English Teacher

I had a retreat this weekend, in which I wore a black dress I bought about a year ago for a wedding I had to attend. I looked like a house compared to when I first wore it. That's because I gained about 10-15 pounds. Anyway, after major depression from this, I had this dream:

I was sitting watching tv eating popcorn. I remember I was watching a reality show, but it wasnt not anything like Survivor or American Idol. In the show, I was a character, but I dont remember what the purpose of the program was. What I do remember was noticing my real self (eating the popcorn) getting noticibly wider and bigger. My thighs were growing rapidly. My hands were puffy and swollen. My stomach started getting pointy. I was getting so big I was bubbling, and couldnt fit on the couch. I couldnt get up, I could not walk. I was stuck trying to fit on the couch. Then, I got the weird sensation that I was going to burst.

I think I am going on a diet.

During the last few weeks, I feel that I have made much progress with my project. When I narrowed my topic, I search the library for journal articles and hard copies of books. In the last few weeks, I have found several books that will work well with my project. During this time I have reviewed my sources, and have completed the annotated bibliography. I feel that the bibliography was an important step in my process because it was a direct examination of the plethora of sources I accumulated. It was also pleasing to se that through an examination the sources I found which professional sources would not fit into my project for various reasons.
Right now, the major problem I am having is identifying a sole question for my topic question for the essay sketch. This is the hardest part. I have a large topic, which I am trying to eloquently put forth into a single sentence, and I was wondering how I can condense my ideas to fit a single line. Right now I feel like I can not articulate my entire thesis idea into once sentence, and it is frustrating. I did, however, create an extensive outline that is helping formulate ideas for my paper. Currently, I have started my draft thesis statement, trying hard to include a topic sentence. I have pointed out important moments of the text to work on in conjunction with my dream analysis ideas.
I feel that at this moment I am having a difficult time starting the paper. I think once I have a solid thesis, I can begin taking portions of the paper, and writing about difficult bullets in sections. I am hoping that when I do have a couple of portions completed, that they will be cohesive, and able to be combined. Yet, I did examine each text and place post-its at place in the text I hope to include in my project, which has helped me sort out what texts would work with the moment I have chosen. Good luck to everyone with their papers. I hope to hear more about them soon.

I am walking in a forest, and I am being followed by a black shadow. It is very far away at first, but soon I notice the slower I walk, the faster is begins to move. I get very frightened, and run up a tree to the highest branch. From this vantage point I see a small city, a place that I am trying to get to I believe. I can see people moving up and down in house, literally looking inside the house like it was split open on a medical table. I see a child in one of the rooms playing with a doll in a dollhouse. The doll, with brown hair and fair skin, resembled me, and I can see many of the characteristics of the doll on my own person. I notice the young child dresses the doll, and put on a pink shirt, and skirt, which is what I am wearing while I sit on the limb of the tree. I call out to her, but no one can hear me. Then, I see the black shadow has gone into the town, and walks into the house toward the room the child is in. I scream out to warn her, to tell her to put the doll down, but the shadow finds her, and picks the child up with the doll, and walks out of the house while all the other housemates ignore it. I wake up now, but I really looked around to see if a shadow was around. It was very scary.

Upon finishing Ishiguro's THE UNCONSOLED, I feel like many of my questions were left unanswered. Although I enjoyed the novel, I often felt extremely frustrated for many reasons, which caused me to perhaps appreciate the novel more than enjoy it, because it closely enacted the style of dreaming.
I primarily felt uncomfortable with the novel because of the loss of time. Although it seems like characters dialogues are elongated, and actions from the hotel to town, from the town to the café, seem to go on for hours (to the point where this town is expansive!!!!), the novel only goes on for what I take as three or four days at most. This is a dreamlike quality that I found rather frustrating because I felt like I was reading a book in slow motion.
Secondly, I rather disliked the inability and inactivity. What bothered me was how the loss of time also affects the characters actions. Ryder conveniently always misses talking to the interviewers, and could not for the life of him keep up to Sophie while walking! These are things that were even more exacerbated by the fact that he was on a so called “regimented” and tight schedule, that often went ignored.
I also thought the characterization in the novel was extremely dreamlike. We witness these characters in this European landscape where I found a dismal existence of people. The reason I say this is that I did not see anything getting done, being explored or exposed, and all of the huge things Ryder has to do is never accomplished. In fact, nothing in character development is honestly accomplished, because the ambiguity of the relationships utterly impede the process. In addition, I found it more of social commentary then anything else, because it felt like Ishiguro was expressing how people can never understand each other, and if you think about from Jung’s subjectivity theory (since it is a dream) you can never understand yourself, and you are your own worst enemy.
What I did like was how the book was centered on memory. I did not realize at first reading that his memory was poor, and really thought he was a stranger in a strange place. It is his memory the keeps his dream subsistent, which is what many of our dream theorist argued: our dreams are a reflection of the present or near past. Yet, his dream also seemed prophetic, since the characters were a reflection of Ryder at different parts of his life. Taking it from a stand of Jung, I would call Hoffmann his shadow, since it is the character who Ryder is always at odds with, feeling there are opposing charges between the two, yet realizing in the dream they are reflection of him, perhaps Hoffmann is a culmination of the things Ryder unconsciously dislikes about himself.

Last week, I had a dream that I was walking around in a very exotic land. When I got to the center of town, I noticed that there were large pillars, decorated in silk and beads. There were very well dressed people staring at the these pillars, and occasionally kissing these pillars. They looked spellbound, there eyes possessing a strange, twisting glow. I walked closer, and noticed that these people were touching the pillar, and making them light up. It was a miraculous sight. I ran to the pillar to try to touch them, but I was stopped by a strange man right before my hand could touch the wood of the pillar. He warned me that I did not believe and could never make the pillar glow. Then, he told me I could believe if I gave them a finger. The blood from my hand could sway the G-d of the pillars. I became so frightened I ran, woke up when I realized I had no idea how to get out of the town.