A number of years ago, just before lunch, I was asked by a co-worker about a dream he had the night before. Since I had been reading a lot of Carl Jung (Man and His Symbols, Modern Man in Search of a Soul), he felt that maybe I could shed some light on his dream.
He dreamt he was sitting in his living room, calmly reading a newspaper while his wife and daughters were screaming and running around in a panic because the upstairs of their house was on fire. I had read where there have been cases where dreams seem to predict a physical problem before one becomes consciously aware of it. Since I don’t have a degree in psychology, nor do I even play a psychiatrist on television, I just asked my co-worker; do you feel O.K.? He looked at me and said “Yeah.” I then left for lunch and came back an hour later.
A few minutes before I returned to my job my co-worker had rushed out of work with a fever of 102 degrees. Perhaps at some cellular level his dream seem to anticipate his house (head) fire.
It was then I realize that I might want to pay a little more attention to what some of my dreams may have been telling me. Most were run-of-the-mill anxiety, nonsense, crazy stuff. But one dream shook me to my core. I dreamt a dark, nefarious figure jumped out of my closet and ran up to my bed. I woke up in a cold sweat and it took some time for me to settle down and get back to sleep. This shadowy figure probably represented all of my fears, faults and bad personality traits, and my mind decided it was time to confront me. I don’t know if having that dream was the culmination of looking inward, or if it was an acknowledgment of my desire to willingly take on my issues, but I knew the next morning I needed to make a photographic record of my experience.
Today, when I look at The Monster in My Closet, it is almost as frighting as when I lived through it. I have never had a dream like that again, maybe because of personal growth and maturity (although many I know might question that maturity part). My belief is that if some night a similar specter were to appear, I would be up to the task of facing the darker truths that are pressing upward from my unconscious.
About the Photo:
The Monster in My Closet (1988)
Camera – Mamiya 645
Exposure – 30 seconds
Film – Kodak T-Max 400
Developer – HC-110
Paper – Kodak Elite