Dream Diary 2: Collapsing buildings

A guide to making your dreams come true

I have a recurring motif in my dreams. it’s been happening as long as I can remember. Being inside a tall, 10 floor at least, building - usually living there, either an apartment or a hotel room. And then the building collapses.

it’s related to sociality. the building collapsing is usually the conclusion to some kind of social anxiety or conflict that goes unresolved. an anxiety grows and grows, and in just the last second before I could no longer bear it, I’m distracted by the fact of my impending doom.

Tonight I dreamt about a girl I used to know, and moving into a shared apartment style living situation with a handful of people. I didn’t admit as much to myself at the time, but I broke up with my first girlfriend in large part because I liked this other girl better, and wanted to have a shot with her. Last I met her she was settling down with a guy. must be like 5 years ago now. She wasn’t unhappy. I could have made her happier than him. She was settling. Should have made my move all those years ago. I didn’t realise at the time that she also liked me, and liked me a lot. I didn’t know so much about these things then. I didn’t think it meant anything that she would do those things for me. She travelled 3 hours to stay with me out of nowhere, when I told her I’d broken up with my girlfriend. What a good friend, to come and support me like that.

I’ve been awake for a while now, made breakfast. The plot of it all has settled and obscured itself. The plot is kind of arbitrary - interchangeable. That’s what makes a good recurring motif. When I tell you about it, I can just take bits and pieces of other dreams, or, just speak honestly about the core emotional stuff it’s all a metaphor for, and it’ll all ring true in writing. It wasn’t the plot - but it might as well have been.

In the dream I’m moving in with her into this shared living situation with a bunch of other people, on the tenth floor of a apartment building. We’re not an item. When I think too hard about it, the building starts to collapse and we all die.

Truly the perfect metaphor for the 21th century

I’m terrified of heights. Not always in practise, but always in theory. I’m terrified of the concept of heights. I have flown here and there around the world, but importantly, whenever I get on a plane, I literally believe I am going to die. If you catch me on a plane, you have caught me in perfect Zen, fully prepared to die. While I also realise that it’s irrational - most planes don’t crash, of course - I simply cannot abstract my way out of “man was not meant for such a height”, an intuitive sensation that this is wrong, spitting in the face of God, and to dare such things is to deserve to die, to invite it.

It relates to one of the big subjects we talk a lot about. “Trust”. When I’m in any other mode of transportation, I have an intuitive, animal, pre-rational sense, that “if something goes wrong”, then “I can save myself”. Cars, trains, wheels? it’s on ground, so I still have “room for movement”, space to take action - even if that action is pointless and I die, there is still a space of possible action. If I’m on a boat in the middle of the ocean? now it starts to get scary, but luckily I’m an extremely trained swimmer and very capable of movement. Water is owned space to me.

But in the air? I’m fucked. I can’t even take a pointless, useless action - I am entirely at the mercy of 1. the pilot and 2. the machine. And, I don’t trust other men. And I don’t trust the machine.

When I dream about buildings collapsing, it is this kind of fear. The phobia of heights. The “irrational” fear, the “disproportional” fear. The fear of the abyss - the fear of the Kierkegaard quote I just posted. Dreaming about girls, about this particular girl as a stand-in for all girls, the perfect girl, the Jungian Anima - my relationship to the Anima. Woman makes you afraid, because the intrusion of woman into your owned-space forces you to face the fact that you are Free. Free to do with [them] as you want.

me and the waitresses at work

Kierkegaard’s leap of faith is the choice to enter into this state of “freefall” willingly.

To get on a plane I have to be prepared to die. I guess I should fly somewhere. I haven’t flown since I went to Egypt with my dad a couple years ago. We had a very good time diving in the red sea.

sic semper feminae