A Dream without a Dream

きらきら

The protagonist ran through the bridge, a long one, towards fireworks far far away. As he proceeded to get closer to the end of the bridge, the cityscape appeared with more details and the crowds were gathering, blocking the whole street that no one could go any further. Suddenly and naturally the fireworks transformed into stars shimmering in the sky and the sun was nowhere to be found. Then everything disappeared, there was only silence, the protagonist and the numerous stars left in the frame. I woke up very abruptly, feeling a sense of nausea, incapable of differentiating the reality from dreams for a second.

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The Family Occasion

Family dinner with another group of relatives, where no one seems to be uttering what they truly want to say, is sort of a manifestation of the pretentiousness from each attendee. I sit among them at the dining table without a word spoken. Till the end of the meal, I haven’t yet moved my chopsticks a bit. When I open my eyes again I felt a sense of nausea.

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Gigantic River

Weird scenario, where I was in a van driven by my paternal grandfather, appears. Whilst the car was on a huge long bridge above an endless river in the mid-winter I felt a sudden sense of pulling-back which made me hit against the back of the van. Then the door opened and the freezing howling wind sneaked in. My backpack fell out of my grasp and went straight falling into the river. It took like an eternity for the backpack to touch the surface of the river. Inside the backpack were all my books and money. After this scene I felt a huge sense of loss and could not utter a word until I woke up.

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The Colossal

I woke up early and took a cup of coffee. I finished a chapter of Le Bon’s A Study of the Popular Mind. Whilst I opened Jung’s Liber Novus I felt an unstoppable sense of sleepiness. When I again got visions I found myself on a plane to Japan. After I somehow got off I was on an island surrounded by beautiful aquamarine ocean and landscape. Everything seemed quite normal until I reached the top of the only mountain visible by noon. The sun was blazing over me and there appeared around a huge tree two kilometers away from me. The tree was around fifty or sixty meters in height and beside it there was an Eagle that seemed ever bigger over sixty meters high. Strangely I did not feel scared but bewildered. It took me a long time standing there to realize how amazing the sight in front of me was. When I tried to grab my device to take an image, the eagle flew away. Hence there was only a motion-blurred shadow visible in my image taken. I went on walking and then I saw a huge titan around eighty meters tall right on the back of another mountain in front of me. When I reached the other side of the mountain the titan has vanished and the night has fallen. Behind the mountain there was a city-scale village where nobody was living. A person encountered me with surprise on his face as if no one was supposed to be there and called his boss. Then I took a plane of theirs back to my home with confusion.

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Filthy phallas. Great fear arouse from the scene of it, grown out of my own body. The view itself is almost mythological already.

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A pen with black ink, left without being covered overnight, can no longer write well.

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It seems extremely hard for me these days to catch the dreams afterwards. These dreams are complex and elusive. The essence of which seems hard to be concluded into a few words. There were some fragments of memories left but nothing more. Those objects are ordinary daily scenes that would normally slip away from attention. Some of my concerns in real life appear to be manifested as real in my dreams. As far as I can tell at this point of life, that could mean I am more or less in an anxious state. Whence what I should do is pushing my projects, including my current dissertation as well as my other personal projects further.

But maybe there is one dream I could share here. For no reason, like how all dreams would start, I found myself climbing down the walls of a very tall apartment (approximately there were 25 floors in sum). I do not know why I started or why I was there, I kept going downwards but felt more and more scared as I was proceeding. Suddenly I realized that I might be caught mid-air or I would somehow fall directly into death if I kept attached to the wall with my feet drifting in the air. So I opened one of the windows in the apartment and sneaked in. It took me no time to realize that another man’s apartment is like a maze to the others. I tried to find a way out to safety yet failed. I ended up being caught. On my way to the trail, finally, I woke up with a sense of dizziness.

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So as I entered the Photography Department, there is a professor here in my program called Olivier. He today occurred to be in my dream as the owner of a luxurious house. He did not seem to have spoken throughout but the house was extraordinary. It had three different floors (I don’t know if there also existed a basement) and on the second floor there was trees planted at the balcony. The whole decoration of the building was Japanese. The location of this particular place was near the countryside of a big Metropolitan.

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Grandmother

My grandmother, who passed away many years ago when I was a 12th grade student, with my grandfather and I returned together back to our rural household. Time was mixed and I couldn’t tell when. Then I saw her packing and tidying up the home where everything seemed to have remained much the same as before. Before this return, we were at the street by Taoyuan and selling our old furniture as well as items. (Among which I doubt that the lost pieces of my old school records were lost.) Most noticeably, I dreamed of one of my old diaries, which contained numerous literary excerpts.

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Back in the middle school, where strangely enough was full of ruins. I and a few friends were just strolling through one of the huge bridge hole. Then we climbed across the ruins of these buildings and all the way up toward the rooftop chasing the sunrise and sunset. All of a sudden I realized that I forgot and left my camera back in the classroom. I failed to return afterwards and woke up.

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The Buddha

In one of the artificial parks, I lost track of my teammates and got isolated by the surroundings. That particular day I stayed in a mysterious little cabin by the road in this weird park. All I remembered was continuous tunnels and countless bewildering floor plans. Huge gigantic roots of trees and chopsticks and tableware with a Chinese style. Hexagon wooden lacquerware and closely compact but elegant sinks. Finally I returned to the cabin which appeared to be a very warm and well-designed studio.

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Sex and women, devil and green flash.

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Heavy and ceaseless rain, I sat by the window in a classroom. I reckoned it as a dream but enjoyed it regardless. I have always loved rain and it seems the second time I dreamed of it after The Gigantic River.

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In Tibet, I was somehow travelling there alone. Groups of other tourists walked past me, asking me a few questions which I no longer remember its content. They furthered into the rivers, blue ones, and I followed them. I then got lost in the Tibet’s forest.

Robert appeared under the Empire Building in central New York. The crowd walked beside him, ignoring him as well as the surroundings. Robert disappeared.

000521

They say that in winter, London would fall into dark after three. The white nights smashes people into the dream, where they have to breathe with lucidity by soaking into the alcohol. Hence, I went to the ocean, trying to sculpt the surface into a sculpture. Then spray into the cracks with shironeri petals. I miss so very much the summer, yet stumbled into the sea in the bleak mid winter.

021121

He lost his way in the alley, seeking a flower. Yet no one allowed his presence, unable to find the flower, he felt a sense of vertigo and confusion, ending up being lost. The flower hides in the corner deep inside the alley, having few ever noticed it, though this is not the first time. The owner of the flower saw a butterfly flying into the forest. The owner then decided to wait for it. As it was flying, the butterfly then shifted into the form of a flower, dropped onto the ground in the forest.

061121

She was there, yet she was not there. This time he chose her, resolutely. The caravan was fading away, deep in the friction between the station and the train penetrates time. Finally he realized how love would shed tears with everything beyond and unstoppable. Now that we have both grown, however little, we breathe the unfathomably holy air.

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fully armored boy

in front of the lost old castle

staring at the erring looks on oneself

the gigantic double gates pushed open

entering a dimmish hall

resolutely pulling out the sword at the waist

yet dropped to the ground to death

not even one step further

death is a moment all of a sudden

simple, crispy without hesitation

memory got neither pain nor blood stain

waking up, finding oneself sitting on a stranger’s bed

with infinite greenery outside the window

to die in a dream

to wake in a dream

still in a dream

穿著盔甲的男孩,站在迷失的古堡前,眼睛盯著自己怪異的穿著,推開氣派的雙開門走進昏暗的大殿,決然地抽出腰旁的劍。隨即卻被砍死在地上,一步也沒能向前,死亡是一個瞬間,乾脆且不拖沓,記憶力既沒有痛感也沒有血漬。醒來時發現自己坐在一張陌生的床上,窗外是無限綠茵。在夢裏赴死、再在夢中醒來,一直都還在夢裏。

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Murder scene

I live high above the building alone in a studio suite. The room was organized and well sorted. A tragedy just broke out. By all means and out of nowhere I found two dead bodies sized like two dolls. I showed very calm and not nervous, starting to deal with the bodies in no time. Because it was so small, I only needed to get rid of three heads. After which I shall put them into a black plastic bag.

I saw police and news media gathering downstairs, the light was sharp but seemed all so far away that it almost triggered no alarm in me. I hated and felt a huge sense of disgust when I ripped of their heads and when I tried to lift them by the first time.

At this point I still have no memory of conducting any behavior which could even remotely put myself into a position like these. I am not sure if it is raining outside. Yet I opened the door and went into the student lounge room on my floor.

I remember that I made a promise to some of my friends that I would travel back home with them. Before entering the lounge I heard them talking to B asking my whereabouts. I shouted yes in response.

Not many seem to be alerted yet but I should prepare. I then decided that I would pass the bag of bodies to my fellow B, asking him a big favor to help. It is, to this date, still utterly confusing why B would have accepted my request at such risks.

In hindsight, I would have had to travel all the way from floor 34 to the lower ground floor to dispose the bin bags. There was a coldness in my facial expressions, the guard was completely indifferent of the situation when he saw me. I went all the way into the alley and found five to six adult digging through the garbage to try to find the claimed relative of theirs. I went among them and helped them a bit to gather more info.

Back in the lounge, the tv was showing the breaking news of one mysterious murder happening. I came to finally realize that I was the murderer. But how come the body was only the size of a big toy doll?

I then fell into the abyss of worry. The feeling that I have just killed someone preoccupied every corner of my heart. It was about the point when I am starting to leave for the main or side gate of the building that I woke up.

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Repeatedly eaten mooncakes fulfilling people’s appetite over and over again.

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As I saw someone, I uttered words asking for name in Japanese. Weird enough though, the next scene was where I made myself into a chaotic scenario, ending up opening the back of one of my pocket camera, exposing and ruining the film, along with all the memories.

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Being a manager for a big celebrity singer, I was working with him in a weird hall where the inner circle’s doors could be closed instead of opened. Walking slowly into the hallway, I see the singer singing seemingly only for the VIP seats yet all other people in the hall had to watch from CCTV screen and the stereo speakers. At the end of the first song, the singer realized that there are great many people outside the stadium who could not listen to his music. He walked slowly to the exterior, whilst I followed. It is rather strange that, which may be due to the dim lightings, no one spotted the protagonsit of the night. He later was disappointed by the fact that regardless of some of the empty seats, there remained a crowd outside eager to see him. He then slowly returned to the stage preparing to do the next song. Then it mysteriously occurred to him that only are much fewer people in the whole stadium comparing to before, he then gathered everyone in the inner circle and started singing. The dream stopped at the point of pondering these details, which remained sharply clear even after waking up.

051723

He was in a big lobby with tons of books and blueprints, people were around, no one specific he recognized. The fire would ignite itself in different spots, at first he allowed it to go, then he realized that everyone else just took the same approach. So he took the role of diminishing the fire, one after another, the room was finally safe. This dream reminds me of an essay written by Jung on the unconscious dream where he shared his own notes, the role of solving the problem may signify the constant stress in life as well as the protagonist‘a daily perceptive worldviews.

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Xiangyin Gu

I work primarily in photography as well as video and performance. Concentrating on modern-day human condition and self-expression, my work tackles the concept of self and others in the context of modern life. Regarding daily practices as signs and symbols that resonate with public psychology situation, I shoot various footages and combine assorted archival materials to find the patterns behind universal problems related to family and self-consciousness across generations. Always critical of public opinions and diverse categorization of contemporary images, I use my work to help people understand varied human conditions and approach philosophical issues while prioritizing my goals over different genres.

https://kuschonink.com
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Choosing the Way to Die