75 Word Missile
He owned her because he could kill her if he wanted to
Last night I dreamed brutal men were occupying the public house.
I could hear his fist smash into her face after she’d hit him, giving him an excuse to let loose his rage at her because she can see the corpse of a child he is carrying around in his belly next to the cartridges.
I changed this typo: “the smash of his fish into her face.”
I see
The unconscious is a delightful companion.
Sometimes anger is justified, or can be justified, by the external situation. It is seldom empowering, quite the opposite. Anger is more often an admission of not having any power. But it’s deeper than that.
Aggression finds anger an essential tool. How can you explain being aggressive toward others if there is no cause? You cannot, not as an individual nor as a nation. So the anger comes from grievance, which has to be manufactured to justify the aggressive posture. In the dream I had walked out of this place, which had been peaceful but was now overrun by brutal men. But went back because I left my phone (my identity) there.
What is the secret cause of the grievance and the anger and the aggression? It is the fear of helplessness, symbolized by the dead baby in the gut (poetic license). The man tries to kill this helpless part by projecting it onto others and having control over it there, eliminating it there.
My best friend was at the bar. I had been on the right side of him before I went out but when I went back I was on the left. One of the men, presumably some kind of military, addressed my friend by my name and I realized he confused us because I’d shifted my location. That was when I woke up.
About the typo as a Freudian slip:
A fish is like a penis, and can represent one in a dream. The confusion of fist with fish was showing me that the violence is frustrated sexuality, and the confusion of sex with violence. Anger is the only emotion of sufficient intensity to substitute for sex. Repressed or rejected sexual desire is expressed in disguised form, much as a criminal will effect a disguise to get past the guards at the city gates without being arrested by conscious attention.
That is the situation in the men’s house I walked out of. But I went back because my identity was left there, and I had to retrieve it. I have to clarify who I am. I can begin with who I am not. I am not one of those men.
“‘Yes, he really is crazy, Doc,’ Dunbar assured him. ‘Every night he dreams he’s holding a live fish in his hands.’ The doctor stopped in his tracks with a look of elegant amazement and distaste, and the ward grew still.” (from Chapter 27 of Catch 22, by Joseph Heller)
