The Ghosts That Haunt Me
oil pastels on paper
approx 17" x 20"
I was looking down at a goat that was strung up by its legs.
The goat was beautiful.
It had shiny black fur and the most gentle
Christlike look on its face.
I had cut the skin off its head from the eyes back and I was slicing and eating pieces of its 'meat'.
Suddenly I saw that the goat was only unconscious.
I realized that I would have to take its heart out and kill it because it would suffer terribly if I put the scalp back on particularly as I had eaten part of it.
It was a horrifying dilemma.
I couldn't kill the goat but I couldn't let it suffer either.
***
The black goat represents my unconscious.
That was easy to figure out - the word 'unconscious'
was the word I used myself in the dream to describe it.
Peeling back the unconscious (the scalp) and eating
parts of it (taking in) suggests to me that there are
some shadow issues I've integrated into my conscious personality.
But the rest of the dream is more problematic.
And "getting to the heart of everything" is going to be a bloody, painful mess.
Jung promises that it's worth it though.
ReplyDeleteThat is very intense...
ReplyDeletePeregrine falcons always eat the brains of their prey first Francie. Your dream reminds me of a poem. The Man With the Blue Guitar, by Wallace Stevens.
ReplyDelete"The man bent over his guitar,
A shearsman of sorts. The day was green.
They said, "You have a blue guitar,
You do not play things as they are."
The man replied, "Things as they are
Are changed upon the blue guitar."
And they said then, "But play, you must,
A tune beyond us, yet ourselves,
A tune upon the blue guitar
Of things exactly as they are."