to go, so I can at least see it?"
I think this exchange symbolizes an experience that I often have in life. Often, when I express something I want to accomplish, or some sort of change I want to effect in society or in an organization, people will initially express negative sentiments: "You can't do that". However, when I'm persistent in expressing what I want, people often agree to help me to the degree that they can. Often, people can think of ways of "going part of the way" or getting me closer to my goal, even if they still believe that the goal itself is impossible. If I ask people to help me as much as they are able, often I'm able to go the rest of the way on my own.
So the dream proceeded...one of the guys working the desk in the library led me back through the library and he explained to me that there actually was one way to get into the other part of the library, but it was somewhat difficult and involved some climbing. I was kinda excited, as I like climbing things and I feel relatively comfortable with my ability to climb things. He then showed me a strange ...I don't know how to describe it. It was like a big chute with a funny sort of textured thing made of carpet, with strange rungs attached to it at various increments. It wasn't immediately intuitive to me how to climb it, but he showed me where to place your feet, climbed down a few feet, and then back up. He said that this would lead me down into the dining hall. I think this is also symbolic as dining halls are a place in my life that I tend to love very much, a source of great joy and a feeling of belonging, and it symbolizes a goal or what I want out of life.
There were a group of four older people who shouldered their way ahead of me while I was thinking about climbing down, and they situated themselves at the top. But they seemed hesitant. They kept delaying, and were blocking the entrance to the downward thingy. They were discussing how they weren't physically fit enough to climb down, but they didn't move and they just kept hanging out, blocking the top. It was starting to annoy me slightly, but I decided that rather than be annoyed, I would just ask them if they could move so that I could climb down, so I politely told them that I'd like to climb down, and that if they didn't want to climb down immediately, I would prefer to go first. They responded by immediately saying that they did not intend to climb down, and they cleared out of the way. I think this part is also symbolic, as it's a struggle I've been having lately about being assertive and direct, speaking up immediately rather than letting myself be annoyed and saying nothing.
Lastly, I was ready to climb down, but I thought for a second about whether or not I was wearing the best shoes to climb down. I was wearing a black pair of sneakers with soccer cleats on them. I thought of changing shoes (I had at least one other pair in my bag--this is probably because, now that I dance so much, I often carry an extra pair of shoes for dancing, and with the crazy rain lately I had been carrying an extra pair too in case mine got wet). But I decided that the shoes I had on were actually the best shoes with which to climb down in. I think that this symbolizes intuition, how our default approach or intuition is often the best way to approach a problem or approach life in general: it's good to think through all available options and think creatively, but much of the time it's best to trust our hunches and proceed naturally.
Someone, another guy who hadn't been present earlier, was wanting to join me to climb down with me. I was happy about this. I was looking at my shoes though and I noticed something about them...they were black but they had a red, white, and blue area around the laces and tongue. I also noticed a very subtly, almost disguised Obama logo, which occurred twice, once at the front of the shoe near the toe, and once at the top of the tongue. This surprised me and I remembered having a lot of different reactions. It was funny, because I hadn't noticed it, and the way it was disguised was humorous. It was artistic, as it showed artful design. But I also was somewhat unhappy with it, because, although I did vote for Obama, I do not feel like I unilaterally support Obama and I would not necessarily always want to be advertising support for Obama on my shoes. I also found additional humor in the fact that the aesthetic of the shoes (which I can't describe easily) seemed more like the sort of thing that African-American men would wear than what white men would wear, and I made a mental note that this was perhaps deliberate marketing by the makers of the shoe, to appeal to a black audience who would be proud and more likely to sport an Obama logo. I was thinking about how I loved the aesthetic in general that black people in America seem to embrace (musically, visually, etc) and I was proud to wear the shoes to express this aesthetic, but had reservations about the political logo. I think this whole thought process was also deeply symbolic:
I think that it symbolizes the way I feel about black culture in America, and Obama. I love black culture and I feel like black people have contributed very richly to musical, artistic, and intellectual tradition in the U.S. And I like a lot of what Obama stands for, and am also happy that we finally were progressive enough to elect a black president. But I do not like the marketing and branding aspect of politics, and I think there is a large degree to which Obama succeeded not because he was a good candidate, and not because America was "ready" for a black president, but rather, because Obama's campaign was marketed in the right way, it had a catchy logo, a catchy slogan, good rhetoric. And this makes me uneasy with Obama. I want to support a good candidate but I don't want to support marketing or support politics which is driven by marketing.
I also think I had this dream because I'm thinking extensively of branding and marketing with respect to my tea site, RateTea.net, and I'm currently having the same struggle: I want the site to focus on quality content, accuracy of information, functionality. And I've made the site very high-quality with respect to these measures. Yet it's not taking off as much as I would imagine, and I see a lot of other sites which are much sloppier which are succeeding. People seem to fairly consistently give me the feedback that the site looks unprofessional or the design or look and feel strikes them as poor. So I'm forced to put more energy or effort into presentation or branding. I think on some level I feel a bit ambivalent about this. I want people to like the site and use the site, and I do want the site to look good. But I want people to like the site because it is an accurate source of information, a reliable resource, not because it looks good. I think on some level I harbor some resentment and frustration towards people in general for looking at appearances rather than looking deeper...which is the whole point of the site, the whole point of RateTea.net is to get people thinking about and paying attention to how their tea tastes, and learning about how their tea is produced, rather than just be sucked in by branding and marketing. As someone who believes deeply that the ends do not justify the means, I think I have this deep, intuitive, gut-level sense of uneasiness with the idea of using branding to defeat branding.
The dream ended there...I did not get to descend, I did not get to see or feel how difficult it was, and I did not get to see what was at the bottom. I think this is symbolic of where I am in my life. I think that I have not yet truly embarked on the biggest projects that I am going to undertake during my life. I don't really know how difficult they will be, I do not know if I will succeed or fail, and I don't really know what "success" will look like if I do succeed...nor do I know if I will lose something valuable in the process (symbolized by the fact that the "task" in the dream was climbing down a very steep incline which could cause serious injury if one fell). But I guess that's what life is about, right?