Since giving up on the hope of any immediate messianic advent last december, and moreover achieving a degree of emotional independence from my innermost desires on turning 23 this 18th of April, my days have become calmer, but my nights equally turbulent. there has not been a night that i have not dreamt the most fearful nightmares, seeing strange people, known and unknown, in stranger shapes, all trying to attack me, kill me. and i am always on the run. fighting back.
when i thought that i have become independent, less panting for a rock, a savior, a sword to become more self-dependent, more secure, have i only in effect driven down my insecurities and fears into a cave from where they come out in the night to chase me? am i becoming a classic case of repression? when in earlier years, i had always lived in a perpetual darkness, and never ceased from confessing to myself my solitude, my dreams had always been peculiarly sunny and troublefree.
or have i
achieved some real progress in maturity? (though everyone around me says i am too much of a kid, that i know nothing) and the nightmares are merely a sign of growing up? or are they those feared incubi and succubi, those demons of the night that medieval fables are so replete with, who come and tempt and rape you in the night? i once dreamt a few days back i am a bird fighting a snake. what does it mean?
achieved some real progress in maturity? (though everyone around me says i am too much of a kid, that i know nothing) and the nightmares are merely a sign of growing up? or are they those feared incubi and succubi, those demons of the night that medieval fables are so replete with, who come and tempt and rape you in the night? i once dreamt a few days back i am a bird fighting a snake. what does it mean?my thoughts dwell with St Anthony the great (c.251-356 AD), considered as one of the founding fathers of monasticism. he retreated into a desert of Egypt for meditation and was there chased by all manners of horrible visions and demons, phantoms in the form of wild beasts, wolves, lions, snakes and scorpions, the devil beating him mercilessly, or sheer laziness, boredom and indifference.
The temptation(s) of St Anthony, as they are well known in theology and art history, have been much favored as a subject matter for artists, from at least the 10th c AD. famous depictions include those by Hieronymus Bosch (ca. 1505), whose images are in this post, and Salvador Dalí.
i am no saint. yet the human mind has its perversities, its conspiracies no less fertile in a saint as in a sinner. and every night, my closest kin become murderers, chasing me through open fields and narrow lanes, temptresses run after me with knives, and i am running and running till i wake up sweating.... i am afraid to write more for fear that my words will now take human form and chase me... Desire mingles with fear, and fear with desire.
never have i loved the day so much as now.
~~by Scio Amo
