Dream Alert: Long-Winded Crap Ahead. About Conquistadors and Natives, no Less!
I just had the strangest dream. I don't know if it's really about my own philosophy/attitude, my father's, or my actual views on the resiliancy of indigenous people. If the latter is true, then I'm pretty damn trite.
Incredibly trite, actually. Embarassingly so!
But I felt like I needed to tell someone about this dream when I woke up, but since no one's here LJ seems to be the next best thing. It seemed very important to tell someone.
Feel free not to read this, though---it's damn long.
This dream took place mostly from what I can remember in some strange aglamation of the inside of my house and a Conquistador camp somewhere in South America (though sometimes it might have been a camp in North America)--i.e., sometimes I was inside my living room, and other times I was deep in the jungle or inside a crude hut.
Throughout this dream, I was either a Mayan (I know I spoke Quecha in parts of the dream) or some random North American tribe memeber--an older, respected man in his mid 40s who was a chief or leader of some kind for the group of people living near the Conquistador/soldier encampment. I had gone over to the camp as a show of good faith, kind of, but mostly to try to get some sort of measure of the invaders, officially acting as a diplomat or an equal with the leader of the Conquistadors---and they accepted me as such. I got the impression, though, that they had already enslaved my people and that this whole thing was a farce, and I was only walking around "inspecting" the camp because I was of absolutely no threat to them. Either that, or they felt that way regardless of the reality, and that was the impression I got.
My role in this dream was constantly fluctuating between being myself, play-acting as this "chief," and actually being this proud, very intelligent and angry guy in his mid 40s. I even had a pretty good idea of what I looked like, and I know that my internal dialogue sounded very much like an angry, intelligent guy in an Alexie Sherman novel who's pissed off (with good reason) about the Rez and the circumstances there. So as this guy, I was some sort of representative for my people. I had
another man with me, too---a much younger man in his 20s, and he was utterly lost to cold hate. He had nothing but anger and hate for our new "rulers," and he knew that we were being recognized purely as a sham, but he was with me all the same. While I felt and understood his hate, and agreed that it was a sham, I also wanted to give the Conquistadors a chance to treat us with some modictum of respect. Whatever they could to to me, after all, was little or nothing in the face of the harm they could inflict on my people.
When I was not being this man, I was myself, role-playing as this man, in a sort of strange battle with my father. He was the head Conquistador who was showing me around the camp, and otherwise trying to demonstrate to me, in no uncertain terms, that he had conquered my people and that it would be best if we just gave up and let them run us into the ground, culturally and otherwise. During these tests he was a smug, superior asshole who was completely assured of the rightness of his point of view. I was ready to fight him about his viewpoint, though, so he spent the entirity of the dream trying to demonstrate his point to me through a series of humiliating "tests."
Each test had to do with something that the Conquistadors took or destroyed from indigenous cultures, and each one was calculated to infuriate and "break" this proud man that I was. From what little I remember, each test made me angry. Each time I came back to my smugly smiling father and demanded another. One of the ones I remember involved writing. My people had no written language, I think--either that, or glyphs--and he tried to make me write something so he could demonstrate how his language was superior. I think he made me try to sign my name on something. For whatever reason, I couldn't write in my people's tounge, or we had no written language, and whatever I wrote was quite laughable. I remember feeling deeply aware of my loss of face to this man, and incredibly pissed off as a result.
I wish I could remember more of these tests. Each was unique, and the emotional interactions of my father and I's dual roles were very intricate and strange. Each test also encapsulated some aspect of colonization, too, and the destruction of native culture. However, each test was also a "learning experience" between me and my father--like he was trying to teach me something himself through these acts. It was all very strange.
The one test I remember the most, though, was the last one. I was getting so angry at these things that my father/the Conquistador was getting highly amused, and kept suggesting more and more cruel tasks, baiting me and aware that in my blind anger that I'd take them on. The last one involved food. I had been in the camp for days at this point, and I had either refused to eat the soldier's food due to pride or fear of poisoning, or been outright denied the opportunity to eat anything, the better to keep me weak and off-guard. Regardless I was very hungry, and despite my best abilities to remain stoic, eventually the head Conquistador caught on. So he gave me another test, and because I was still really pissed off and full of wounded pride, I jumped at it. He told me that he had heard of the Mayan belief that everything in the universe is animated by a spirit or life-force that sustains it independent of things like sunlight and food and whatnot, and knew well of my people's stoic nature. Therefore, he reasoned, it would be easy for me to be denied food. So he told me that if I didn't want his food, I could merely look at it, touching nothing, and through my people's "spiritual oneness" with the world be completely fine without any food--i.e., if I looked at something, I could touch the life-force of it, suck it dry, and be completely fine. Psychic vampirism, or something like that, I guess.
Of course, I knew this was a complete load of crap, and that he was just trying to "break" me again. The young man with me knew this too, and he spent a lot of time trying to convince me not to do this, that all I was doing was playing into the Conquistador's hands and bringing folly on my people. But I was pissed and not having any of it, so the test began. He brought out food and left it everywhere in the camp and on all the tables in my house. I specifically remember a large bowl of mint ice cream. Then he told me that I should feel free to amuse myself, so I began to walk around my house/the camp like a caged animal. I was hungry, but the burning anger, humiliation and staunch pride compelled me to touch nothing. I ate nothing, and I got weaker, but I did as he bid. I stared intently at the food, careful to look at everything, just as we had agreed. I stared and as I did I thought about my people, and the Conquistadors--how they had already won, and would continue to win, how they would crush my people utterly. I was filled with bitterness and hate. I didn't know how we could go on, how we could even bother; it was just too crushing of a defeat. But as I stared at the food and paced, getting weaker and weaker, something strange began to happen. I started to be able to see this life-force coming out of the food, a sort of faint glow. I didn't know if it was light-headedness or not, bUt I was sure it was the life-force common to all things that I was seeing. This didn't surprise me, really. I wasn't a shaman, so I wasn't necessarily gifted with seeing these things, but I knew they were always there. But like a shaman, I found that I COULD draw from this stuff. I did so with gratitude and while it didn't really take away any of my earthly hunger, I felt better. I felt at peace. And I realized, all at once, that my people weren't really completely screwed. We had a strength that the Conquistadors couldn't touch. As long as we could keep our beliefs and world-view alive in our hearts, they could never fully conquer and destroy us.
Having realized this, I returned to confront the head Conquistador/my father.
I came and sat down in the family room as he walked in with a drink in hand, looking at me with amusement and pity. He looked at me and asked, half-jokingly, "so, are you ready to kill yourself yet?" (these were his exact words)
I/the chief just stared at him, and he took this as a sign of defeat, so he went on: "See, this is what the world is. This is what life is. It just gives you shit again and again and again, and it never stops. The world is pain." He looked angry and bitter and full of pain. Then he grinned nastily and said, "isn't that great?" (Mind you, these weren't his exact words--I'm sort of paraphrasing, since I can't quite remember them anymore--but the general gist was "I feel pain, so you should too"--a sort of ecapsulation of his cynical world-view). He came off as more amused than anything, and seemed smugly triumphant, confidant that he'd proved his point and also taught me something of the world. He seemed more like a patronizing teacher than anything. But there was something kind about him, too. He was doing this all for my own good, after all, to teach me about life.
I just looked back at him and refused to give in and feel angry and bitter and hateful along with him. I smiled at him, and was about to say something in response...
...And then I woke up.
Are you choking on the sacchrine levels yet? The trite-ness of this sort of blows my mind, but I find the paralells interesting. I'm not sure if this is a commentary or a revelation of my own romanticized views of indigenous people, or if this really is about philosophical power struggles with my father. It seems especially surreal in light of my other dreams being about throwing brownies with rocks in them at undead grizzly bears.
Go figure, eh?
Incredibly trite, actually. Embarassingly so!
But I felt like I needed to tell someone about this dream when I woke up, but since no one's here LJ seems to be the next best thing. It seemed very important to tell someone.
Feel free not to read this, though---it's damn long.
This dream took place mostly from what I can remember in some strange aglamation of the inside of my house and a Conquistador camp somewhere in South America (though sometimes it might have been a camp in North America)--i.e., sometimes I was inside my living room, and other times I was deep in the jungle or inside a crude hut.
Throughout this dream, I was either a Mayan (I know I spoke Quecha in parts of the dream) or some random North American tribe memeber--an older, respected man in his mid 40s who was a chief or leader of some kind for the group of people living near the Conquistador/soldier encampment. I had gone over to the camp as a show of good faith, kind of, but mostly to try to get some sort of measure of the invaders, officially acting as a diplomat or an equal with the leader of the Conquistadors---and they accepted me as such. I got the impression, though, that they had already enslaved my people and that this whole thing was a farce, and I was only walking around "inspecting" the camp because I was of absolutely no threat to them. Either that, or they felt that way regardless of the reality, and that was the impression I got.
My role in this dream was constantly fluctuating between being myself, play-acting as this "chief," and actually being this proud, very intelligent and angry guy in his mid 40s. I even had a pretty good idea of what I looked like, and I know that my internal dialogue sounded very much like an angry, intelligent guy in an Alexie Sherman novel who's pissed off (with good reason) about the Rez and the circumstances there. So as this guy, I was some sort of representative for my people. I had
another man with me, too---a much younger man in his 20s, and he was utterly lost to cold hate. He had nothing but anger and hate for our new "rulers," and he knew that we were being recognized purely as a sham, but he was with me all the same. While I felt and understood his hate, and agreed that it was a sham, I also wanted to give the Conquistadors a chance to treat us with some modictum of respect. Whatever they could to to me, after all, was little or nothing in the face of the harm they could inflict on my people.
When I was not being this man, I was myself, role-playing as this man, in a sort of strange battle with my father. He was the head Conquistador who was showing me around the camp, and otherwise trying to demonstrate to me, in no uncertain terms, that he had conquered my people and that it would be best if we just gave up and let them run us into the ground, culturally and otherwise. During these tests he was a smug, superior asshole who was completely assured of the rightness of his point of view. I was ready to fight him about his viewpoint, though, so he spent the entirity of the dream trying to demonstrate his point to me through a series of humiliating "tests."
Each test had to do with something that the Conquistadors took or destroyed from indigenous cultures, and each one was calculated to infuriate and "break" this proud man that I was. From what little I remember, each test made me angry. Each time I came back to my smugly smiling father and demanded another. One of the ones I remember involved writing. My people had no written language, I think--either that, or glyphs--and he tried to make me write something so he could demonstrate how his language was superior. I think he made me try to sign my name on something. For whatever reason, I couldn't write in my people's tounge, or we had no written language, and whatever I wrote was quite laughable. I remember feeling deeply aware of my loss of face to this man, and incredibly pissed off as a result.
I wish I could remember more of these tests. Each was unique, and the emotional interactions of my father and I's dual roles were very intricate and strange. Each test also encapsulated some aspect of colonization, too, and the destruction of native culture. However, each test was also a "learning experience" between me and my father--like he was trying to teach me something himself through these acts. It was all very strange.
The one test I remember the most, though, was the last one. I was getting so angry at these things that my father/the Conquistador was getting highly amused, and kept suggesting more and more cruel tasks, baiting me and aware that in my blind anger that I'd take them on. The last one involved food. I had been in the camp for days at this point, and I had either refused to eat the soldier's food due to pride or fear of poisoning, or been outright denied the opportunity to eat anything, the better to keep me weak and off-guard. Regardless I was very hungry, and despite my best abilities to remain stoic, eventually the head Conquistador caught on. So he gave me another test, and because I was still really pissed off and full of wounded pride, I jumped at it. He told me that he had heard of the Mayan belief that everything in the universe is animated by a spirit or life-force that sustains it independent of things like sunlight and food and whatnot, and knew well of my people's stoic nature. Therefore, he reasoned, it would be easy for me to be denied food. So he told me that if I didn't want his food, I could merely look at it, touching nothing, and through my people's "spiritual oneness" with the world be completely fine without any food--i.e., if I looked at something, I could touch the life-force of it, suck it dry, and be completely fine. Psychic vampirism, or something like that, I guess.
Of course, I knew this was a complete load of crap, and that he was just trying to "break" me again. The young man with me knew this too, and he spent a lot of time trying to convince me not to do this, that all I was doing was playing into the Conquistador's hands and bringing folly on my people. But I was pissed and not having any of it, so the test began. He brought out food and left it everywhere in the camp and on all the tables in my house. I specifically remember a large bowl of mint ice cream. Then he told me that I should feel free to amuse myself, so I began to walk around my house/the camp like a caged animal. I was hungry, but the burning anger, humiliation and staunch pride compelled me to touch nothing. I ate nothing, and I got weaker, but I did as he bid. I stared intently at the food, careful to look at everything, just as we had agreed. I stared and as I did I thought about my people, and the Conquistadors--how they had already won, and would continue to win, how they would crush my people utterly. I was filled with bitterness and hate. I didn't know how we could go on, how we could even bother; it was just too crushing of a defeat. But as I stared at the food and paced, getting weaker and weaker, something strange began to happen. I started to be able to see this life-force coming out of the food, a sort of faint glow. I didn't know if it was light-headedness or not, bUt I was sure it was the life-force common to all things that I was seeing. This didn't surprise me, really. I wasn't a shaman, so I wasn't necessarily gifted with seeing these things, but I knew they were always there. But like a shaman, I found that I COULD draw from this stuff. I did so with gratitude and while it didn't really take away any of my earthly hunger, I felt better. I felt at peace. And I realized, all at once, that my people weren't really completely screwed. We had a strength that the Conquistadors couldn't touch. As long as we could keep our beliefs and world-view alive in our hearts, they could never fully conquer and destroy us.
Having realized this, I returned to confront the head Conquistador/my father.
I came and sat down in the family room as he walked in with a drink in hand, looking at me with amusement and pity. He looked at me and asked, half-jokingly, "so, are you ready to kill yourself yet?" (these were his exact words)
I/the chief just stared at him, and he took this as a sign of defeat, so he went on: "See, this is what the world is. This is what life is. It just gives you shit again and again and again, and it never stops. The world is pain." He looked angry and bitter and full of pain. Then he grinned nastily and said, "isn't that great?" (Mind you, these weren't his exact words--I'm sort of paraphrasing, since I can't quite remember them anymore--but the general gist was "I feel pain, so you should too"--a sort of ecapsulation of his cynical world-view). He came off as more amused than anything, and seemed smugly triumphant, confidant that he'd proved his point and also taught me something of the world. He seemed more like a patronizing teacher than anything. But there was something kind about him, too. He was doing this all for my own good, after all, to teach me about life.
I just looked back at him and refused to give in and feel angry and bitter and hateful along with him. I smiled at him, and was about to say something in response...
...And then I woke up.
Are you choking on the sacchrine levels yet? The trite-ness of this sort of blows my mind, but I find the paralells interesting. I'm not sure if this is a commentary or a revelation of my own romanticized views of indigenous people, or if this really is about philosophical power struggles with my father. It seems especially surreal in light of my other dreams being about throwing brownies with rocks in them at undead grizzly bears.
Go figure, eh?