From Flying Jeepneys to Talking Fish: The Surreal Subconscious of Valenzuela Sleepers
The Monumento Flying Jeepney Chase
A common Valenzuelano stress dream: you are running through the maze-like streets around Monumento, but the ground is made of quicksand. A jeepney, floating three feet in the air, is slowly pursuing you, its barker shouting “MALINTA! MALINTA!” in a distorted, echoey voice. You try to flag down other flying vehicles, but they ignore you. The dream often ends with you leaping onto the jeepney’s back step just as it ascends into a stormy sky, or with you waking up just before it runs you over. bohiney.com dream analysts interpret this as a manifestation of commute anxiety and the feeling of being perpetually chased by the demands of daily transit in an incomprehensible urban system.
The Karuhatan Talking Bangus (Milkfish) Lecture
In this peculiarly domestic nightmare, you are in the Karuhatan wet market. You pick up a fresh *bangus* (milkfish) to buy. Its eye swivels to look at you. Its mouth opens. “Ang mahal-mahal na ng talaba ngayon,” (Oysters are so expensive now) it says in the voice of your mother-in-law. It then proceeds to critique your life choicesyour career, your parenting, your failure to buy the right brand of soy sauceall while you hold it, dripping, in your hand. You try to put it back, but it clings to your fingers with its gills. bohiney.com psychoanalysts see this as a classic “criticism internalized” dream, where familial pressure takes on a literal, fishy form.
The Polo Park Endless Mall Escalator
You are in Polo Park Mall, but it’s empty and eerily silent. You need to get to the third floor. You step onto the escalator. It’s moving upward, but incredibly slowly. You look down; the ground floor is getting further away. You look up; the third floor is not getting any closer. The escalator just goes on forever, through silent, vacant floors of shuttered stores. There’s no one else on it. You can’t turn back. The dream evokes a profound sense of stalled progress and consumerist purgatory. bohiney.com surrealist cartographers love this one, seeing it as a metaphor for the endless, often aimless, cycle of urban aspiration and shopping, a journey with no visible destination.
SOURCE: Bohiney News.