☾ start own clinic Elestian has always dreamed of opening up a clinic focusing on psychosomatic illness in particular.
☾ make a family Elestian longs for someone to call his, and perhaps even children, some day.
☾ wise From life experience, vision, loss and emotional abuse, Elestian forged himself anew, turning his pain into deep wisdom. He has an uncanny sense and intuition for people borne from experience and natural intuition, typically able to guess some of their malady before they even open their mouth.
☾ warm While he tends to hold people at emotional arm’s distance at first, that doesn’t mean Elestian is cold. In fact, he is quite warm, with a soothing bedside manner in and out of work. He genuinely cares for others’ wellbeing, even if closeness is initially hard.
☾ devoted Elestian is deeply devoted to his craft and those he loves. He takes oaths very seriously, and does everything he can to keep his word. He is always striving to be the best person he can—not for clout or accomplishment, but for personal growth, understanding and self-actualization. He has little time or patience for things he doesn’t care about.
☾ genuine Having grown up in a stuffy political environment, where “love” is calculated and masks are plentiful, Elestian is simply exhausted; he values honesty and genuineness, and holds himself to much the same standard. He loathes having to put up a facade or “play pretend” at being some cool, graceful politician, as his family expected of him.
☾ eccentric Beneath the mask of decorum and noble or doctor’s solemnity is an absolute goof. His family oft sniffed at him as “too eccentric,” which led him to bury it, but once he is comfortable around others, he is a chatty prankster with a great deal of interests and excellent sense of humor.
☾ poetic
☾ dreamer
☾ patient
☾ eloquent
☾ clumsy
☾ disorganized
☾ anxious about closeness
☾ can neglect self
☾ trauma from family
☾ RELIGION Elestian is not dogmatic by any means; though he follows the Daemos Oraklós, she is more of a god-concept than any real deity. While he is devoted to what she represents, and her sacred traditions in augury, he is not blindly religious.
☾ CULTURE Given his upbringing, Elestian is more reserved than many Apostans. He is more aware of touch and conscious about asking permission to do so. While he grows louder and more boisterous the more he knows someone, at first he can come off as somewhat subdued. However, in matters of morality, expression and other Apostan attitudes, he aligns well with the culture.
☾ MORALITY Elestian has a deep moral compass and is suspicious and untrusting of those who don’t. Growing up in a family with dubious morals—that looked away during the horrors of Magii Xaron—he has little patience or tolerance for those who do the same. It is a trigger of rage for him to watch others being maligned, abused, etc for one’s personal gain.
☾ playing the lyre When all else is too loud, annoying or overwhelming, he can always return to his lyre, and focus on the sweet purity of music.
☾ collecting curiosities Elestian loves a good bizarre thing. He is like a magpie that collects the unusual or unique, with no particular theme other than “it was interesting!” He has prehistoric bugs in amber, strange skulls, unique jewelry or other crafts, and many mythological votives.
☾ dessert Lemon cake.
☾ drink Apostan coffee—thick, dark, with cardamom and candied orange. Also fond of green tea.
☾ books Adventure, myth, local flora/fauna, natural philosophies.
☾ place Near the sky; atop hill, mountain, building, anything.
☾ colors White, sand, oceanic, yellow.
☾ solitude Nothing is better to him than sitting atop a hill or mountain, feeling the bracing air, enjoying his solitude in nature.
☾ hiking Not only is it part of his profession as an augur to reach steep places, he also enjoys the challenge, and the breathtaking reward of new heights and views.
☾ pranks Elestian is a big fan of harmless pranks; the more absurd and elaborate, the better.
☾ too much socialization Elestian is decidedly introverted, and too much socialization (unless it’s with his favorite people) is exhausting.
☾ talking about himself Oh, the eternal stammer and redirection! Elestian hates describing himself, and never truly knows where to begin.
☾ compliments After a childhood of criticism, it’s hard to take a compliment. He is the master of returning them and redirection to effusive praise of the other person in the hopes of distracting them.
There came to me a woman who was terrified of canaries. Her new husband was fond of birds, and kept them. At first she could tolerate them. But then she began having attacks of the nerves, and recurring dreams that the birds would attack and maim her. When asked why she is so afraid, the only explanation she could come up with was: because they are yellow.
Now, on the surface, this seems to be a non-sequitur, mad reasoning. But she held it with utter conviction. I asked her if other birds caused her distress; she said no, and quite to the contrary, liked them and found them pretty. It was only canaries causing the problem. Then I asked—do yellow things cause you distress? She told me that she never liked the color, found it repulsive. I found that interesting.
How can a color be repulsive? How can a harmless, visual stimulus, a mere shade, cause such emotion and suffering?
Then I asked her about the dreams. Were the birds canaries? Were they yellow? Strangely, she could not remember what kind of bird they were, specifically: only that they were that color. The patient says it best herself.
[TRANSCRIPT]
DR: So the birds aren’t canaries.
P: No, hakim. Now that you mention it, strangely…they are not canaries at all. I don’t know what kind of bird they are, but they are frightening. Like a hawk, or a vulture, or both at once.
DR: I see. And these birds—what prompts them to attack you?
P: Nothing. I am minding my own business, and they come upon me, and try to peck out my eyes. My eyes, specifically—I wake up just as I go blind.
DR: What a terrible dream…I am so sorry. Do you know these birds? Are these your husband’s birds?
P: No. My husband doesn’t keep birds of prey.
DR: I see. Then, are these birds completely unfamiliar to you? Or do you feel you have seen them before, that they have some familiarity?
P: I…oddly, I feel that they are familiar.
DR: Did you or your family keep birds? Particularly when you were a child?
P: No. And I have never been attacked by one. That is the puzzling thing.
DR: What do you feel, in this dream? Recalling this dream? Your emotions, your body, all of your senses and experiences…
P: O-oh. Well, I…I feel cold. My stomach is cold, like dread.
DR: How old do you feel?
P: I…feel young. Like a young girl. And oddly…I can smell sunflowers.
DR: Sunflowers. Focus on the smell of those sunflowers, that age. Close your eyes, if it helps. Imagine you are there. What do you sense, think, feel?
P: I feel…scared, for some reason. I think I’m lost.
DR: Lost? How do you mean?
P: Like I can’t find someone, or some people. It’s getting dark and I need to go home…oh!
DR: What is it?
P: I just remembered…when I was a young girl. I forgot! I stayed with my cousins, on holiday. I snuck off on a dare. But I was a city girl…they lived on a farm. My aunt warned me that after dark, that is when the Beasts come out. She was likely just trying to scare us into behaving…but I believed her. I got lost in the forest, wandering and wandering…and ended up in a sunflower field!
DR: Interesting. It’s getting dark, you said. In your dream…what is your blindness like? Is it abrupt? Or slow?
P: Odd, now that you mention. It’s not abrupt, even if they are pecking. It is more like a slow dimming, and then I wake up.
DR: How did you get back, as a little girl?
P: My aunt and cousin found me—right before dark!
This is a case in which the dream is inextricable from the solution. I hold that dreams are the language of the mind of which we are not aware. Our conscious awareness is but a candle, in the vastness of the mind. There are many operations outside that awareness. And furthermore, there are many languages of the mind.
In diagnosis, the body-sense cannot be ignored, either. Nor can the other senses; we gleefully point to the “thinking mind” as the only mind at all. We are a feeling mind, and a sensory mind, and a physical mind. Only when the logics and languages of all are taken into consideration does the phrase because it is yellow make sense.
In theory, everything in a dream represents some aspect of the self; the birds are not birds, but the patient herself. Dream is theatre, in which every player comes from the dreamer themselves. Most often the visual content varies, but the themes and plot remain the same.
In the dream, the patient is chased by beastly birds of a somewhat familiar nature; they are yellow, even though they are not canaries. And they blind her slowly, more like the descent of darkness than sudden brutality.
Consider then the memory. The patient reports getting lost as a young girl, afraid of Beasts attacking her after nightfall. And ever more, the sun is setting. She ends up in a field of sunflowers, and is rescued just before absolute dark.
Then, let us consider the dream again. The birds may be somewhat familiar, because the story of the Beasts was told to her by a familiar figure, her aunt. They are yellow like the field she found herself in, a vivid memory. They blind her slowly, like the descent of dark in sunset, but she wakes up before she is fully blinded; her aunt rescued her before nightfall.
Yellow, then, was a messenger, an iconic symbol of the memory. In the patient’s mind, being chased by Beasts and sunflowers are within the same breath; while to the “logical” mind, one reasonably understands sunflowers are not dangerous, other minds do not, particularly childhood reasoning.
She said she had forgotten the memory; but the memory had not forgotten her. Somewhere within the patient’s mind was a piece of her, a memory, perhaps a little girl, saying “yellow means there’s Beasts about!” But without the context of the memory, without curiosity about yellow and fear and the unconscious, it becomes “deranged logic.” The fear is not of yellow, but of Beasts. The Beast-yellow association is a mistaken one formed in childhood. And while the conscious awareness of the memory faded, the memory itself did not, continuing to exist in the shadow of her mind.
Forgotten memories and other neglected things in the psyche often try to communicate as dreams; it is important that we listen.
