Spring or Mating Rituals

By J Jones

I read astray the title "spring rituals" but I make a mistake and actually read "mating rituals". The ritual and mating ideas bring simultaneously in my mind sequences from a documentary film about some birds in the mating period - what caught my attention was the curious ritual of the male who was playing with his feet with a solemn and stiff attitude as he was executing a dance - the background music was, in fact, a Russian folk dance.

Starting from this ritual I remembered other animals and males who were tenaciously fighting for a female they eventually killed by mistake! I told to myself that they are stupid animals, thinking that they missed an opportunity. I probably considered the spring rituals I was watching in TV equally useless or counterproductive - otherwise, why would I have replaced "spring" with "mating"?

Let me explain: by replacing "spring" with "mating" I substituted a word string with another and simultaneously replaced a meaning with another one. I have thus disclosed, without my wanting this, my real opinion about the "spring rituals" and what they suggested me. This opinion was, for one reason or another, repressed.

I should insist more and talk about what these "spring rituals" really were and what they suggested me, but this would mean to reveal personal things that I do not want to make public.

I liked to show how the repressed ideas regarding these "rituals" reveal themselves without my intention (wanting it), through a simple reading error.

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