Wednesday, January 9, 2019
A Dream of Spilt Coffee
I spilled some coffee, including someone else's coffee, in a group of people. I collapsed to the floor and hid my face in my inner elbow for a while, to allow myself to recover by some strategic weeping. I felt that it was always I who was spilling the coffee in these meetings. When I sat up again at a table a genial guy in a beard began making emphatic hand gestures as if to show that spilling coffee while making gestures as you talk is the most natural thing in the world. He told me to take a breath, hold it for a second, and take away the insight from the experience as I exhaled again. As I did this the clock radio went off to a version of "Body and Soul" and I awoke from the dream of spilled coffee. I was relieved that the coffee spilling was not real life, but at the same time grateful for the insight.
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3 comments:
OK interpret my dream.
I went to a conference in London, with a graduate student (a woman, and someone I identify with in a lot of ways) who used to be mine but who has transferred to the university down the road. This conference was somehow connected to that university, and the student and I are in comparative literature, which was how we got to that conference / why we were there.
We ran into a colleague from English at that university, with whom I work now on a statewide committee. We work well on this committee and have a lot of solidarity, which surprises us because otherwise we do not have the same politics or interests at all. When I worked at that place, we always voted differently on everything. On this committee, though, which isn't about concerns within discipline, we see eye to eye.
This colleague turns out to have come up to the conference from southern Spain, where he is, oddly enough, on sabbatical. He is enjoying himself greatly doing some sort of archival research related to England. He is dressed in summer / beach white and has a deep tan from surfing, has lost weight, and his hair has returned to the color and shininess levels it had years ago. I am pleased to see him doing so well and utterly surprised his work has this Spanish connection.
...So this is some sort of narrative of healing. From the P.O.V. that all characters are oneself, the grad. student got to a better program and the professor got totally rejuvenated, so that's good. And it all has to do with that university, where I felt more myself than I do at this one. But what else?
You are imagining circumstances of rejuvenation for yourself. Southern Spain is the imaginary of the profession (Spanish and Spanish American literature and culture): the space of romanticism, as in our youthful dreams. For some reason you think subconsciously that this space is more available to colleagues in English. Your former graduate student represents you when you were a grad student, at the initial stage of the career. The ambiguity / ambivalence about the colleague's politics represents your desire to form alliances even with people who aren't automatically akin to you, but at the same time a suspicion perhaps that those who seem to be your allies might not turn out to have your back.
Very interesting!
"For some reason you think subconsciously that this space is more available to colleagues in English." Not just subconsciously -- consciously too. Interesting that I also think this subconsciously. Very.
"Might not turn out to have your back." Or: the ones who should be allies don't, and the more unlikely ones do?
Very innteresting, southern Spain as imaginary of the profession, I wonder whether this is why the students want to go there so much. I never quite get this, but I see I secretly believe it too!
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