Rêve de neige

I finally had a very good Christmas compared to last year. =) Exactly a year ago today, I was in a mortal peril and the vivid memory of what transpired that time seemed to have happened only yesterday.

Toddle Elsa and Toddler Anna dolls with Olaf (click to zoom)

But what is past is past, and I was more than happy to pig out on things I never got to eat last year. We were also back to our normal tradition of letting the kids open all of the gifts under our tree. We line them up from smallest to biggest, and allow them to tear the wrappers one by one. I was most particularly excited for Brie to open her gift because Elsa finally got a sibling. But to my astonishment, she seemed more delighted with the books Mon and I gave to her, which is always a good sign.

Hopefully, she gets to like books the same way I do until now. The whole Christmas morning until afternoon, I was busy playing with JB’s toys and I even took a couple of ensemble photos of Brie’s Frozen dolls a day after.

Elsa’s sheer long sleeves, unfortunately, had to go because Brie was a bit hard with her. Compared to how squeaky clean she was last year, she is still relatively on point. Her hair was another story though, as it was a tangled mess. I had to comb for an hour before setting it with a side plait. I almost used hair spray to render it immovable, but toys were meant to be played with anyway so there was no use for that.

Compared to the Elsa doll last year, the Anna doll this year was a couple of inches smaller. I did not manage to find the same size and I assume that the same-sized dolls last year were already phased out. Disney’s gotta get those Holiday money with new reproductions, right?

I had a bit of fun taking those photos, even if Mama had to look really hard for Elsa’s shoes and tiara. LOL I was also a bit heavy-handed with the editing because, well, I was inspired by a curious dream last night.

Toddler Elsa last year, Christmas 2013 — which took about all of the toy stores within the Makati/Taguig range just to find one available

While I never get to remember all of the chronological details of my dreams, I always remember the gist of the most interesting ones. Well, dreams do not happen in a chronological manner and they are as palpable as Salvador Dali’s Un Chien Andalou.

Anyway, last night, I dreamed that Mon and I were back in the metasequoia tree lane in Nami Island, where the snow was falling softly to the ground. I was feverishly taking photos of the tree lane because it was surprisingly deserted. From how I remember it, the place is usually packed with tourists and it is very unusual to see it without any people.

The most peculiar detail was my cat, Miso, was with us during the trip. LOL She was as little as when she first arrived in our house when I look at her, but every time I try to pick her up from the snow, she turned into a grown up kitty. =D My subconscious must be itching to go back to Korea again, but I’m not sure if it would happen next year and it has been already two years since our last trip there. I really miss winter, and scratch the fact that I have wrote it off before. I’d like to go back in a heartbeat.

And speaking of Miso, I remember another dream from October 2013 when an alien invasion attacked our area.

The aliens (who by the way looked like 7-11’s fish tofu on their noodles) came to Earth to abduct all cats from the planet. It was hysterical remembering it upon waking up because it was one of the most absurd dreams ever. Around 6-foot, tofu-shaped aliens abducting felines from terra firma.

Hilarious.

I also had a dream about a total solar eclipse (which, by the way, is one on my bucket list), and Faye was inanely blabbering Physics terminologies to refute its presence otherwise. Another LOL. Also, when Ikle was here last July, we were laughing about my dream of crossing the River Seine on a bateau mouche, when a splash of water unexpectedly hit my face. It turned out that our windows were left open and the rain started pouring in the dead of the night. I also had a dream of winning not just any marathon, but an Olympic marathon.

Carl Jung’s painting of a snake in his dreams

Just recently, I watched a documentary on Carl Gustav Jung, a Swiss psychologist who was once touted as Freud protégé-turned-archnemesis after they had a falling out.

More than a decade ago, I was originally introduced to the concept of the collective unconscious by Carl Jung by one of my friends. It was a very intriguing concept that stresses the presence of a shared consciousness across humanity, and a shared connection exists in our psyche and similar concepts (archetypes) persist between cultures even if they had no contact at all.

Case in point, the existence of nature as a mother, the familiarity of a hero’s journey, the wrath of an unforgiving father once defied, or the presence of a healer in a culture are all part of a mythological theme. In this documentary, Jung was forced into isolation to closely inspect his thoughts and reconsider his career.

Dreams might be synonymous to Freud in most circles, but Jung has his own spin on it. And from then on, his analyses became the basis of future works such as Joseph Campbell’s comparative mythology in The Hero with a Thousand Faces and the Myer-Briggs Type Indicator.

I was familiar with the first one because it was one of the related literature I used years ago, but I only stumbled upon the MBTI in the middle of this year. Also, Jung heavily promoted individuality and for him, “in order for us to be truly happy, we should stop trying to be who we think we should be, or what everyone expects us to be, and figure out who we really are“. Makes perfect sense, right? It takes off the pressure of conforming to what society thinks we should do, or what people in our immediate circle expects us to become.

In my graduate school university graduation post last year, I quickly mentioned the valedictory address of from my undergraduate university graduation. I searched for it online and found the transcript directly from her blogsite.

“Take not the road less traveled. Rather make new roads, blaze new trails, find new routes to your dreams.”

I also remembered the song Corner of the Sky, which was the song used for my first ever dance competition in high school. Not only it took me a decade and a half to realize that it was from the broadway musical Pippin (which I kept on hearing from the Bring it On! audition sequence), but also that Basil Valdez was not the original singer. =D

Incidentally, Mr. Valdez’s version removed the following lines:

So many men seem destined to settle for something small
But I won’t rest until I know I’ll have it all
So don’t ask where I’m going, just listen when I’m gone
And far away you’ll hear me singing softly to the dawn:

Until now, I get astounded by how obscure memories from years past can rush back to your consciousness and remind you out of the blue that it is the journey more than the destination.

I have left my NGO job last year with a heavy heart and I also stopped teaching because I was again at the point of pushing myself to exhaustion. I’m still on my way to Ithaca and I’m finding that the journey is indeed a long one.

I still have lots of Laestrygonians and Cyclopes to meet, but I am unfazed and will keep Ithaca fixed in my mind. But that’s all for now and I wish everyone a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

(P.S. Enjoy the falling snow on my page, which is available for WordPress users until January 4, 2015!)