I don’t like to bang on about my dreams these days. It’s far too self-indulgent. Often, the part that made one’s own dream fascinating at the time was its attached emotions. Even the most intense and meaningful nocturnal experiences – those thunderous, world-changing revelations that made perfect sense to one’s slumbering mind – are impossible to convey when awake without provoking bafflement, concern or stifled yawns from anyone unlucky enough to be within earshot. It’s the same for all of us.
The digestive processes of our minds can produce seemingly profound narratives and characters. Yet in the bright, often disappointing light of day, these are revealed as nothing but regurgitated waking memories and mashed chunks of half-chewed Jungian symbolism. The inside of my head – and yours – is no more interesting than anyone else’s.
Bear with me then, while I indulge myself and describe part of a dream I had this morning. It was about a statue – or rather, a painting in three dimensions. There were other details, of course. I won’t bore you with them. There was a garden, a computer screen, and the chaste little frisson as I (in long, black gloves) touched the bare hand of a voluptuous woman in a shining white dress. That’s all you need to know. My dreams have all the symbolic subtlety of a slap to the face.
Anyway, at the centre of the dream was a statue. Viewed from the front, it was Leonardo da Vinci’s “Virgin of the Rocks”. Like a picture in a pop-up book, it stood out from its page. As I moved, the Madonna began to change. Unlike the flattened, angular youth she had previously appeared to be, her three-dimensional self was curvaceous, the shape of a mother, and anything but virginal. Her cheeks were rosy and succulent and her mouth was pursed into a knowing smile. The image was powerfully erotic.
When I woke (a little flustered) it occurred to me that, as a young woman at a religious school, I wasn’t given much to aspire to. The biologically-impossible role model who the church taught us to emulate was a mother who had never had sex. No matter how hard a girl tries to be this mythical creature, she will inevitably grow up to feel she has failed. In a week where the Catholic Church has put the equal rights of women on a par with kiddy fiddling, the virgin mother is a particularly poignant symbol to dream about.
If Mary truly existed as a historical figure, she would almost certainly be different to the flat, dour-faced prude we’re told to follow the example of. After all, we met her as an unwed woman carrying an illegitimate child, who then became a political fugitive and raised a revolutionary son. As the living, breathing, three-dimensional mortal in my dream, she seems far more realistic to me. That’s somthing to aspire to.
Read about the Virgin of the Rocks on Wikipedia here.
