Needles
Last night I dreamt that I had needles stuck on my throat, a handful of them stubbornly piercing the tender flesh, refusing to be swallowed down or coughed up, simply stuck. I woke up bathed in sweat, feeling a sharp pain where they should have been had the nightmare been real. I wondered whether there was something I needed to say, an intelligible urge struggling to get out of my chest despite my efforts to conceal that I am panicking, a bubbling fear in the pit of my stomach furiously rising up in a screaming crescendo that crashes bluntly against my closed lips and falls back down, too exhausted to find its way back to where it came from, deciding to lurk close in case my mouth relaxes its guard and decides to let it out. A tension cankering within, a fear that the present situation will continue as it is, like these needles, immobile, refusing to develop or rot to death simply stuck. An image builds in my mind, the tarot card representing the hanged man, a man hanged from his feet to the branch of a tree with the blood rushing towards his head impairing his capacity to think a solution, to imagine and create the possibility of escape. A man with a strikingly serene expression despite his situation, what is he thinking? Is he suffering? Does he struggle or does he decide to surrender to his seemingly cruel fate? According to what I have read he is going through a process of growth, embracing the sacrifice of what needs to be left behind and forgotten before real development takes place. A slow, binding and painful process. Self-sacrifice. And I ask myself whether he’d rather be enjoying life’s simple pleasures, standing on his feet blissfully ignorant of his own inner depths, reluctant to accept the spiritual dimension of man and eagerly welcoming the tangible rewards of the material world.
