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Show 'I'm falling through a hole in the flag... j Page Two He -recalls that at times several years ago he had Ejv thought to taking up militancy, but he had been persuaded" within the system" for the betterment of society. We fear l ll becoming disillusioned and depressed, however. He 0urfr'end s! that since he has decided to be a member of the "system " iT ' ifs is turning around and "screwing" him again. He tells u's th Wf"' time he passes a grocery store, going hungry in the nJ "wants to slug somebody." eanHk; And we don't blame him a damn bit. j f A friend told us about a singularly bad dream he had the other night It actually came in a series of nightmarish episodes, the first ot wnicn had a setting something like this: He was innocently walking down the street when he suddenly sensed impending doom. What had a moment ago been a bright spring day was now dreary and overcast, and a mood of depression and paranoia settled over the landscape. As he continued to walk along he not'a the area immediately around him growing rapidly darker, and ne looked up just in time to be covered by a gigantic American flag which had floated down omnipotently from the sky. He began to slowly smother, but luckily he escaped just in time. The second dream was similar in nature, but less overt and more disquieting. Wherever our friend went, he was followed at some distance by a sinister figure who lurked in the shadows with malice in his heart. Our friend could only catch fleeting glimpses of this menace out of the corner of his eye and in rear view mirrors. Oddly enough, whenever he turned around to confront the figure directly, he constantly found a grinning man with a ski-jump nose and chopsticks in his pockets, waving to wildly cheering throngs with both hands raised high in peace signs. The third dream was straightforward but nevertheless terrifying. Our . friend was drowning in a gigantic apple pie, and whenever he would struggle to the upper crust and try to make his way to safety, his fingers were smashed by persons unknown wielding a handsome but heavy walnut gavel, and he would slip back into the mire. We make no claims about any competent knowledge of the principles prin-ciples of psychology ,and we profess no mystical power to divine the origins and explanations of dreams, but we think some additional material about certain aspects of our friend's situation may shed some light on his disturbing dreams. Our friend is a student, as are most of us, and he is living away from home of his own volition, in the belief he can learn more and become a more "complete" person by tackling the chore on his own feet and no one else's. Needless to say, having to support himself and his education on a part-time job he is poor. Being forced to do so, he found innumerable ways to cut corners financially, one of which was to find two other students in similar situations and with them rent a two-bedroom house to live in. He also found that by applying for and getting food stamps, he could afford a decent diet on a regular basis. Recently, however, food stamps were denied to him, on the basis that he lives with people not related to him. Our friend thinks this development has caused his nightmares. He thinks his subsequent bad diet might be troubling his unconscious mind, but he places more credence in another explanation: ex-planation: He is the victim, he told us, of a conspiracy. He is not exactly the model of the American way of life, being that he is poor, has long hair, speaks his mind, tends to be a liberal thinker and asks a lot of questions. He thinks that the "powers that be" are trying to wipe he and his kind out, one of the instruments of such extinction being the denial of food stamps to those living with other than relatives. He readily admits he and some of his ideas may have been a thorn in the side of the "establishment" at times, but he claims he did this openly and honestly, trusting that democracy would encourage him to ask questions. |