Tag Archive for 'children'

My first memory is a long, connected series of dreams

Published by
bartok fiend
 in memory. 0 Comments

My first memory is a long, connected series of dreams- so intense that they most likely wiped out all of the memories beforehand. I was 3 years old.Well, it starts off in a field in front of a large brick house. I am led to believe that my grandmother lives there, yet I cannot be sure because from the outside, this house looks as if it is on the shore of a teeming ocean of horror- not standard horror- but horror that for me has come in the form of textures and slow noises ever since this dream.

Inside this house, my mom and my little brother (and me of course) are led into a large white auditorium which, instead of seats, houses small, faceless ice-cherubs playing with small white balls. At the very end is a large white bed with a polar bear skin on it, and we stay there at th head of the room for awhile, just staring at them.

I am then walking down the front stairs of this house, and the walls are covered with some sort of red, gilded ‘design’. To my right is a large glass case built into the wall, with lion figurines in it. There is a volcano, and I press a red button to make it spout on the lions. It is mirrored; reflected. The lions appear to be covered in lava millions of times over. They melt.

Across the hall is a place I know about immediately, yet both dread and look forward to entering- it’s a secret room with no door that only I can go through- in it is nothing but a small table with my Aunt Connie seated at it, and rows and rows of large, talking rubber plants. My aunt appears very lonely, and I feel as if I could sit at that table with her, but I can’t. There is one chair, and while I feel somewhat capable in this room, the rubber plants scare me. I leave this room knowing i have been irrecoverably changed; in essence, a microcosm of the entire dream. Continue reading ‘My first memory is a long, connected series of dreams’

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Socrates unsatisfied, or a pig satisfied.

Published by
David van Ofwegen
 in memory. 1 Comment

As with the previous post, this one too is not a memory per se, at least not in terms of a recollected story. Rather I’m writing down the awareness of having changed, of really -seeing- the world in a different way. Any state of mind at a certain moment in time could be considered a memory; since that’s what memory is: stored experience.

So today I write about the memory of being a staunch anti-intellectualist. A sentiment fed into by years of unhappiness in education. I remember almost vowing to myself that one day, if given the means, I would plead and fight for childrens’ freedom. From a young age they were taken away from their parents, from their home, from safety and all that is good in life.  It may sound overcharged, but this is literally how I experienced the first day of school, and many mornings after it. As if being put on a daily train to Auswitz for day-camp (back when it wasn’t yet a tourist attraction, of course). The teachers were  cruel sadists, venting their frustrations and lust for power on children who only wanted to be children. Children that like play, explore the world and retain their innocence. Instead, you were cornered between a pack of 30 other little wolves (children are indeed savages to one another) on the one side, and parental/educational pressure perform on the other side; made to counter-intuively think and cram al sorts of facts into your mind. The result of which was a hampering in respectively moral development and mental stability.

Then came university with its pretentions. I saw pretentious professors who placed their self-esteem in the study and reverance of other, dead intellectuals. Pretentious students,  having gained the right to study by forsaking their childhood, ready to find a guru, embrace a philsophy and look down . This is the problem with intellectuals; they condemned themselves to an unnatural life, hunched over in chairs, skulking in libraries, destroying their eyesight. And what do they do? They praise and other iuntellectuals, who similarly gave up their life, or had none in the first place (being perhaps debilitated or just plain anti-social). A vicious circle of people who dare not bite the hand that feeds them.

Needless to say, anti-intellectualism is not a very popular view among intellectuals. I felt priviliged to be the lone ranger that saw through this facade.

Continue reading ‘Socrates unsatisfied, or a pig satisfied.’

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