Anyway, you are taking a solitary walk down through a wooded area you don’t know too well. As you walk along, you see several things:
1. First thing you see is a house. Describe it.
Large wooden hotel lodge, like I imagine you’d see in the Pacific Northwest or a National Park – rustic, comfortable, surrounded by pine trees, with a nice dining room and lots of rooms for guests.
2. Walking further down the road, you see a dog. Describe it.
Yellow. Barking at me. Medium size. Tense. Why is there an unleashed dog staring me down in a path in the middle of the woods?
3. Next thing you see is a body of water. Describe it.
A lake, not huge, I can see the other side. Calm waters, surrounded by woods, maybe some of those paddle boats on it.
4. Finally, you come across a brick wall, one that stretches way off into the distance in both directions (so you can’t go around it.) A dense fog has come in so that you can’t retrace your steps, and can’t see what’s beyond the wall. There’s a ladder against the wall, but from the position it’s in, you can tell that once you’ve climbed across it, you won’t be able to get back the way you came. Describe your reaction.
Not sure I understand why I won’t be able to use it to get back the way I’ve come, but assuming that’s true, I don’t climb it. Instead, I just sit down and lean against it and while away the time till the fog lifts, then I retrace my steps and go back.
I should note that many of these reactions are due to the fact that I’m walking through the woods – I hope that’s on purpose, and not just something insignificant randomly thrown into the OP, because if I was told I was just walking down a path in a landscape of my own imagining, my responses would probably be different.
Well, since it’s a wooded area, it’s up in the mountains (you just don’t get wooded areas elsewhere in Spain), so it’s a farmhouse. It’s an old-style one: maybe not old, but done in the old style. Black slate roof, quite peaked to keep the snow from piling up too badly; most of the walls is whitewashed, with wooden beams and stone corners left unwashed. There’s a barn, its heavy wooden doors well-kept; the right door is open. It mustn’t be used to store the tractor, since the arch is still rounded. The main door is a gothic arch, a liiii’l peaky; there’s the usual rectangular door carved into the larger right door. Both large and small doors are decorated with heavy iron nails. The lock in the small door is modern but done in black, so it doesn’t contrast too heavily with the rest. The balcony running through the front of the upper floor is porched, with wooden floor and railling. In keeping with the general style, the windows have old-fashioned shutters, painted a red so dark it would look black if the contrast with the slate roof didn’t bring up the color.
In other words: google images for caserio
The dog is… a dog. Yellow. Not particularly pretty, probably no particular breed. Short-haired, basically because I hope nobody has made hairless dogs. Friendly, it’s wagging its tail and lolling its tongue. It’s come out from behind the house. Someone calls it (him?) but when I say “it’s OK!” they say “oh, alrighty then!” The dog comes up to me, sniffs me, decides I’m absolutely and OK person and comes along with me for several meters, until the pull of his mistress’ is bigger than mine (I swear, the way dogs take after me, I must smell like chorizo).
A stream follows the road for a while. It’s not very wide, not yet a river. Some of the parts where it’s alongside the path look like they may have been canalized in a primitive fashion: they’re areas where it gets really, really close to the path and the rocks there are larger than usual. Some of them have a different color than the rest. I can see ponds, which aren’t very deep right now but I’m sure sitting in them in the dead of summer feels great. If you survive the pneumonia from the chilly water, that is! It might be a trout river, although of this I’m not sure, since some parts of it are very narrow. The water is absolutely transparent. I can see movement but can’t tell what it was.
Whadafu? What, now we’re walling up the mountains? I’d heard the expression, but never thought I’d see it come true. ¡EEEEEEH! Where’s the asshole whodunit? No te jode, vallitas a mí*… I get up the ladder and take a look at whatever’s behind the wall.
something like “yeah, like you can stop me with some flimsy wall”
First thing you see is a house. Describe it.
Brick house, red door, two windows in the front (shuttered). In good repair, but the yard needs to be tended. No smoke from the chimney.
Walking further down the road, you see a dog. Describe it.
Brown and black mutt. Well-fed and suspicious of me.
Next thing you see is a body of water. Describe it.
It’s just a narrow creek running through the woods, nothing spectacular. The water looks clean, and cold.
Finally, you come across a brick wall, one that stretches way off into the distance in both directions (so you can’t go around it.) A dense fog has come in so that you can’t retrace your steps, and can’t see what’s beyond the wall. There’s a ladder against the wall, but from the position it’s in, you can tell that once you’ve climbed across it, you won’t be able to get back the way you came. Describe your reaction.
I’m tempted to find my way back to the house to ask for directions/seek shelter, but I’m creeped out by the dog I passed on my way in. I take a look at the ladder and think, “There’s no way I’m going over that wall just to find myself even farther from civilization.” So, I head back toward the house to face whatever’s in there.
The house:
Large, shingle-style with lots of dormers and wrap-around porches.
The dog:
A happy Golden Retriever, very energetic.
The water:
Lake Erie on a partly sunny day – the air is warm but the breeze is sharp and refreshing, moderate waves, nice beach with lots of trees, can’t see the other side.
The brick wall:
Climbing the ladder seems kind of high risk, I’m content to sit there and wait for something to happen. It’s more relaxing than climbing up strange ladders.
A trim, red brick house with a chimney on the left side, white wood trim.
It’s a black and white cross of some kind, about 40 pounds, and friendly.
A brook to the right side of the road, in the woods.
Fear, obviously. It’s like a Twilight Zone episode. I’d climb the ladder but wait at the top, hoping for the fog to clear and trying to use height to my advantage. I’d wait a good long time before going over.
Like a kid’s drawing. Square, detatched, doors, windows, smoke out the chimney.
It’s a labrador. Happy looking thing, sitting on the kerb.
A lake, surrounded by trees, though not a wood. An small island in the middle.
I pinch myself, since clearly oddness is happening. I test the ladder to see if I can move it. If I can, I take it down, and look at it to see if I can find anything of interest. If not, or I find nothing, I see if I can call for the dog, because while I don’t like dogs all that much some company is better than none. And it might help lead me back to…well, wherever. If it doesn’t come, I climb so i’m sitting on top of the wall, so I can see both sides and hopefully take the ladder with me whichever way I go.
Ok, sorry to keep you all in suspense so long. Now here’s an explanation for it, along with some random arm-chair psychologist observations on random answers:
This is an ‘associative’ test, similar to Rorshach ink-blots. All the things you ‘see’ on the walk are common archetypal image symbols, and the first image that comes to your mind is really indicative of how you feel about what the image symbolizes. When answering these questions, what’s most important is the details you provide about what you see. (BTW, OBJECTION!! is right that there are more of these symbolic images, but these are the ones I could remember.)
The woods in general represent the untamed, but teeming subconscious mind. It’s primal, free-flowing and untamed - except by you alone.
1. First thing you see is a house. Describe it.
A ‘house’ (or home) is a stand-in for family, the family you grew up with. It’s what you think about your own family.
Rodgers01 for example states
He views his family as welcoming, homespun, social, outgoing. His family likes to take people in.
JoeSki wrote:
He sees his family as outwardly eccentric and appearing to be disfunctional to an outsider, but actually quite stable & inviting once you get past the exterior.
Several people remarked upon the numbers of windows (either having ‘several’ or just one, etc.) which indicates how ‘open’ (or closed off, depending on how many windows there are) their family might be - you can see inside, they let lots of light into the house, etc.
2. Walking further down the road, you see a dog. Describe it.
Dogs represent friendship (even if you’re more of a cat person apparently, because dogs are bred to be companions/helpers to humans and are commonly referred to as ‘man’s best friend’ of course.
From Nava:
Nava’s friends are kept on a leash. They trust him, warm up to him quickly, want to play & pal around with him, but always seem to be dragged away from him.
From Montgomery0:
Monty likes freaky people. He gravitates toward oddballs who look more sinister and threatening than they actually are. His dog is being cast-off, and perhaps his friends tend to be disenfranchised in some way.
3. Next thing you see is a body of water. Describe it.
Bodies of water represent sex. (Semen, sweat, women ‘get wet’) Notice that a lot of folks described trees growing out or around it (life extending outward from sex) and that many people saw their body of water in a secluded area where it’s private and that the waters. At least one person mentioned something about getting pneumonia from swimming - there could be hidden dangers from indulging yourself.
I won’t single anybody out for interpretation during this question.
4. Finally, you come across a brick wall, one that stretches way off into the distance in both directions (so you can’t go around it.) A dense fog has come in so that you can’t retrace your steps, and can’t see what’s beyond the wall. There’s a ladder against the wall, but from the position it’s in, you can tell that once you’ve climbed across it, you won’t be able to get back the way you came. Describe your reaction.
Death. You can’t get around it, you have no choice but to face it. You can retreat from it for only so long. And nobody knows what’s on the other side.
aclubs:
aclubs wants to retreat from it and clings to the things in life he feels confident about. He won’t take unnecessary risks, but feels that his life as a whole (his family, his friends, his sex-life) are satisfying enough for him.
evibe:
evibe has no fear of the inevitable. He’s willing, perhaps eager even, to court serious danger as long as it means taking himself out of the usual routine. He is perhaps a bit unrealistic about it though, as he doesn’t take any mind to the fact that he can’t return should he dislike what he finds there.
But that’s the gist of it. I’ll refrain from further amateur pyschoanalysis. You can draw your own conclusions from here on in. Hope you found it interesting.
White. Cottage style. Two up two down. Shutters. Chimeny. The smell of wood smoke.
Medium sized. Labredor sized. Dog sized. Tongue hanging out of mouth. Looking for love…well, petting. Floppy ears, pleading eyes.
A pond. Or a small lake. Beautiful rippling water. And surrounded by pine trees. Definatly pine trees.
No way am I climbing a ladder in a fog. Certainly not a ladder I haven’t been introduced to. I’d probably stand and enjoy the fog for a while ( I like fog) then I’d make my way back following the wall, till I found a point where I regained my bearing.
It’s pink, with one window on the right and a door on the left. There is a blue gable above the door and a blue step below. The door itself is a lighter pink than the rest of the house. The window is also blue framed, as is the roof – which is ^ shaped. There is a red chimney on the right side of the roof. You can see the concrete foundation at the base of the house. This house would probably be too small for practical use.
It is brown and has it’s tongue lolling out. It’s ears are fluffy like brown cauliflowers and stick up above it’s head in a somewhat unnatural way. It passes me on (my) left and we make eye contact.
It is a lake, possibly circular but it’s hard to tell. There is a small stream snaking into it from my direction. There are trees around the edge, and it appears to be autumn. The surface of the water is not completely flat.
Well, seeing as this whole scenario has taken on a dream like quality, I’d be straight up the ladder and over the wall. In reality I’d probably stop halfway up to take a look.
EDIT: Now I analyse myself!
Well I was raised mainly be women, and the house is pink…
It makes eye contact. I guess that’s a good thing. I didn’t mention it, but I was under the impression that the dog was alone. I like free spirits.
Hehe, my post was actually a Zork reference. Sadly, apparently it wasn’t that funny. Depressingly, many people weren’t old enough to get the reference. Frighteningly, your analysis was eerily precise.
LOL – I envisioned paddle boats on a lake. Does that mean I like to use toys during sex? Even more disturbingly, I envisioned (though I didn’t write it down) those paddle boats being used by people from the lodge house…ie, my family!! :o
Seriously though, aside from the trees, how are you supposed to interpret the imagery in this section? What does a lake mean as opposed to a river? If it’s a large lake does it mean you like sex, as opposed to a small lake? What about calm waters versus raging torrents? What if there’s a waterfall, what would that mean?
