8: The Nightmare of My Life
9/27/2011
I just woke up from a nightmare. The details aren’t important. They weren’t Batu related. But their metaphorical meaning was clear enough. I began pacing back and forth with a cup of coffee to squeeze every drop of meaning from the dream to see what it was trying to tell me. Essentially, that my life is out of control, that I have things inside me that won’t leave when I want it to, that I’m better off in isolation from the real world, that my mom and dad are no longer home to help me, dialing 911 doesn’t help because I no longer have recourse with the law, and I began to do crazy out of the box desperate things that I knew wouldn’t help me but felt good in the moment.
Then somehow my analysis turned to Batu and the whole narrative’s underbelly opened to me in a way I never let myself see before. Alena was always obviously Alison (my first love when I was 7 years old). Alena was always the first love that is inevitably lost. But now I see that I’ve combined Alison with my sister, having lost her, too. Having made Alena (my sister) the hero of the story, not Mogai (me), it’s only Alena (my sister) who can save the tribe’s way of life (my life).
My sister is the Fa Hawara of my life, the messianic savior. Can she save me through forgiveness? Also, I have created my shadow side through Bakae’s reincarnation, who plays Judas and betrays the tribe (my family). His sentence is death. Mogai goes to his son, to find redemption for him perhaps, but ultimately to claim responsibility and sacrifice himself for the greater good. I’m killing Mogai (myself) to give the tribe (my family) to Alena (my sister). Then she goes off with the tribe to attempt to rebuild and salvage what she can.
Kanunga is not as developed, but he’s obviously my brother – the voice of orthodoxy and critical of Mogai’s wayward path, eventually disowning him. Mogai’s self-destructive obsessive behavior regarding Bakae’s death is my over reaction to losing Jennifer, embracing madness and drama with suicidal flair. Not only planting the seeds of my own demise, but that of my family (the tribe) as well.
The whole thing seems so clear now, it’s hard to believe I never even suspected what I was really writing about. No wonder this Batu project is so important to me. It’s not so much my biography dressed in art, but more like an apology for my life wrapped up in a death wish.
I’m more messed up than I thought. I’m in a no-win situation. One of my own devising, created by my own drama. As I always do. Life has given me every advantage as a birthright: middle class, white, male, U.S. citizen, loving family with no abuse of any kind, not too smart and not too dumb, not too handsome and not too ugly, healthy, every educational opportunity available to me. I could have been anything I wanted. And I chose this.
This is my life. I made it, but now I’ve lost control. My culture has judged me unfit for society and will never forgive me for my past. I’ll never again be allowed to be like everyone else. I never wanted to be like other people, and now I’m not allowed to be.
Anyway, who cares?
As far as my Batu work is concerned, I’m not sure how any of this will affect my creativity or story development with the veil over my unconscious mind beginning to lift. I’ve always embraced self-honesty and knowledge, but I hope it doesn’t hinder my creativity. It may be that keeping things in the shadows yields better fruit. We’ll see.
At any rate, there’s always tons more garbage buried within my unconscious for my creativity to play with. The landfill of my life.
Present-Day Reflection
6/2/2026
I’m not sure how much I trust this interpretation of the nightmare I had way back then. I remember perfectly the feeling of how it all made sense at the time, but that doesn’t mean it’s true. Our brains are pattern recognition and problem solving devices, and they’re good at creating or exaggerating patterns from random noise, or creating and exaggerating problems just to have something to do. Dreams too can be like a Rorschach test, where your interpretations often say more about how your subconscious mind is working than your how your unconscious mind is.
Nevertheless, the interpretation I went with had power, and no doubt shaped the development of my work after that to a certain degree. I’ve long since made peace with most of my family demons from back then though and have replaced them with more relevant ones from my current life’s dramas.
