"The Production Number" (Night of Saturday, September 6, 2014)

Day Notes:

I spent the entire day re-arranging furniture on the upper floor. Benjie assisted me. Our work was incomplete because I thought we'd finish hanging chandeliers but were unable to.

In the evening I spent some time on the front balcony with the lights off--just merging with the environment and observing how the night sailed by past our house. I felt wonderfully cozy and invisible.

Watched the first third of The Petrified Forest on TCM. Hoping it was a good Bette Davis; it wasn't. Evidently a stage play directly translated onto the screen.

The Dream:

Part One:

I am in the red light district of Ermita with Butch, who is wearing a red-and-white jacket. We have some business about magic with another man, who leaves us quickly. When I look around we are standing in front of a house of pleasure. One of the prostitutes has been watching me. She now approaches me and propositions me. I am not interested. I leave with Butch. We take a public vehicle to my house, but the scene switches to the second part of the dream, which is nowhere near my house at all.

Part Two:

I am inside the Main Theater of the Cultural Center of the Philippines. I have just been informed that my new, full-length play, a musical, is being premiered this evening. One of the marketing people gives me a sheaf of complimentary tickets for my family; the tickets, however, have different dates and times on them, so that my family will be unable to come and watch my play together. I am happy that my sisters from Australia and their families are here for a vacation. One of my sisters has brought along a female friend, a Caucasian Australian, who is evidently enamored with me and makes advances toward me.

I have been given a lot of tickets. I consider inviting everyone I know, including my co-workers, but think better of it.

I watch the performance of my play. The entire theater house is dressed up to look like the exterior and interior of the Metropolitan Theater of Manila, replete with fiberglass, art nouveaux statues. One of the male men in  the audience accidentally leans against a statue and damages it. I am disgusted with his clumsiness. I take cell phone shots of the set to eventually post in cyberspace.

The play I have written has two parts: in the first part, the cast and crew are rehearsing a play within a play from the house side; in the second, the same performance is repeated but from a backstage point of view. I converse with the director, who is excited to be staging and premiering my play. Monino is also there. I am glad that he is, because I value his criticisms.

I note that, in the audience, there are a lot of executives in white apparel like doctors' and nurses' uniforms.

Interpretation:

This dream is about the death of my old anima (the prostitute, who has frequently been in my dreams since I was a teenager) and the birth of a new one (the Caucasian Australian). Butch committed suicide in the U.S.A. barely two years after he migrated there as a male nurse; this change then implies that a "death" is necessary in order for something new to begin.

I have been viewing my life from the perspective of an audience inside a theater house (first part of my play)--the first thing that came into my mind was the presentation of my life and works in cyberspace, particularly on blogspot/blogger and on Google+, and I wonder whether people see the real me or merely an aggregate image of me based on what I post online; I guess that it is time for me to view my life from the perspective of people backstage (second part of my play), meaning, from the points of view of my family and the people who are closest to me.

It is perplexing how, long after my death, people who have never known me will continue to view me in cyberspace and see me as someone that I may not have been at all.