Dream

[felephant]

I had a dream last night in which I kissed a girl who was surprised by how agreeable that was and so whose boyfriend I found myself. But it was a little more subtle than this, and I confess I'm a little proud of my dreaming self's psychological acuity. When I kissed her, she didn't just reciprocate; I felt with my lips that hers clenched in

Comments

[felephant]

I should note that my dreams are not normally either this subtle or this romantic.

[felephant]

What's also interesting is that, identity in dreams being more fluid and empathising being necessary to create a fictional character (or, as in this case, bring a real person to a fictional context), I also have memories, weaker to be sure, of being a short pretty curly-haired girl in a summer blouse with my arm linked with my very tall boyfriend's.

[ideealisme]

They say that we go around as a half-being waiting for that ideal person to make our other half. By "they" I think I mean Plato, but you can correct me if I'm wrong! So it is a marriage of two souls and a healing and harmonising of one. That is why the profoundest and most powerful of passions come from the feeling that the beloved is a missing piece of the self.

[felephant]

It is indeed Plato, the Symposium. At the drinking party which is the symposium, Socrates tells the story about the dawn of man and of love. We were once man and female together but were broken apart by the gods for becoming too powerful, and now, as you say, we live longing and searching for our other half from whom we have been clove.

[ideealisme]

Which is odd because Socrates spent a lot of time praising homosexual love too.

[felephant]

Now don't quote me on this, but my understanding is that though the Greeks did indeed invent gayness, gay and straight relationships operated in very different ways. Gay relationships were between a master and a student, e.g., Socrates and Plato, and was about education and mentorship and so on. Straight relationships were, relatively speaking, between equals, and were about marriage and children and financial security and all that. It might be that the two-halves together thing only really took place between men and women (because of the smaller age discrepancy) and so that's why Socrates says what he does. This is all pretty speculative mind!

Though what it does remind me of is the general truth that the gay/straight dichotomy only exists in certain cultures such as ours. It's anachronistic, for instance, to call Michelangelo gay. I'd love to know more about this actually.