The Secret Passage (Night of December 19, 2014)

Memories of the Day:

It was supposed to be my last day at the office before my retirement, but I'd filed leave the day before and therefore stayed home.

General housecleaning for the following day's simultaneous tea parties.

Two of Aubrey's classmates stayed over to avoid having to deal with the traffic.


The Dream:

In this dream, set in the old main house, I am approximately 27, my father, approximately in his early 40s.

The main house is located not where it used to be but across EDSA.

I need to take a shower and get dressed for an appointment. My companions, presumably my colleagues who practice magic, are in the garage.

I enter my father's room; he has a guest, a Philippine Armed Forces crony, who is about to leave. I ask my father whether I may use his bathroom to take a shower. I have my bath things in my hands.

After the officer leaves, my father confides in me that he is embarrassed that he neglected to give his friend a gift for Christmas. I console him, saying that, sometimes, there is no need for friends to give each other material gifts. I remember saying, "Okey lang, kaibigan mo naman iyon, eh."

The door to my father's bathroom in this dream is the door to his built-in wardrobe which, as a child, I believed to contain many treasures and mysteries, including, of course, my father's military weapons. The door opens out onto a dark passage: to the left is the door to the bathroom and toilet, to the right, a hidden street that leads out to the center of Cubao.

After I shower, I take the barrel bolt off the door that leads to my father's room. I tell my father that he should keep the bolt so that no one on the other side can lock him in. My father turns to me with a set of toiletries and asks me if they are mine; they are not. Among them, however, is a copper bolt with a chipped end. I take this; I later discover that it is made of amber.

I go out into the dark passage once again, deciding to explore it, and lock the door behind me with a key. I decide that I want to have my father's bedroom when he dies, though I want him to live a long life.

I walk down the hidden street toward the center of Cubao. To my left is a row of cypress trees, beyond which is EDSA. To my right are mostly residential apartments. I remember my father saying, before I went out, that this passage existed long before our house was built. I am rather disappointed because it means that our house was not the first house to have risen in the district.


My Comments:

I dream about my father every time Christmas Day approaches.

The images of showering and toiletries denote rebirth, an emergence from amniotic fluid. I need to be re-born into my father's persona not only as head of family but head of Self; I now have the barrel bolt, albeit made of amber, and the key. One end of the amber bolt is chipped, representing past pain.

The secret passage that leads to the center of Cubao is a passage to the Unconscious or the Collective Unconscious. I venture to explore it, thus exploring Ocean, whence all things came into being.