Saturday 10 June 2006

Pic of the day: Copying pencil in the bedroom!

Freudian dream?

Now that would be a first, I think. But let me tell it to you first. Many of the details faded before I was fully awake, but the essence remained.

I was spending time with a girl I liked. We were friendly, but we were not doing anything remarkable, just spending time together. At this time, I tried to use a copying pencil, but the lead kept breaking, forcing me to carve a new tip, which then broke again almost at once. It got frustrating, and I woke up.

***

First, in case you don't know what what a copying pencil is (and you probably don't if you are much younger than I am), I have explained this in the last part of this entry. Basically it is a special type of color pencil which becomes excessively powerful when wet, as strong as ink or more. And as the name implies, it was used in really old days to create a limited number of copies of what you wrote. The color was so intense that it sufficed for several sheets of paper.

OK, how is that for Freudian symbolism? I probably don't even need to explain it, since if you're very very innocent, you are probably not reading this far. But let's sum up: A long, stiff pencil that unleashes its power when it gets wet (say for instance, you dip it). And its function is to make copies. Except in my case I was together with a girl and I did not get it to work, despite repeated attempts, which caused the dream to end. Eh. More detail would just be explicit, wouldn't it?

It's pretty obvious, you'd think. It's pretty amusing, for sure. Because the truth is that I did have such a copying pencil, at one time. It was my favorite color, but it had an annoying tendency to break. The lead was just too soft. And even when it did not break, the lines became too broad pretty quickly, because of the soft lead. It quickly wore down to just a short stump. I think it was lost in the move, if not before.

I do have another copying pencil, though. During the moving and unpacking it ended up not in the home office where it naturally belongs, but in my bedroom, where it has been lying on top of my drawers for a long time now, where I can see it subconsciously each night before I go to bed.

And the girl? She was no one I know in real life. Probably local to the dream. She was a rather generic girl. And this reminds me... the time when I bought all those copying pencils, which were on a clear-out sale, I was there at just the right time because I was with a bus of almost exclusively young boys and girls, Christians on our way to (or was it from?) a Christian conference. We were all friends, more or less by default, even though I did not know them too well. In fact, the copying pencils caused somewhat of a temporary stir, and some of them bought pencils from me as we moved on. As can be expected with color pencils, the girls were the more interested. So the connection between copying pencils and friendly girls may date all the way back to that day.

In short, there are perfectly natural causes for the dream. A bit late for me to suddenly become Freudian this late in life, don't you think? (After decades of highly uncensored dreams, in case you have not noticed.) But still, it was pretty amusing. Perhaps my brother might say: "The only true Freudian is a Schadenfreudian."