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About a week or two I had a nightmare and the settings were moments before nuclear warheads went off and the panic that ensued, the explosions, and the aftermath. I had it in my head that this was the conclusion of the Russia-Ukraine conflict despite having not kept up with it in weeks. I have dreamt of post-apocalyptic settings before as seen here,

Post-Apocalyptic Ukiyo-e
The Apocalypse Revisted

But long gone are the halcyon days of urban, futuro-primitivism and in are the days of brute existence’s relentless and unceremonious gut punch. Something similar to this,

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=17LQnaaUTp8

The halcyon days that never were. Even after writing those journal entries, the ego’s schizophony still played its discordant music. I still have a way to go before I can harmonize the notes.

As for this dream I don’t know what to make of it and it’s been bothering me slightly. Lately I’ve been on an upward trajectory – I’m in a stable and loving relationship, I’m moving to a bigger city, starting a new job, becoming more focused and driven in my career, and new opportunities are opening up for me. Wherein lies the monkey wrench?

There are a couple of ways to interpret this dream but I wouldn’t know where to start.

I’ve always had a tendency towards self-destruction both in passive and active, and sometimes violent, ways. The cycle of numbness and the desire for intensification rears its head and this period of peace and stability is alien to me. It’s almost as if there’s a fear that I might go ‘nuclear’ and tear it all down. But I don’t want that, at least not consciously.

Another way to view this is my mind cleansing itself through immolation. Let the old edifices burn to the ground and may its embers nourish the soil. May the ghosts of these edifices be put to rest. Spectres of the past can no longer obstruct the future. I no longer inhabit retro-futures but journey towards futures where the ink hasn’t dried yet.

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Returning to this: https://the-black-book-gallery.com/2021/06/11/post-apocalyptic-ukiyo-e/


The demolished cityscape represents the self/ego and the different blocks and aspects of the city represent the different aspects of the self. Initially I thought the crumbling landscape symbolized a fractured ego. But I’m coming to the conclusion that the dreams mean something else.


From the destruction and decay of the cityscape, life reasserts itself. The modern city represents alienation and compartmentalization, and the whole edifice of it all is destroyed, while oddly enough maintaining the bustling nature of it, arguably the main feature of a city.


Vegetation overtakes the sprawl. Whorehouses and crackhouses are situated alongside decrepit, concrete playgrounds and businesses.


Innocence and the darker aspects of the self commune with each other, coming into contact and communicating with each other.


The whole psycho-geography of the landscape is fascinating – the simultaneous urbanity and the primitiveness of the landscape seamlessly coexist, bringing forth new ways of living, communing, relating, communicating with others and viewing and inhabiting oneself. And the reason I compared the dreams to ukiyo-e is that these elements – the urbanity, primitiveness, seediness, playfulness- seem to mesh harmoniously, literally a world floating above the real world.


Heaven, hell, and purgatory all coalesce in this one spot. This one location. In this liminal space.


So I’m seeing this dream as the process of holistically integrating the ego.


As someone who’s mental health goes in and out of stability and who not infrequently went into psychotic states, this bodes well especially since I’m waaayy more stable these days.


Hopefully, long gone are the days of the schizophony of the fractured self, whose various aspects were in irreconcilable tension with each other. Though it might be premature to hope for that.

The actual experience of the dream is accentuated by the alternating feeling of being disembodied from reality and the lush sensuality/viscerality of the intense and raw atmosphere.

It was simultaneously dream-like and fleshy. It was pulsating, as if one entered into the beating heart of the center of a city and feeling the electricity run through the air and coursing through one’s veins.

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The famous Japanese woodblock prints known as ukiyo-e, or “pictures of the floating world”, had their origins in these districts, and often depicted scenes of the floating world itself such as geisha, kabuki actors, sumo wrestlers, samurai, merchants, and prostitutes.

The term “ukiyo”, when written as meaning “the floating world”, is also an ironic, homophonous allusion to the earlier Buddhist term ukiyo (憂き世, “sorrowful world”), referring to the earthly plane of death and rebirth from which Buddhists sought release.[2]

In its modern usage, the term ukiyo is used to refer to a state of mind emphasising living in the moment, detached from the difficulties of life. – Wikipedia

I’ve been getting these semi-reoccurring dreams of a dreamscape. Imagine the entirety NYC that’s semi-demolished and bombed out but it’s still bustling. It’s nowhere near as populated as it originally was but there’s still people there doing commerce.

It felt like an almost idealized mixing of different aspects of NYC from different eras.

From the gritty atmosphere of the 1970s before Giuliani cleaned up the city.

To the modern hipster gentrification of the city.

The funny thing about it all is that I’ve never been to NYC.

Each block was interlaced with wrecked abandoned builds and semi-demolished businesses and buildings used as playgrounds by kids.

I remembered seeing a chic and busy 3 story coffee house (semi-demolished of course).

The city was simultaneously stylish and decayed. Wrecked yet bustling with life. Dangerous while also something that could only exist in dreams, “a floating world.”

Underlying it all was a joie de vivre.

Brothels and crackhouses situated alongside cement playgrounds and an apothecary.

As is the logic of the floating world.

There was the rawness of living in an gritty environment populated by criminals and prostitutes. Or at the very least, their presence was more front and center and seemingly tolerated as if they were a natural part of the landscape.

But it never reached the level of being confronted by brute reality.