Monday, March 09, 2009

Funnier Post

Here's one that amuses me.

I have, I don't know, about three or four recurring dreams. Some details vary, and they can even be combined, but their plots or setting are always recognizable:

I can't remember the combination to a lock.
My children are in some peril and I can't get to them.
I'm blind and groping in the dark. (Definitely the scariest)
I find my old 1980 Toyota and drive it away. (Definitely my favorite)

And

I'm at St. John's College, where I went to school. If you're not familiar with the curriculum there and why I turned out how I did:


http://www.stjohnscollege.edu/academic/main.shtml

In the dream, I'm back there, not because I work there or go to school there, but either for an interview or to give a guest lecture. It is a very jarring dream - not frightening like some of the nightmare ones listed, but jarring because I don't know what to make of the place and the people there (and oddly, there are never any of the people I went to school with present, nor any tutors I know). Everything seems comforting, yet forbidding and threatening, in a way. I wake up feeling the most disoriented from this one.

2 Comments:

Blogger Matt Cardin said...

Now, why didn't I know you went to St. John's College? I've been fascinated for years with that institution's major place in the history of the 20th century's higher education wars. Back in the late 80s and early 90s I was reading a lot of stuff by and about Mortimer Adler, Robert Hutchins, Stringfellow Barr, and Scott Buchanan. Plus some Allan Bloom. You know, the whole Great Books subculture. And of course I was fascinated each time I reread ZEN AND THE ART OF MOTORCYCLE MAINTENANCE and saw Pirsig talking about his own tumultuous encounters with this world of ideas. So this is all to say that I'm fascinated and somewhat envious of your St. John's College experience.

6:36 PM  
Blogger KPaffenroth said...

Well, MattC, somewhere down there, there's some deep ambivalence about the experience (which I've known for a long time, even at the conscious level). I suppose that's the enduring difference of having an unusual college experience - be it SJC or USMA or a deeply religious school - they fill you with a lot of conflicted emotions, the way a family member often does. I can't imagine feeling conflicted over SUNY or Rutgers - I might think I made the wrong choice, or be very happy with the choice, but I don't think there'd be strong feelings either way. At an unusual school there are strong feelings BOTH ways!

6:41 PM  

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