Thanks Teacake...your response wasn't easy to read and it stirred up a lot of uncomfortable emotion in me, but maybe that's what I needed. It's true, I do feel angry. And I don't think it's just me; I have a lot of other friends my age (25) who feel the same way. Mangled and weighed down by a consumerist and bottom-line culture.
I hope you don't mind, this may end up being a long-ish post. I associate the feminine with India, and India with the interconnectedness of all things, the ever-renewing flow of Life and Death. I've always had this awareness of life cycles and I feel our culture doesn't. One important thing I forgot to mention was that in the dream, the pants were in the women's section of the mall; the carpet bags in the men's section. I do feel a certain degree of oppressed womanhood, especially in grad school.
Grad school has been especially rough. My school has a rather corporate atmosphere and I've done my best to retain my voice. I'm an artist and a sensitive person so it's been difficult at times to "get with the program" and be the student they want me to be. Now school is over and I have a month off; I've put so much concentrated effort in one area for the past 3 months (NOT easy for me to do, as I'm typically scattered and distracted and bipolar like most artists) and I feel deflated, but also kind of confused and muddled emotionally...almost a feeling of like..."what now?"
Regardless, I feel grad school is my ticket to a good job and finally getting out of my parents' house so I feel in a bind...
I saw some positive aspects to the dream too...the colorful Indian pants I think represent the colorful and vibrant aspects of myself; and in the dream, the woman was pointing very clearly at the PANTS, not the carpet bags; I only got
distracted by the carpet bags. So perhaps if I focus on India and what it means to me, I will not feel so oppressed...rather than focus my attention on carpet bag issues....
And the black girls...I think they can be positive as well, as anger is only energy, and there was a LOT of energy in that basement....
Thanks so much,
Alma
Quote:
Originally Posted by Teacake
You would like to express some aspect of yourself more colorfully, but you feel constrained by culture, so much so that you feel angry and oppressed.
Carpet baggers were opportunistic northerners who came to exploit the defeated gracious south. They were consideres greedy, low class boorish people and they were resented for buying up the rui.s of the grand old south. So you could feel drawn to expression of something you associate with India, but you dont want to look like a carpetbagger, which could mean you dont want to exploit and disrespectfully (like western feminists appropriating the hindú female god Kali) or you fear looking like a contemptible outsider to your own culture.
Maybe Im projecting. Im one of those older wasp women who would love to wear beautiful panjabi suits in summer but fear people would roll their eyes at me.
Watch out for the black girls in your basement. They dont care about your stuffy old culture. They are young, oppressed, and angry. So are you, deep down.
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