Introduction

Getting over the midlife crisis?

Chapter 1
A rather unfortunate name for his first residence in Moscow, in exile - 3rd Lazarus Lane. He moved to Moscow in January 1989. Cold and gloomy, as Moscow should be at this time of year. A spacious 3-room apt, Spartan with a b/w fuzzy TV and not much else, but he had his trusty tapedeck and some cassettes of rock and classical music. Had he burned his bridges across the Styx? Was he to live in the Land of the Dead? Thank God E brought 2 packs of Drum and a few hits of acid.
1989. Ah... what a time. Perestroika, glasnost, Moscow was a frenzy of activity. After his father's death, E was determined to escape the straight-jacket of family and the deadening routine of uncreative work. He felt like a cruel coward but had no choice. The hypocrisy of family and complacent society had pushed him towards a desperate belief in the promise of Russia's tired and tragic revolution, and via an obscure West Berlin travel agency, he was able to book 2 weeks in Moscow (seeing East Berlin in the process) and land a job at Moscow News.
What seemed like jumping into the void at the time became the start of expat living in a so-called hardship posting, self-inflicted. To accept the status of Soviet living seemed like a terrible comedown, and the crumbs provided by occasional Embassy affairs and the society of other expats was a life-line to cling to at the start. Slowly, this began to reverse, and with this reversal, perhaps some acceptance of what he in fact was.
His diaries, dreams and essays from the time show his breaking out from his cage, just as the old Iron Curtain began to fray badly. His is a quest for 'the other' in himself and society, just as the SU was looking for its own other. Whether either of them are any farther ahead after the intervening upheaval is a moot point. More likely they are both following some law of natural cycles.

January 1989

Why I came here now

I am constantly asked this. "Why are you attracted to these gray, God-awful places?" the principal of SEE alternative school, Jim, asked me on a wild school trip to Cuba on the eve of my departure for Moscow. Who knows … but most likely, it is because the grim smothering Socialist bloc is just that, the terrible mother that I love and hate, that stifles as it nutures, like the SU both cruel and benevolent. Whatever horrors and distortions this 'mother' had perpetrated on her 'children' surely were unintended and unfortunate errors, to be forgiven by her offspring as they matured. But then it's hard to forgive, as I realised from personal experience. Anyway, as my story unfolds, I hope some more concrete, up-beat reasons materialize.

You could pinpoint the beginning of my odyssey to in 1975, which in this gloomy January 1989 marks my 15 yr apprenticeship, my rebirth. [As it turned out, the SU was not to have much more than these 15 years left. But I like lost causes. As Oscar Wilde said, there are two tragedies in life - not getting what you want and getting what you want. It's important to keep a balance between these two.]

A long and painful road it was, retracing the pains of childhood under the prolonged protection of various universities - UofT, YorkU, even Moscow State University, and the Pushkin Institute, where I studied Russian language and culture under the auspices of the Soviet Friendship Society.

The latter - 8 months in Moscow - was both wonderful and horrible. 1979-80: the last throws of detente, the build-up to the Moscow Olympics [Soviet joke: Khrushchev promised us Communism by 1980; Brezhnev gave us the Olympics], singing in the MGU (Moscow State U) Concert Choir, marching through Red Square on a wintry November 7 to the strains of Shostakovich's Festive March on the eve of the invasion of Afghanistan, a nightmare encounter with Soviet bureaucracy and the health system. Warm and natural friendships (a bit of sex), a mugging and theft in Armenia...

How to make sense of it all? It's so easy to forget the worst and to remember the best moments. Even the worst had their positive elements. Having been infected with hepatitis (either in a midnight adventure in Tashkent or in a filthy hospital in Moscow while recovering from strep throat caught on that wonderful wintry day in Red Square), I wisely fled the proposed quarantine and hid for a week with Petya, my truest Russian friend. He was formerly an economist who couldn't stomach the bribes and corruption which he was unavoidably being drawn into, chucked it all, and became an apprentice violin maker. He and his mother, who was in fact dying of cancer at the time though unknown to Petya, nursed me back to sufficient health to give me the strength to resist the heavy hand of the state, and to keep my room in the hostel and attend classes. Petya and his sidekick Vitalik nursed me back to health, playing many games of preference and listening to rock music.

Vitalik and I hit it off right away. He was a childhood friend of Petya, whom I met through the Italian students studying at the Pushkin Institute. They knew of the violin makers because of their participation in international exhibits in Italy. Vitalik is a classic Soviet worker in an electrical factory, and a borderline alcoholic, as was Petya at the time. He also had his mother problems, and used alcohol (like us all) to help forget them and reach out to whomever.
I remember one crazy night in particular when my Norwegian Maoist roommate, Erik, and his steamy Austrian lover, Olga, rolled around on his bed, while Vitalik and I played on mine to the strains of Queen. We often slept together, though V would be long gone before I came. Once I went too far and he blew up; he said he wasn't into 'that' and said he would tell me where I could find 'it', if that's what I wanted. I declined and the incident was 'forgotten'. Freud might say it is a case of 2 boys in their latency period. The question is if they will ever grow up. Right now, I fear that the answer is 'no'. I'm back in Moscow now 10 years later, with little to suggest any progress, still looking for my roots, or maybe just a few sexual adventures. V seems to have changed little as well, still living with an ailing, fretful mother. He seems to get childishly drunk easily (incipient cirrhosis?), though he works hard, and takes a more active interest in his work, so he says. Petya died suddenly a few years back of a brain hemorrhage, refusing to go to the dreaded hospital until it was too late.

Volodya Ivanov is my other close friend. We met through fellow MGU Concert Choir bass and concert-goer Kostya back in 1980. V was hungry to experience anything Western, but we got past that stage and I entered his circle of friends (he and at least several others were gay though I was never sure till after I left). After our 'Friendship Society' group had been unceremoniously dumped in an unfinished hostel to make room at MGU for revolutionary students from the newly socialist Ethiopia, and both before and after my bout with hepatitis, I spent many evenings and nights playing bridge and in discussion, sleeping on a cot or the floor of Kostya's or V's room in the MGU dorm.

The last food I ate before my liver seized up was a piece of salted pork fat which Kostya offered me - I can still see it glisten, wondering why my body seemed to be saying NO though it still tasted good. V was a defiant outspoken dissident, reading Gulag all night, denouncing the secret life of the privileged in his politics class, inviting me impromptu to his English class, much to the chagrin of his teacher.

We even took a clandestine and quite illegal trip to Novgorod one magical weekend by 3rd class train. N was made for the Russian winter with its majestic cathedral, ancient walls, stately columns along the river - the remains of 'Chinatown', the medieval market, though it's doubtful any Chinese merchants operated there. We discussed politics heatedly - I arguing passionately the cause of the revolution, V insisting that the whole experience has been a tragic mistake, that "Stalin won the war only because he was a ruthless dictator" and that the revolution was a shame. We both reveled in our secret journey, hurtling through the dark forbidding cold, sleeping on a 3-tier bunk, avoiding the attendant, walking through the ancient city, pondering its cruel history of invasion, slaughter, and revolution. It was no doubt the illegality of the adventure that made it so precious. Just as the fact that Russia was the 'enemy' - and it seemed to me a false enemy - that made me fall in love with it. My society, with its false, inhuman values, deserved betrayal, just as my family did, with its narrow hypocritical values.

It sounds very much like a teenager talking, as indeed it still feels, throwing off the hypocrisy of the nuclear family. Of course, the n.f. can't help but seem hypocritical for the child as he changes and needs to connect his new sexual powers with the world of another. [Joke: Teenager: Dr. Frazier Crane, my parents are stupid. C: How old are you? T: 14. C: Well, they'll be stupid for another 7 years. Be patient.] What was a comforting, motherly, protective (though not necessary selfless or even benign) love, suddenly becomes a barrier, a denial of one's self-fulfillment and self-realisation, a tragic dilemma of classical proportions.

But maybe some are destined never to grow up. Peter Pans of the world, unite! Maybe there is another option after one leaves the nuclear nest. Rather than slipping into the same reactionary rut as one's parents, maybe it's possible to channel and control one's new-found energy. This is the path of the sage and the revolutionary, the artist and writer. It requires self-centredness and peace of mind, struggle and release.

This transformation did not seem to happen in the 10 yrs since my return from Mother Russia. I laid down roots, painfully but always with the help of dope to dull the pain of loneliness, studied Marx and Hegel and campaigned half-heartedly for the coming revolution, as my classmates diligently complete PhDs and found lucrative professions, marrying and raising their families, buying homes and cars, joining the mainstream. Throwing off academia, I too joined the rat-race, though the pull of things Russian and my double life helped to keep me outside of the mainstream.

My life as a communist petered out - the pathetic nature of the CPC forced on me the realisation that it was no substitute womb, just as did my rocky experiences with Mother Russia. When it comes down to it, my political path has followed a natural process of maturation as an individual, a tempering of the youthful ego by an increasing awareness of my cosmic insignificance. It seems to me this can only go so far as long as I don't come to terms with my sex life - or lack of it. My psychological castration tends to keep me on the level of a frustrated teenager, although I know it is possible to come to terms with sexuality without a monogamous relationship or without any physical relationship at all, though this is the struggle of the libertine or aesthetic, and more often fails than succeeds.

Clearly, both the party and the SU became my mother substitutes after my realization that I had outlived my genetic mother-son relationship, and that my attempt to find a womb at Cambridge University and, with increasingly less conviction at UofT and York, had failed. Why did they fail? My sublimation of sexuality into revolutionary politics and theory was merely a prolongation of my teenage mentality into the life of academia. Rejection by the 'cruel mother' looks in retrospect to have been inevitable, even 'just'. The party and the SU themselves politically immature did not reject me, and even provided a womb of sorts. Their narrow-minded camaraderie, their promise of a womb-heaven with its cradle-to-grave security, dressed up with the Stalinist dogmas of Marxism-Leninism, provided a secure, if boring and shallow, world view. The many dark spots in their history were worrisome, but Khrushchev did denounce Stalin, and Brezhnev had presided over albeit half-hearted economic reforms. The closed suspicious nature of Soviet society, seemingly justified by the ruthless cynicism of US foreign policy, was very convenient as a way to keep out prying eyes. True, there were constant instances of internal cruelty, or better idiocy, both in Russia and in the Canadian party, but the general line of Soviet foreign policy seemed progressive (with the glaring exception of Czechoslovakia). Support for progressive revolutions, campaigns for disarmament, domestic policies of full employment and a supposedly benevolent and just planned economy - these were the credo of both the party and the SU.

It is easy to support these policies when the daily reality of Soviet life is inaccessible. Even my period of study was sheltered enough to let me maintain my general fantasy. There were no people starving, though the working conditions looked pretty awful, and the hospital I stayed in was a disgrace.

The mind certainly does work in mysterious ways, as did mine through this long (mother) love affair. Growing up, you are forced to forgive your mother for her hateful actions - she is your primary love object. Sometimes your mind adapts to the point where your love becomes activated by those hateful and cruel actions, leading to masochism and, in imitation of those actions, sadism.

The 'free' studying in Moscow for 8 months, and the benign ideology, was the loving side of Mother Russia. But the nightmare move, the foul hospital, and the lies and hypocrisy that seemed imbedded in the society, the frightful Stalinist past, and the mindless pervasive drunkenness (friends had tried dope but didn't like it - society not ready?) certainly were there to be reflected on. Glasnost makes me slightly nauseous in forcing on me what my 'shakti'* told me long ago, but which my mother-complex drowned out. Because Russia is so far away, and revolution so foreign to our mentality, it was easy at home to dismiss the cynical emigres, justifying their departure, and the shallow press. It's much less easy to dismiss the reality in person, especially when already alienated from the 'mother'.

The pluses and minuses of living in the party were perhaps easier to sort out, since I had to live them day-to-day. The selfless mothering of my Russian teacher Sonia and her quixotic husband, Harold, with their reminiscences of revolutionary Russia in the 1920s and Greenwich village in the 1930s helped prolong my devotion to the romantic past of the left in North American society. The evil mother lurked in the background, and refused to be silent. The letter from the CC condemning the unauthorized publication of Tim Buck's memoirs Yours in the Struggle ed. by Phyllis Clarke was sickening. Phyllis was an old faithful and one of the party's few intellectuals and born-and-bred Canadians. She refused to submit to party censorship of a vague allusion to Kashtan's lack of charisma, and published the memoirs. The directive instructed us not to read them, and to denounce them to anyone who would listen. There could be no clearer lesson in the absurdity of Stalinism and that it was alive and well in the Canadian party in the 1980s, as no doubt it was in the Soviet party.

Then, of course, there is the saga of Canada-USSR Friendship Society Chairman Mike Lucas, such an unrepentant Stalinist that he has alienated himself from even the party, and maintains his Moscow support through flashy gifts to corruptible officials in the Friendship Society in Moscow. His slander of me as gay and others as corrupt or sectarian has driven me to vocal hatred in the past - now to benign indifference, which I suppose is the true negation of love (and hate). Certainly he has been another parent substitute, with all that entails.

So am I increasingly indifferent to Russia, the party, and my genetic mother? My passion is towards people, but as in Dante's Inferno, desire in itself is invariably evil - it must be guided by memory and reason. My passion for PaulB has been complex and self-indulgent, full of the sado-masochistic hangup of my mother complex, though we have come far and seem to have a basis to our relationship that goes deeper and higher than that. My passion for my students Mario, Brian Kenney, Phil Roslin, Jordan and Matt has been frightening, even terrifying, because I'm clearly a father-substitute for them, and the Oedipal feelings of being a father/mother and the desire to be an equal - a rebellious teenager - at the same time, are hard to contain. I'm terrified of looking foolish and of being rejected. Only with Mario and Phil do I want to fuck; with the others, it's just the sharing and the joy of being young that fills me with joy. But joy brings despair, as I've felt with a vengeance here. And I knew it was coming - which hasn't lessened the pain.

Peace is what I'm craving most. Somehow, my feelings for Mario and Phil are more connected - I feel the androgyny and balance in them which "can happen to me". I'm not afraid of wanting to fuck them as I am with a more macho guy, and they aren't feminine, which would be a turn-off. In general, I like the idea of actively fucking only a young androgenous guy, and of being fucked, well, by any reasonably young masculine guy.

If I must betray my country or a friend, it's my country, as my shakti told me way back even in my most passionately political days at Cambridge, when I first read Forster's words. Does that mean I should pack up and go home? I think not. My adventure and search for myself must continue, and not just in kilometers, but inside - I must continue to tame the inner dragon, as Schwartz [playwright repressed by Stalin] put it. And the fact that it reappears in new guises is not grounds for total pessimism. It is desire or Shiva - god of destruction - which is as much the foundation of life as Vishnu - god of creation. Passion balanced by reason with the wisdom of age(s) brings peace. My panic in the face of middle age can only be 'conquered' by acceptance of life (though this doesn't mean tolerance of evil (or does it?)).

The maturing of society here, its re-evaluation of the experience of the revolution, the painful analysis of the bad irrational mother-Stalinism, parallels or better, incites me to come to terms with my own mother complex. Throwing it off (and my mind-numbing use of dope) is painful, and necessitates getting out of my rut, reaching out for loving (even at the expense of rejection), writing articles (even at the expense of rejection), getting round the bureaucracy to travel, meditating and searching for peace (even at the risk of failure).

This is what others will find attractive in me, not me as a war-casualty, cringing at each moment for fear of being stung by a stray bullet, or a mama's boy, afraid to enjoy his body and give it to another.

---------
So now begins the painful process my expat stage of self-discovery. Looking back over notes from the past 15 years - my period of political commitment - is like pulling teeth. It was necessary to rip out my roots to force myself to look back and reassess what I have been doing with my life.

What I see is naive struggle. It's not surprising, as there is little to guide me apart from religion, tradition, and instinct. Having rejected religion and tradition (or tried to) as hypocritical and arbitrary (the Canadian identity!), and being disoriented in my sexuality, I embraced the political struggle. A true product of the '60s, I identified with the idealism of the post-war baby boom generation, which seemed to embrace all that is good and fashion its morality out of spirituality and tolerance. I had the clear choice of my parents' narrow conservatism vs the promise of finding fulfillment among the new generation. [I find the situation of my students today rather schizophrenic where their parents are themselves people from the '60s who have made peace with society, unlike me.]

I embraced grass wholeheartedly - it always comforts - dulls the pain of loneliness and provides a mild background for self-reflection and self-enjoyment. Unfortunately(?), it dulls intellectual activity, and I can see that my notes over the years reflect this, though I know my mental state at the time was lucid. Coming here seemed the only way to break myself of the habit, though I'll probably return to it when I return to Canada.

I've been planning a "Doper's Guide to Marx and Lenin" all this time, though the notes are scattered and compiled in a stoned haze, hardly decipherable. This is in lieu of it. My first acid was the only time I hallucinated (on a ranch in Alberta hitching back to Guelph in 1977) and I saw Marx in the clouds. I never really took to Lenin - 5 of his volumes sat untouched on my bookshelves till I left. They're clearly the 'gods that failed', looking back. On the other hand, with the collapse of ideology proceeding apace here, it's as if no one cares anymore about the 'hard-core' left. You can breathe freely now, but the structures supporting you are gone, and that's frightening. What's left? It's time for meditation. The Doper's Guide is in fact my life journey.

I'm struck, looking back, at my fascination with commodity fetishism. The coincidence of the rise of the term fetishism by both Marx and Freud at approximately the same time, the brilliant way both of them incorporated it into their monumental systems, and of course the possibility of sublimating my own 'perversion' into theory and politics as a kind of fetishism. Certainly capitalism as a system brilliantly manipulates consciousness to its own ends via inversion of the spiritual and material. However this insight does not mean we can flip things around socially to create an ideal society. Marx never tried. Lenin did, with a motley crew and the consequences were far from ideal for anyone, though a friend here Zhenya told me "You in the West have us to thank for your high standard of living. The reforms and advances there were to make sure the same kind of revolution wouldn't occur. The Communists will never come to power in the West as long as you have us as a negative example."

Looking back, I see my process of personal growth over these years as the search for my real family: Sonia and Harold, my students, a few straight friends, which has also been a flight from my ontological, genetic roots. These seem arbitrary in a society without tradition, or rather, stigmatized by a tradition of repressed bourgeois morality.

It seems these reflections leave me with a lot of broken dreams - and sitting alone (though quietly, healthy and comfortable, which is something after all) even isolated, in Moscow in midlife. Man can't make his own history as he wishes in the bright future. Socialism as a state system has not brought us closer to truth in the world - its ideology, corrupted and at times even perverted, has not approached reality. In fact, because it has been planned (or has pretended to be so), it is more insidious than capitalist ideology, which is 'natural' (or at least pretends to be so). I am driven back to religion and the self as the only foundations in which there is 'truth'.

I wanted to learn French and Spanish to understand (and eventually live) the romantic traditions of anti-capitalist struggle under capitalism, and Russian to taste socialism in practice. This would give me an international identity, make me a patriot of world progress, the ultimate fellow-traveler. But what about me? This cool intellectual trip is, as it turns out, Nowheresville, and I have only myself to blame when it comes down to it. Fleeing myself by sacrificing myself to a mythical world revolution has left me with a splitting midlife hangover now that I've woken up. It's enough to make me want to flee to a monastery, Thomas Merton style. But I still feel the need to feel. That's my Golgotha, but I'm not ready to give up just yet. I may be Judas - the intellectual revolutionary, whose very ability to speak various languages is as much a liability as a gift. He was manipulated, his wish for political revolution turned against him [or so he is represented by Zeferelli which I saw on acid at Sasha's (Altufefskoe Shosse) recently].

But there is an intellectual path to enlightenment, at least in Buddhism, though it's not the easiest one. And there are hints of Christ in me, at least as far as my volunteer work on twinning Toronto with Volgograd is concerned (the true master must be your servant), and even a bit of Buddha (don't become attached to your work). Hanging is not an unreasonable option from a social and person perspective (what have we/I done to shape the world/my life), but I know there's a safety net of true family with whom I can keep growing and healing myself. There is a theory current that suicide is actually a herd-preserving instinct. I the herd member am chronically unhappy; therefore, it's best for the survival of the herd for me to go. Another theory is that your level of contentment is more or less genetically determined - no matter what self-help book or therapy you go for, you have an inbuilt predisposition to a certain level of depression.

Another theme which has taken on value for me is the value of minorities, or maybe a theory of minority values - forced on me as a minority wherever I happen to be. I comfort myself with the thought that everyone's a member of some minority, whether or not they realise it - physiological (left-handed, chronically unhealthy, sexual, even female-in-a-man's-world), or spiritual. The physical and mental come together in the issue of minority membership here. Maybe it's a right hemisphere thing - your minority life.

Another fascination I have is with ontological/ phylogenic patterns. You have to strive to fit your own personal development into society's. Take Shostakovich, with his 5th, 10th, and 12th (Petrograd) symphonies, myself with the peace movement from the '60s on, bringing me to the turmoil of Russia in '89, coinciding, albeit self-imposed, with my own inner turmoil. Neither struggle has a predictable outcome, though openness/ glasnost is what is making it possible. But here I am, an outsider to the struggle in Russia, and still an outsider to my own personal struggle. This same lack of center, which has driven me into intellectual deadends, restlessly embracing and abandoning theories and causes till my mind is a blur, paralysed into inaction. Inaction - maybe this isn't a deadend, but a beginning. Causes are bound to disappoint, because they are outside of you. I half-realized 10+ yrs ago that you can't plan revolutions in yourself and society - they must happen 'dialectically', so I confidently claimed then.

Dreams 1/89 - 4/89

22/1/89
About to leave. Read G&M interview of The Touchables about Maria Fiorello, Mafia daughter torn between going to the police and her loyalties. I cry and PB says "At least you're finally feeling sad." I can hear the music "Cocaine".
Meaning: The f/anima (Maria) in me is torn between the demands of the conscious to conform (police) and the needs of the unconscious (u). PB (phallic mother, mentor, psychiatric support) points out I'm opening up to the dilemma. The music is from the u. The title of the article also supports this.
23/1/89
Young pimply cop wants to give me assault charge. I try to talk him out of it. I end up helping a plumber in a church fix an L joint. I meet Bram practising Beethoven sonata for a talk/concert (my economic theory exam interferes). I see the cop going the other way on the hwy and hope he's forgotten about me. Suzanna appears in a funny tight skirt and cap and we hurry into St. Andrew's Church. I sit between JimW and ? Sharon is performing an exorcism ritual. I join in half-jokingly, but Jim and ? are touching me and using illusion to scare. I say something is pricking me then admit it's beads of sweat.
Meaning: My c is fighting off my u needs (perhaps guilt for being attracted to my students). This leads me to religion. The plumbing suggests birth or anal eroticism. I've abandoned music for economics (repressed u). I try to incorporate the f in me with the spiritual. Being touched by JimW perhaps is the sexual abuse of childhood. Sharon's exorcism is to overcome her sexual abuse (ie, mine?). I'm only half committed. The 'pricking' is the abuse, but I admit it's all in my head.
24/1/89
Mulroney with me and other peaceniks. We look at Penthouse and he says he wants a copy, but it's really a statue of Our Lady of Guadalupe on fridge in basement of 81 Walnut. He hugs and kisses me and I enjoy this.
Meaning: The penthouse is the intellect. My peacenik activities appear intellectual but are really u religious and sexual. They are my food (fridge). I seek approval from father (Mulroney).
5/2/90
Go to cottage in early spring with 'proper' crowd. Nearby in the woods is a hippy cottage which the proper crowd looks down on. I go there, up to the 2nd floor. A young Doberman bites my leg. It hurts and I plead for them to take him away. They do so and join me. We go down to the lake. They jump in while I sit cross-legged in shallow water. It's not so cold (I compare to Lake Erie) but am afraid to get right in.
Meaning: Russia is the cottage, I'm rejecting the pressures to conform. The 2nd floor is intellect/memory (though climbing stairs is sexual). The dog is the sexuality I fear, biting my leg/penis is castration fear. I sit in meditative position skimming the surface of my subconscious. Lake Erie is in fact warmer and shallower than the other Great Lakes - forcing myself to deal with the subconscious is not SO unpleasant.
17/2/89
Went to Guelph. They thought I wanted to reconcile, but I start packing my stuff anyway. Throw out most music and notes. Decided to keep Beethoven sonatas thought they're falling apart. Can hear slow movement of Pathetique. Also take nice suit, paper and a red smooth philosopher's stone. Just then mother comes over and holds my arm. I let her and she says "I don't use living room too much" and there is saliva on her mouth. I say she can sell piano more easily. She agrees. I realize she's pathetic and don't have to fear her any longer (or her touch). She's like child or senile person. Friend comes in from heavy labour (deodorant stinks on him and mother asks if he used). I had seen him (Louis?) on the street and gave his boss the 'fuck-you' sign but he didn't see the boss.
Meaning: Try to throw out the old scars and memories, keeping only music (sex?) and the sacred (red represents feeling). Mother still trying to inhibit, but now powerless. The friend is my shadow, repressed m, and my rebellion against father (?) goes unnoticed/unfinished.
20/2/89
Both Mills and I recovered from childhood illness when parents had to buy fresh vegs in winter (pickled cucumbers).
Meaning: Our childhood abuse overcome. The garden is our emotional life, plants generally represent psychic growth and development.
21/2/89
Depart with father piloting to Moscow. Stopped at Dandelion communal farm because of storm and I realize we can't take off without crashing.
Meaning: I can't keep living the old way. Possibly this dream portends the collapse of the SU.
22/2/89
Walking in rain barefoot at Grindstone resort. All laugh at bare feet except one.
Meaning: Yearning to return to nature. To be cleansed and renewed.
26/2/89
Bring Achiko back to residence-like room. My sister Carole comes. Beautiful, slim, uneasy, and says "I hope this doesn't mean..." I finish sentence about alienation from family and she hurries away. I say (sic) "You're not guilty and neither am I."
Meaning: I have no home now, only a room. Achiko is my hoped-for lover. In fact Carole and I are central to the alienation, but then maybe we are more victims of our parents' neuroses.
5/3/89
Homosexuality justified. Sexuality in animal way and with boy. Heard many touching coming-out experiences. Prefab houses going up in West German town. I'm watching tractors.
Meaning: U liberated. Will create own family hearth. Tractors – m, new growth.

In these and other dreams in the past year, I see my move set certain struggles in motion: over sexual feelings and guilt, confirming the break with family and the need to create my own family. Also the spiritual quest.

113 Eramosa Road [childhood home], basement, second floor, back room, toilet stall motifs stand out. The u struggling to assert itself. Traveling (leaving) represents my search for my destiny. Frequent pizza images - the circle symbol (sacred Manadala, new center in c) but often with students and sexual overtones. The tilted elevator going up surfaces first 19/3/89.

*Shakti: the power, lying dormant within the body as a coiled serpent (kundalini), that must be aroused and realized to reach spiritual liberation. Shaktism is inseparably related to Tantric Hinduism, a system of practices for the purification of both mind and body.