You are never too old to set another goal or to dream a new dream.
~ C.S. Lewis
Category: Dreams
Faerie Paths — Life and Death
Life and death are one, even as the river and the sea are one. In the depths of your hopes and desires lies your silent knowledge of the beyond; and like seeds dreaming beneath the snow, your heart dreams of spring. Trust the dreams, for in them is hidden the gate to eternity.
~Kahlil Gibran
Faerie Paths — Do It
20 years from now, you will be more disappointed by the things you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbour. Catch the trade winds in your sail. Explore. Dream. Discover. ~Mark Twain
Dreams
This blog is dedicated to my close friend Robin who lost both of her parents a little over a year ago.
Last night I had a dream.
I had spent the day with my mom at her house. I don’t know exactly what we were doing — cleaning, my guess. And talking.
I was in the living room watching TV, and I yelled into the kitchen, “Where’s dad? I haven’t seen him all day.”
“He was sleeping in there — you must have missed him,” she replied. Then a deeper voice answered. “I’m right here.”
So I went into the softly lit kitchen and there they were, my mom and dad, sitting at a small kitchen table. There were wood scraps on the table; my dad was a carpenter all his life, and was always working on something.
I remember coming and kneeling next to him. Something didn’t feel quite right. Like neither one of them was supposed to be there.
I had a thought in the back of my mind.
“What’s it like over there?” I asked.
My dad smiled and nodded but said nothing. So I continued.
“Is it beautiful? Eternal? Spiritual?”
“Yes it is,” he said, smiling.
I lost my mother 49 years ago, my dad 15. Yet I still dream of both of them.
I don’t care what psychologists and scientists and textbooks say about the origin of dreams. It’s the one world man really doesn’t fully understand.
And I believe dreams are a portal. A connection.
Our only connection.
Dreams hold our fears and experiences, along with our passions and imaginations. Those points in our life never leave us. And even if you say you don’t dream, you do. You just don’t remember them. They are a way to remind us who we are. How we got here.
Dreams are our connection to those who have gone before us, proof that all is well.
In this world and the next.
Faerie Paths — Illusion
Dream delivers us to dream, and there is no end to illusion. Life is like a train of moods like a string of beads, and, as we pass through them, they prove to be many-colored lenses which paint the world their own hue.
―
Faerie Paths — Dreams
Never be tired of a dream, if not fulfilled. Fear of failure should not deter you from your path of self-belief. Your belief and determination will get you to your destination and make the dream come true.
~ Anil Sinha
Dreaming of Godzilla
Some say dreams are manifestations of your deepest fears. Others say dreams show you who and what you really want to be.
I am not a dream analyst, nor a psycho-analyst, but just someone who wonders where dreams come from.
I get the obvious ones: your significant other leaves you, you suddenly become a motivational speaker. And I’m not talking about Godzilla in the distance or some movie star flirting with you.
The ones that make me wonder are the ones where you could have, should have been a better person.
Aren’t we always striving to be a “better person”?
If so, why do we not measure up in our dreams?
I had a dream last night that my mother was in the hospital and some strange people were cleaning her house, and that one social worker told me I might not be able to find out where she was staying because I was a bad daughter and moved out of state.
In reality, my mother passed away long before I moved out of Illinois, long before I got married and had children and grandchildren.
Where does the fuel for that dream fire come from?
I was a good daughter. My mom and I had a really good relationship. My dad remarried, and it took quite a long time to reconnect with him in the same way, but we did reconnect and he was a blessing to me until the end.
I’ve always worked hard to keep friends and family close. It doesn’t matter what you call them — friends, sisters, cousins — love is love. And there should be no rationing because of title, distance, or circumstances.
I’m not here to throw about past relationships. I know in my heart I was a “good person”, contrary to what my dreams portray. And I will continue to do so, for, as simple as it sounds, being a good person makes me feel good.
I just wonder where my head gets these ideas from.
Probably the same place that tells me Godzilla is coming this way and I have to hide in a closet to get away from him.
Where do your dreams come from?
Faerie Paths — Dew
Like dew I was born
Like dew I will vanish
Osaka Castle and all that I have ever done
Is but a dream
Within a dream
~the Taiko
Shogun, James Clavell
Faerie Paths — Discover
Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines, sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover. ~ Mark Twain
Faerie Paths — Color
I’m Finished!
After months of angst and woe and apprehension, I have finally finished my book.
It feels amazing.
I am a lame duck in the writing world. I have written many a novel, a short story, a poem. But I don’t toot my horn often and I haven’t been published, except for an article here and there a number of years ago.
Of course there is editing editing editing to do. But I have followed the road to its end.
I am of the strange sort that it doesn’t really matter if I get published or not. It’s the thrill of the chase that sustains me.
Surely you have had creative moments where all you want to do is — create. You have this nebulous or fairly detailed idea in your head of something you want to make. Pick an art. It doesn’t matter. We all start from a seed, and, if we’re lucky, it grows into a fine, tall, sturdy tree.
Sometimes the seed splits and doubles and all you have to show for your progress is a couple of bushy, out-of-control bursts of color.
Other times, though ….
I don’t know whether I’ll try to get this one published or not. There’s always an e-book or whatever if I just can’t stand not having the world hear about Paris.
But more importantly, I have a finished creative product in my hands.
Something that came completely from my head.
Something that turned this way and that until it became a beautiful vase on the potter’s wheel. A landscape painting of immeasurable beauty. A song that gives you goose bumps every time you hear it. A movie that makes your heart burst out of your chest because it’s so poignant.
It’s like birthing a baby. You don’t know what it will become, but your life has become richer for it.
Keep your creativity going. Don’t stop. Not if you really want to feel free.
Dreams — A Second Time
I was going to write about some weird dreams I’ve been having lately, but when going through my blog topics I came across this one. I’d rather share what other people think about dreams….October is for Dreams
With the growth of social media, people are throwing out inspirational and tell-tale quotes left and right. So in honor of October, the month of Dreams, I have gathered some wonderful ditties you can post away whenever you are in need of something deep, warm, and mystical to say……..
Yes: I am a dreamer. For a dreamer is one who can only find his way by moonlight, and his punishment is that he sees the dawn before the rest of the world. ~ Oscar Wilde
I believe in everything until it’s disproved. So I believe in fairies, the myths, dragons. It all exists, even if it’s in your mind. Who’s to say that dreams and nightmares aren’t as real as the here and now? ~ John Lennon
It is by no means an irrational fancy that, in a future existence, we shall look upon what we think our present existence, as a dream. ~ Edgar Alan Poe
All men dream: but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake up in the day to find it was vanity, but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act their dreams with open eyes, to make it possible. ~ T.E. Lawrence
A garden to walk in and immensity to dream in–what more could he ask? A few flowers at his feet and above him the stars. ~ Victor Hugo
I’ve dreamed a lot. I’m tired now from dreaming but not tired of dreaming. No one tires of dreaming, because to dream is to forget, and forgetting does not weigh on us, it is a dreamless sleep throughout which we remain awake. In dreams I have achieved everything. ~ Fernando Pessoa
Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there, wondering, fearing, doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before. ~ Edgar Allan Poe
All human beings are also dream beings. Dreaming ties all mankind together. ~ Jack Kerouac
The best thing about dreams is that fleeting moment, when you are between asleep and awake, when you don’t know the difference between reality and fantasy, when for just that one moment you feel with your entire soul that the dream is reality, and it really happened. ~ James Arthur Baldwin
All men whilst they are awake are in one common world: but each of them, when he is asleep, is in a world of his own. ~ Plutarch
Dreams are often most profound when they seem the most crazy. ~ Sigmund Freud
Dreaming is an act of pure imagination, attesting in all men a creative power, which if it were available in waking, would make every man a Dante or Shakespeare. ~ H.F. Hedge
Dreams are more real than reality itself, they’re closer to the self. ~ Gao Xingjian
In sleep, fantasy takes the form of dreams. But in waking life, too, we continue to dream beneath the threshold of consciousness, especially when under the influence of repressed or other unconscious complexes. ~ Carl Jung
Dreams are illustrations… from the book your soul is writing about you. ~ Marsha Norman
A dream is a microscope through which we look at the hidden occurrences in our soul. ~ Erich Fromm
Dreams are the most curious asides and soliloquies of the soul. When a man recollects his dream, it is like meeting the ghost of himself. Dreams often surprise us into the strangest self-knowledge…. Dreaming is the truest confessional, and often the sharpest penance. ~ Alexander Smith
The answer is dreams. Dreaming on and on. Entering the world of dreams and never coming out. Living in dreams for the rest of time.” ~ Haruki Murakami
You know that place between sleep and awake, that place where you still remember dreaming? That’s where I’ll always love you. That’s where I’ll be waiting. ~ J.M. Barrie
I was born to catch dragons in their dens
And pick flowers
To tell tales and laugh away the morning
To drift and dream like a lazy stream
And walk barefoot across sunshine days. ~ James Kavanaugh
Faerie Paths — Possibilities
It is the possibility that keeps me going, and though you may call me a dreamer or a fool or any other thing, I believe that anything is possible.
―
Dreaming
This is my first spring being “retired.” I’ve been teased with a few warm days, but today it’s slipped back into cold and sleety and snowy, as spring always does, here in the Midwest.
These days I notice that there are quite a few things that have changed since my work days.
I dream a lot more about work. Not my last job, particularly, but I’m always “at work.” Sometimes I’m being reprimanded for, I don’t know — misbehaving, I suppose. In other dreams I’m quite successful, pulling off a stunning career at 67.
I often hear that our most private desires come out in our dreams.
I also hear that our biggest fears come out in our dreams.
I think what’s most frustrating with this quarantined retirement is that I’m not getting a chance to make a final stand, so-to-speak. To join clubs or groups I’ve always thought about but never got around to being a part of. To take classes at the nearby university just for fun. To make new friends that are my age who are going through what all of us go through at one time or another.
And with the weather misbehaving at the moment, I can’t even get outside and putz around making gardens like I promised myself I would.
That will all come, I know. I talk to family and friends on a regular basis, keep in touch on Facebook. I keep in motion, I keep busy. If you don’t use it you lose it, and all that.
The biggest difference between quarantine and retirement is that I am lonely in quarantine. I mean I have a great relationship with my hubby. But outside of him. I’m not a big social person to begin with, but I realize how much we all need human contact to continue to grow. Everyone doesn’t have to be your best friend, but it’s nice sometimes to exchange pleasantries in person.
Like when I was working.
I might not have been best friends with my co-workers, but we shared parts of our lives with each other. We brought a different point of view, a different life, into the conversation. We shared ideas, places to visit, birthday parties and new craft projects and all sorts of stuff that stimulated my curiosity. We gossiped and complained about work and it was all quite entertaining.
What I miss is the choice of exposure these days. The choice of meeting for coffee or sitting on my deck by myself. The choice of working together for a common cause or striking it out on my own. The choice of asking how someone’s grandma was or minding my own business. The choice of hanging with my grandkids here or at their house.
Maybe that’s the big difference between retirement and quarantine.
Choice.
Working all my life just to have this new avenue of choice open up to me, and finding the gate is still locked.
I know that sooner or later the gate will open and opportunity will greet me on the other side. But things will have changed. The world will have changed. And my retirement will be different than what I thought it would be.
But at least it will be. Better later than not at all.
I AM My Character … and That’s Okay
I had an epiphany earlier this evening.
I find that if I let my mind spew then wander, I answer my own questions, find my own direction again.
The other day I was sooo concerned about writing stories that sounded like me but weren’t me but were me but not really. At first thought, that bothered me. I didn’t want every character to be me. That’s a legitimate concern of most writers.
But, in my case, I see now I wanted these stories to BE me.
I wanted to be the one who traveled back in time, the one who was taken to another planet to take the place of a dead queen. This common-sense-that-I-don’t-always-have made me realize that, in this case, I might be making a mountain out of the proverbial mole hill.
The reason for this epiphany was that on my drive home today I started thinking about going to Paris for a week next year, and how I doubt that I will go. There are a number of reasons for this pre-decision, and nothing is set in stone yet, but you kinda know if you’ve got a chance or not.
I was going to write of my adventures, my visits to cafes and libraries and shops and bridges. What a wonderful journal it was going to be.
So does that mean that if I can’t go I can’t go?
Does that mean that just because I can’t walk the streets myself and eat the croissants and touch the gargoyles I can’t walk the streets and eat the croissants and touch the gargoyles anyway?
Since it seems I’ve already traveled through time and space, why can’t I take this trip, too? Maybe cut my hair, make myself a little thinner, but be the same person exploring new worlds?
Maybe when I sit and look at the glass pyramid at the Louvre I can sit and talk with a young funny Parisian, or fall in love for a couple of evenings with a roguish French man or watch Hemingway drink at a back table at Café du Dôme. I can slip a Hermes scarf into my purse and not get caught, or have dinner at Seb’on without having to pay.
Who will know that lead character is me besides you and me and my friends and family?
You see — I can do all that. Without guilt, without explanation. I can be me and not be me. I can research and look at pictures and watch old movies and visit Paris on my own terms. I can get lost without getting lost. Talk to strangers without talking to strangers.
Being myself in my story is actually a win/win situation.
I am starting to think about starting a new book. A book with a little adventure, a little flirting, and a little café au lait.
Don’t let your inability to go somewhere, to attend something, stop you from doing research and doing it through your art. Through your painting, your writing, your sketching. Whatever world you create for yourself. There is always a way through the clouds.
Artists always find a way.
Faerie Paths — Layers
… as we travel again between life and death,
Waking and dream, blinking, while layers within layers,
None better, none worse, unravel and knit up before us …
―
If You Can Do It I Can Do It
Been away for a weekend, loving every minute of it, now needing a vacation from my vacation.
But once reality sets in, when the kids go back to school and the weather starts to change, I start to think about my own dreams and desires and how time flies before you get a start on any of them.
Do you have dreams and desires and goals you have set for yourself that you haven’t quite reached yet? Are you doing anything about them? Are you saying “Mmmyeh…what comes comes…” and half way giving up since you believe they weren’t meant to come true anyway?
Or are you working on those dreams, manifesting your inside outside and really going for the gusto?
A friend of mine in here is a wonderful abstract artist, Anthony Grootelaar (MyMonkey Mind). I’m going to feature him in the Gallery soon. He has so much art created I’m sure he could wallpaper a mansion. I love his colors and his approach and his experiments and his plans. Here I am, telling him he should have art shows and go to art fairs with his wares and all these other extra-curricular things that he probably already has done.
I get pumped up when I see other’s successes.
I know a few other poets through this blog that are marvelous writers. I’m always telling them to publish a book of poetry or offer it on their blog or at book fairs. I’m all for the excitement and sharing of their talent with others.
I know painters, furniture makers, writers. They all are extremely creative and moving forward with their Art.
Yet where am I on my own cosmic sharing scale?
I would like to think that I, too, have a special talent that’s worth sharing beyond my personal computer or now and then on my blog. Yet I cringe when I think about sharing my talent.
For what if it’s not talent?
Why is it so much easier to be enthusiastic about someone else’s work?
There is so much beauty out there — so much creativity. So many new ideas. Forms of expression. Shining stars. I am all for others sharing their souls with the the world. After all, ~I~ am in love with their work — why wouldn’t others be?
But when it comes to our own work, we are our own worse critics.
I’ve been both ways. I’ve thought something was fantastic and it was terrible; I’ve thought something not that great and it was well received.
We will never know the extent of our greatness until we put it out there. And keep it out there.
We have to develop a thicker skin, that’s for sure. One man’s trash is another man’s treasure, and all. But more than that, we have to be willing to learn. from our creativity. To correct, to erase, admit we made a wrong choice, and start again differently. Better. Smoother.
I have so many plans for my future creative self. Things I want to write, art I want to make. And I want to share it with others. Maybe even sell some of it.
I know I can do it. I just don’t know if I have the patience to see it through.
But you all have taught me something. If you can do it — I can do it. If you are thinking about it and working on it, I can be thinking and working on it too.
Let’s say together it in Morgan Freeman’s voice!
I think you can do anything you want!
Come On — Let’s Go Dreaming!
I am in one of my magical moods this evening. One of my “anything is possible” states of mind.
Do you get those now and then?
Those times when who you really are comes through, and it’s amazing?
It’s like when I get in the “zone” when I write. It doesn’t happen all the time…I think I would burn out like a firework if it did. Or reading a book that I just can’t put down. It’s read read read crash. It’s that adrenaline rush that teases as it blows in and out of my life.
The one thing about my pretzel view of the world is that I’m often in and out of all sorts of adrenaline rushes. The basics never change…writing, cheeseburgers, looking for artists for SEAG.
But other nirvanas blow in and out like Wisconsin weather. One day I love yogurt, two weeks later, ick. I was on a kick for a while of a homemade snack mix of sesame mix and chocolate Chex mix and pecans. That lasted two big containers full. The container has been empty and put away for weeks. Now I’m into raspberry sherbet, but I haven’t bought any in over a week, so who knows.
My interest in airy fairy always stays the same, though, even though my choice of airy fairy changes with that same wind.
Now I’m into dreaming. I want to do more.
Everyone dreams, but most just don’t remember them. It has to do with waking at certain times and slipping back into REM sleep and a whole bunch of scientific mumbo jumbo I’m not interested in.
What I am interested in these days is remembering those crazy mind trips.
Watching yourself in a dream. Controlling your dream. Making choices in your dream. Knowing you’re dreaming and following wherever it goes.
It sounds so simple, yet any idea of “control” is as far away as Pluto. I mean, how do you control the madness of your mind at so-called rest?
I know dreams are supposed to be reflections of what’s in your head during the day. A way of working out problems and situations and romances and your deepest fears. Blah blah blah. I don’t care about figuring out anything.
I just want to be able to remember and record these dream trips I have so I can look back at them and wonder “where did that come from? Man, that was fun!”
Something I read said that creative people tend to have more lucid dreaming. Are an active part of their own dreams. Of course, the line between creativity and madness is a thin one. I suppose that’s what drove Van Gogh to paint Starry Night and cut off his ear in the same lifetime.
You are all creative people out there. I keep encouraging you to come forward, but you are timid. I see. I understand. Do you have wild dreams? Do you enjoy them? Like them? Are frightened by them?
I took a book out of the library earlier this evening on dreaming. If my attention span lasts on this I’ll let you know what I learn. My creative urges, as they are, will most likely take me in another direction somewhere down the road, but let’s have fun while we’re here!
Faerie Paths — Midnight Dreams
All that we see or seem is but a dream within a dream.”
― Edgar Allan Poe
Make Sure You Want to Hop That Fence
This is one of those posts where the title could go either way:
Don’t give up on your dreams
or
Be careful what you dream for
Those of you who have followed me through the years know I’m a 65 year-old granny of three, an Internet Data Specialist (fancy title for data entry), lover of chocolate and spaghetti, and a writer.
Writer is always last on my day job resume. Until now.
Yesterday my job title was changed to reflect the writing I’ve been doing for my company blog and other media.
I am now a Digital Writer.
I’m not telling you this to get your congratulations — I’m telling you this so that once you get to your greener-on-the-other-side-of-the-fence place you are prepared for what’s there.
All my life I’ve been a writer. I do not have a college degree — perhaps the one regret I have in life. But no matter. I’ve been a secretary most of my life, moving to a coordinator 15 years ago which included proofreading. Right up my alley.
I’ve worked my way up the proverbial ladder, although the rungs are narrow and so far apart I need another ladder just to move up one. We had a company blog that just sat there, some nebulous person posting every three months or so.
Because I am a blabbermouth on this blog, it was a natural to start blabbering for the company. The form has changed, but I now blog for the company two times a week.
After yesterday’s meeting, I found out I’m going to be doing a lot more writing than blogs and an occasional Facebook post.
And I’m nervous.
It’s one thing to toot your horn when no one is listening; it’s something else to put your money where your mouth is. Now all of a sudden I’m going to have to perform. Diversify. Research. Take a few online courses.
Am I up to it? After all, I can retire in 9 months.
I am going to give it the best I can give. I’m going to work my a$$ off to keep up, twist around, speak up. I am going to do the thing I’ve always wanted to do and do it the best I’ve ever done. I’m going to make this position a POSITION.
The purpose of today’s sermon is to reaffirm to you not to give up your dreams. And make your dreams reasonable. I mean, you can dream you are the first artist to walk the moon, but, you know…
But if you dream to have a better job, lose weight, get out and see the world one city at a time, don’t give up. Work towards it. Finagle your way around it.
I wouldn’t have had this opportunity if I hadn’t bugged my boss to take over the blog. It went to once a month to twice a week, and I fear more often in the future.
I might have been a 65-year-old pain in the a$$, but I did listen to Kenny Rogers:
You got to know when to hold ’em,
Know when to fold ’em,
Know when to walk away,
And know when to run.
You never count your money
When you’re sittin’ at the table.
There’ll be time enough for countin’
When the dealing’s done.
A Poem for the End of October
October is for Dreams
Poetry, like short stories, novellas, chapterbooks, and song lyrics, are music to the ear. Whether that music is a symphony, a hum, rap, an Irish ballad, or a rock band guitar solo, matters not. Something about the rhythm, the cadence, the meaning of the words transports us across time and space to a place that brings a smile — or a tear — to our face.
Born in 1788, Lord Byron was one of the leading figures of the Romantic Movement in early 19th century England. A poem he wrote 200 years ago brings to heart the crossing of the dream world and reality. It serves up nine stanzas, but the first is the one that caught my eye — and my ear. Like a symphony.
Here is to October, to Dreams, and to the music of language.
The Dream
I
Our life is twofold; Sleep hath its own world,
A boundary between the things misnamed
Death and existence: Sleep hath its own world,
And a wide realm of wild reality,
And dreams in their development have breath,
And tears, and tortures, and the touch of joy;
They leave a weight upon our waking thoughts,
They take a weight from off waking toils,
They do divide our being; they become
A portion of ourselves as of our time,
And look like heralds of eternity;
They pass like spirits of the past—they speak
Like sibyls of the future; they have power—
The tyranny of pleasure and of pain;
They make us what we were not—what they will,
And shake us with the vision that’s gone by,
The dread of vanished shadows—Are they so?
Is not the past all shadow?—What are they?
Creations of the mind?—The mind can make
Substances, and people planets of its own
With beings brighter than have been, and give
A breath to forms which can outlive all flesh.
I would recall a vision which I dreamed
Perchance in sleep—for in itself a thought,
A slumbering thought, is capable of years,
And curdles a long life into one hour.
It’s Almost the End of October
October is for Dreams
October has really been full of dreams, hasn’t it?
I hope you have enjoyed our wandering in and out of dreams and nightmares. If it seems that although the world around us is strange, it doesn’t hold a candle to the world inside of us.
I have a wonderfully talented artist lined up for Sunday’s Art Gallery — a fun way to tie together Halloween and All Hallow’s Eve, dreams, and, who knows — nightmares, too.
But what have we learned, spending the last month in and out of the dream state?
- We all dream. Whether or not we remember, we do. It’s the body’s way of relieving stress, rebuilding on a cellular level. It’s just that some of us sleep so hard that dreaming seems a drifting dream itself. So quit running around saying “I don’t dream.” You do. Keep on doing it. Even if you don’t remember it.
- Many dream about people who have passed on to the next life. And some are upset about that. To me, dreaming about my mother (who passed away 30 years ago) and my dad (who moved along to be with her 5 years ago) just keep them in my life. I remember at first, going along with the dream, then suddenly saying (to myself or to my mom in the dream) “Hey! You’re not supposed to be here! You’re dead!” Now I know this is just a way to continue my life with the two of them. It’s often in the house I grew up in, and I love hanging out there. I love, laugh, talk or argue, then move along through the rest of the dream. It doesn’t hurt. And it shouldn’t hurt you, either.
- Nothing makes sense in dreams. Studies show dreams (and nightmares) are a way for our unconscious side to deal with our conscious side. But I’ve also come to the conclusion that it doesn’t matter if they make sense or not. People I haven’t seen in ages, places I’ve never been — where does that come from? Who cares? We have to quit trying to make “sense” of everything. Like black holes, most of their evidence is indirect. Probably with a “to be continued” sign hanging metaphisically on the doorway.
- Nightmares are also a way of life. A way of coping. Some people bring their day nightmares into their dreams; others pick them up on the way. A bit of advice from a non-psychology major. If your day job (family, job, friends) give you nightmares during the day, leave them. You only go through life once; don’t waste it on those who don’t understand or appreciate you. Get professional help. Or listen to the friend who has been there for you all this time. But get out of the toxicity.
- To those who have a fairly balanced, often off-center, goofy, busy kind of life, let the nightmares do their thing. Most times they don’t make sense anyway. The monsters, the chasing, the cars flying off the cliff, all are ways we cleanse the soul, the mess we have to deal with every day. If you can find a way to stand back and just watch them, do it. If you wake up with your heart pounding and your mind dizzy, sit up, breathe, go to the bathroom, get a drink of water, and slip back under the covers.
- Sigmund Freud believed that every action and thought is motivated by your unconscious at some level, and that in order to live in a civilized society we have to repress our urges and impulses. Because these urges and impulses must be released in some way, an easy outlet is through your dreams. Because the content of the unconscious may be extremely disturbing or harmful, Freud believed that the unconscious expresses itself in a symbolic language. That’s why they don’t often make sense. That may be true, but I don’t believe the “content” is always disturbing or harmful. Dreams are alternate choices, alternate paths, our minds take, each one as valid as the one taken during the day. Don’t psychoanalyze what more often is a vivid playground you can only visit during sleep. Go play.
- If you can retain the essence of your dreams, retain it. Savour it. Write it down. Transform it into poetry or a painting or a piece of jewelry. Let it encourage the creative side of you. Explore those feelings that float in the mist just beyond your reach, the light just around the corner. You will find that there is such a thing as magic — and the magic is you.
Quotes About Dreams
October is for Dreams
With the growth of social media, people are throwing out inspirational and tell-tale quotes left and right. So in honor of October, the month of Dreams, I have gathered some wonderful ditties you can post away whenever you are in need of something deep, warm, and mystical to say.
Yes: I am a dreamer. For a dreamer is one who can only find his way by moonlight, and his punishment is that he sees the dawn before the rest of the world. ~ Oscar Wilde
I believe in everything until it’s disproved. So I believe in fairies, the myths, dragons. It all exists, even if it’s in your mind. Who’s to say that dreams and nightmares aren’t as real as the here and now? ~John Lennon
It is by no means an irrational fancy that, in a future existence, we shall look upon what we think our present existence, as a dream. ~ Edgar Alan Poe
All men dream: but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake up in the day to find it was vanity, but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act their dreams with open eyes, to make it possible. ~ T.E. Lawrence
A garden to walk in and immensity to dream in–what more could he ask? A few flowers at his feet and above him the stars. ~ Victor Hugo
I’ve dreamed a lot. I’m tired now from dreaming but not tired of dreaming. No one tires of dreaming, because to dream is to forget, and forgetting does not weigh on us, it is a dreamless sleep throughout which we remain awake. In dreams I have achieved everything. ~ Fernando Pessoa
Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there, wondering, fearing, doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before. ~ Edgar Allan Poe
All human beings are also dream beings. Dreaming ties all mankind together. ~ Jack Kerouac
The best thing about dreams is that fleeting moment, when you are between asleep and awake, when you don’t know the difference between reality and fantasy, when for just that one moment you feel with your entire soul that the dream is reality, and it really happened. ~ James Arthur Baldwin
All men whilst they are awake are in one common world: but each of them, when he is asleep, is in a world of his own. ~ Plutarch
Dreams are often most profound when they seem the most crazy. ~ Sigmund Freud
Deaming is an act of pure imagination, attesting in all men a creative power, which if it were available in waking, would make every man a Dante or Shakespeare. ~ H.F. Hedge
Dreams are more real than reality itself, they’re closer to the self. ~ Gao Xingjian
In sleep, fantasy takes the form of dreams. But in waking life, too, we continue to dream beneath the threshold of consciousness, especially when under the influence of repressed or other unconscious complexes. ~ Carl Jung
Dreams are illustrations… from the book your soul is writing about you. ~ Marsha Norman
A dream is a microscope through which we look at the hidden occurrences in our soul. ~ Erich Fromm
Dreams are the most curious asides and soliloquies of the soul. When a man recollects his dream, it is like meeting the ghost of himself. Dreams often surprise us into the strangest self-knowledge…. Dreaming is the truest confessional, and often the sharpest penance. ~ Alexander Smith
The answer is dreams. Dreaming on and on. Entering the world of dreams and never coming out. Living in dreams for the rest of time.” ~ Haruki Murakami
You know that place between sleep and awake, that place where you still remember dreaming? That’s where I’ll always love you. That’s where I’ll be waiting. ~ J.M. Barrie
I was born to catch dragons in their dens
And pick flowers
To tell tales and laugh away the morning
To drift and dream like a lazy stream
And walk barefoot across sunshine days. ~ James Kavanaugh
Angels and Witches and Dreams
October is for Dreams
Ever since I started this month-long series on Dreams and Nightmares, my night life has really been cranked up. I don’t know if it’s because I’ve been focusing more on my crazy dreams, wanting to remember them more, or are just fascinated by the worlds that are only accessable through those states.
I want to end the month with more light and fascination.
I really love the bloggings of Austin and his blog The Return of the Modern Philosopher. He is funny and creative and talks to gargoyles, THE devil, and other various characters about life, love, politics, and everything inbetween.
The following blog is from way back in 2013. It is based on a supposed “fever”, but, knowing Austin, it could be just another state of reality. But it does tie in wonderfully into my October is for Dreams segment. Enjoy!
Delirious Ramblings Of An Angelic Man In A Cauldron Fever Dream
Posted on November 10, 2013 by Austin
I remember waking up on the porch of The House on the Hill, Modern Philosophers. I was still in my pajamas with my Magic robe pulled tightly around me.
I was soaked in sweat as I slowly opened my eyes and glanced out upon the falling snow. Why was I sleeping with my glasses on? Why was I out on the porch? Was I shivering from the cold or from my fever?
“Why are you out here, Austin?” came the sweet, soothing, familiar voice to my left.
I glanced over, and the mere act of moving my head sent a violent pain throbbing through my skull. My tired eyes focused on the most beautiful creature I’d ever seen, Rachel the Archangel. Her wings were still visible and she held her mighty, flaming sword in her right hand, a sure sign that she sensed a threat.
I told her I didn’t know why I was on the porch. She strode towards me, her eyes constantly checking to make sure there were no surprises. After what seemed like an eternity, she finally arrived at where I sat. Her big, brown eyes looked down at me, she sighed, and then finally smiled.
“You don’t look so good,” Rachel advised as her wings vanished and the flame extinguished on her sword. “Judging from the sweat pouring off of you and that deranged look in your eyes, I’d say you have a fever. Let’s get you inside.”
She reached out and offered her hand. The second I grabbed it, I felt a chill race through me. My body temperature immediately began to drop as goose bumps popped up over every inch of my 6’3″ frame.
I told Rachel how beautiful she was, and that I knew she would come for me.
“I’ll always come for you, Austin,” she cooed and that was the last thing I remember. The next time I opened my eyes, I was in my bed and saw my three closest Witch friends staring down at me.
“He’s finally awake,” Ti-Diana whispered to Waltzing Matilda and Volcanica Ivy. All three of them approached the bed with caution. “How are you feeling?”
My throat was dry and extremely sore, but I managed to ask them where Rachel was.
“The Archangel?” Volcanica Ivy asked as she looked down on me with concern. “She wasn’t here when we arrived. Are you expecting her?”
Why had Rachel left? Did she just bring me up to bed and vanish? Then I saw it. Rachel’s sword was leaning up against the wall in the corner of the room. She had been here.
“Gary the Gargoyle came to fetch us,” Waltzing Matilda explained as if she thought the perplexed look on my face meant I was wondering how the three most powerful Witches in Maine had come to be in my bedroom. “He told us that you’ve been extremely ill and wandering aimlessly around the house.”
“We’ve come to cure you with Magic,” Ti-Diana assured me as she squeezed my shoulder. “There’s a cauldron of Feevahbraykor Elixir bubbling down in the sun room. Once it’s ready, we’ll give you a dose and all will be well.”
“Just rest for now,” Volcanica Ivy suggested. “You need sleep.” The next time I opened my eyes, I was on the couch in the living room. I was in my pajamas with my Magic robe wrapped tightly around me. My fever was gone, and The House on the Hill smelled as if an apothecary had exploded in the next room.
I got up to wander into the sun room and find the source of the smell, but the room was empty. The only thing I discovered was a dark smudge in the middle of the floor, as if something large, round, and hot had been set there.
I trudged up the stairs, crawled into bed, and settled in under the covers. I looked over to the corner, expecting to see something there, but there was nothing. I couldn’t quite remember what I thought would be there, and my mind was too tired to form any further Deep Thoughts on the topic.
I’m pretty sure I fell asleep the second I closed my eyes…
Food for Dreams
October is for Dreams
Sweet dreams are made of this
Who am I to disagree? ~Eurythmics
The Significance of Dreams — H.P. Lovecraft
October is for Dreams
Howard Phillips (H.P.) Lovecraft (August 20, 1890 – March 15, 1937) was an American author of horror, fantasy and science fiction. His major inspiration and invention was cosmic horror — the fact that life is incomprehensible to human minds and the universe is fundamentally alien. Lovecraft’s writings were influenced by Edgar Allan Poe, and like Poe, was virtually unknown and only published in pulp magazines before he died in poverty. Fortunately for us, he is now regarded as one of the most significant 20th-century authors in his genre.
I like to describe Lovecraft’s works as eloquent, cerebral, and very curly-q-ish. The following clip is the first paragraph from his short story “Beyond the Wall of Sleep.” I know it might be hard to read at first, but take one sentence at a time. Savor it. Let the sentence linger on your tongue, in your senses. And let his reflections about dreams open your own thoughts.
Beyond the Wall of Sleep
I have frequently wondered if the majority of mankind ever pause to reflect upon the occasionally titanic significance of dreams, and of the obscure world to which they belong. Whilst the greater number of our nocturnal visions are perhaps no more than faint and fantastic reflections of our waking experiences—Freud to the contrary with his puerile symbolism—there are still a certain remainder whose immundane and ethereal character permits of no ordinary interpretation, and whose vaguely exciting and disquieting effect suggests possible minute glimpses into a sphere of mental existence no less important than physical life, yet separated from that life by an all but impassable barrier. From my experience I cannot doubt but that man, when lost to terrestrial consciousness, is indeed sojourning in another and uncorporeal life of far different nature from the life we know; and of which only the slightest and most indistinct memories linger after waking. From those blurred and fragmentary memories we may infer much, yet prove little. We may guess that in dreams life, matter, and vitality, as the earth knows such things, are not necessarily constant; and that time and space do not exist as our waking selves comprehend them. Sometimes I believe that this less material life is our truer life, and that our vain presence on the terraqueous globe is itself the secondary or merely virtual phenomenon.
You can find full texts of H.P. Lovecraft’s writings at the following sites:
http://www.hplovecraft.com/writings/texts/ or http://www.dagonbytes.com/thelibrary/lovecraft/.
Enjoy!
October Dream Poetry
October is for Dreams
Dream House
I went to the house of the Lady of Dreams
For a dream to carry away
That should ferry me over the blackest streams
I had to cross by day;
For comforting dreams from her small white hands
Rise up like butterflies,
And dreams like the lakes in old fairylands
Lie back of her shining eyes,
And gold-riddled dreams like tapestries
Cling painted along her walls
And yellow bird-dreams from shadow-trees
Come fluttering when she calls;
And all of the day-dark when she spoke
Was shattered and rainbow-hung,
And she gave me a dream like a scarlet cloak
And a dream like a wreath rose-strung . . .
But I went from the house of the Lady of Dreams
And my packet of dreams blew wide,
And only a red-rose cloud in streams
Swung torn in the west outside!
Margaret Widdemer, 1918
I’m Watching Me Dream
October is for Dreams
You are engaged to your old boss from 40 years ago, even though in reality you have moved to a different state and have been happily married to someone else for almost as long.
You have an important dinner date or presentation to make. All you can find to wear is some tatty t-shirt and dirty shorts. All the clothes you’ve ever owned are piled way high around the washing machine. You watch yourself throw clothes everywhere, digging, digging through the pile. Yet everything looks the same.
You are hiding from some unknown monster/entity that is clearing out your apartment complex floor by floor. You are running from room to room, finally settling on hiding under a shelf behind the clothes rack in some closet. You’ve never lived in a high-rise apartment, and you don’t believe in monsters. So you hide and wait to see what happens.
Are you dreaming? Or lucid dreaming? Is there a difference?
I’ve scoured the Internet looking for clues, for some sort of distinction between the two. If you want detailed explanations, the Internet is your portal. If you want the I-enjoy-your-blog-so-give-me-the-short-version version, stick around. Because you and I want to have fun with this.
According to Web MD (Dream1), dreams are basically stories and images our mind creates while we sleep. They can be vivid, happy, sad, or downright confusing. They can occur any time during sleep, but most vividly during deep REM sleep, when the brain is most active.
Lucid dreams, on the other hand, is more like having a dream where you know you are dreaming. In other words, you know the house you are walking through is not your house or your spouse is not your spouse and you follow along anyway. You don’t have to wake up to know that whatever is happening is not real. Lucid dreaming represents a brain state between REM sleep and being awake. More like those twilight dreams at the edge of waking.
I think most of us experience a combination of the two. Most times we find ourselves in situations and places and memories we have no control over, and we go with the flow. But sometimes we make decisions to do certain things in our dreams like jump off buildings and fly or open doors that lead to huge mansions and strange factories and more. We don’t fight the dream – we actually encourage it.
You can scour the Internet (my favorite phrase today!) for ways to become more aware/involved with your dreaming. Some sights are hokey; but others share real information. The Goddess and I have a few suggestions for this next step of evolutionary dreaming, though.
- Don’t pay for seminars, pills, lectures, or anything that concerns moola. Simple – and free – ways are available.
- Sleep in complete darkness. Don’t let the stray light of a bathroom light or hall light unconsciously raise you from your well-earned dream stroll.
- Keep a dream journal. I know it’s a pain the buttocks to turn the lights on and off all the time, but the act of writing forces the art of retaining. This training will help you acknowledge and track your dreamscapes.
- When your weird dream ends, don’t jump up. Don’t move. Don’t even open your eyes. Recall as much of it as you can. Even if it doesn’t make sense. The mere act of recalling the feeling and actions encourages more recollection.
- Condition yourself at night to let your dreams go where they may. The final thoughts you have before switching gears into dreamland help influence where your dreams go. So go lightly but firmly.
- Allow yourself to check in and say “Hey! Cool dream!” Let it flow as a passing thought, not a change in the river’s flow. The more you find yourself letting your dreams go where they may, the more you can stand back and watch them.
- Unless it’s a nightmare, don’t try and force yourself awake. Many squiggly dreams make it to the surface to taunt you then fade back into the abyss. The more you let the dreamworld take you by the hand the more you will remember.
Dreaming is a wonderful way to explore the worlds of “what if” and “if only.” Not to mention “Wha??” and “Woah!!” Those are the ones you want to explore, continue, and repeat.
Happy Dreaming!
Dreams Give Us Strength
October is for Dreams
The other side of night is day. Despair, hope. That is what the dream world provides. An escape from the horrors or pressures or stress of the day, or perhaps a continuation of the love, good times, and everlasting friendships of the day. Either way, the word “dreams” become part of our every day vocabulary.
I follow a blogger who has become a good friend through the years. Ann Koplow has been writing through the ups and downs of life, including a very recent heart surgery. Her blogs are full of unique pictures that relate to her topic at hand…all written with hope and love and a bit of humor. She shows us all that we should never stop dreaming.
It is her blog of December 28, 2015, that I bring to you this evening. If you like the ring of dreams, please check her blog The Year(s) of Living Non-Judgmentally.
Day 1092: Dreams
Here are some of my associations with “Dreams” on this Monday of the week between Christmas and the New Year of 2016:
- This time of year feels particularly dream-like to me.
- I think and talk a lot about dreams, at work and elsewhere.
- One of my favorite books is Where People Fly and Water Runs Uphill, about the amazing healing that happens when people share dreams in groups.
- Even though I’ve been living the dream of blogging daily for (almost) three years, I’ve written only four previous posts with “Dreams” in the title (here, here, here, and here).
- When I got my first cardiac pacemaker at age ten in 1963, my being alive and well over fifty years later was just a dream.
- I’ve had several dream jobs — including creating the recruitment video for Berklee College of Music in the 1990s — but nothing more satisfying than my current work as a psychotherapist.
- When I was 44 years old, I consciously gave up the dream of ever having a child.
- One month later, I found out I was pregnant with my dreamy son, Aaron.
- Two nights ago I had a dream when I was falling from a great height to certain death, but because I knew I was dreaming, I wasn’t afraid, at all.
- If a dream comes true and I get a call-back when I try out for The Voice on February 21, I’m going to sing Mad World, which has this line: The dreams in which I’m dying are the best I’ve ever had.
Because I was dreaming so much yesterday, I forgot to take many photos. Which of these images seems the most dream-like, to you?
Dreams and Nightmares — Nightmares and Dreams
October is for Dreams
Nightmares and Dreams. Two sides of the same card. Two sides of the same mirror. Two breaths from the same mouth. We cannot have one without the other. For how can you reach for the light if you’ve never been lost in the dark?
My friend Kat McDonald (Inner Focus) is an exceptional writer. Her writing is gritty and vivid and imaginative. I read this story back in 2013, and I remember it like it was yesterday. It stretches longer than my usual blog lengths, but do take the time to read it all. Get lost in her mind and figure out for yourself. Is it a dream? A nightmare? Or both?
Delirium
a new fever has me in its clutches… i can feel her long, bony, icy fingers twist my spine and contort my brain… i need paracetamol… i need a glass of water… i need to sleep…
but sleep won’t come easy…
paracetamol… a glass of water… bed.
i climb into bed… i am shaking… my hands are tingling… am i hungry..? am i over-tired..? i feel exhausted… i feel sick… nausea rushes at me like a jealous mistress… my head feels twice the size it should be… my forehead is hot… my feet are cold… i am shaking… i swallow the pills and wash them down with a long drink of water.
i climb into bed… the pillow feels cool beneath my heavy skull… i close my eyes and then it starts… i must ride this out until it breaks…
micro flashing neon lights spark inside my minds eye, igniting visions… visions… murky, but i look deeper… deeper into the grain and chaos… i see a face… a man’s face… it is Stalin… he is standing outside an old house… a house on a wild beach… a house with a red door… suddenly, he vomits all over himself… then dissolves into a puddle on the ground… i look out to sea… but the sea is not a sea… it is a vast expanse of rippling silken fabric, billowing in the breeze… i look up to the sky… a pterodactyl swoops in low over the water towards me… i duck for cover and close my eyes tight, anticipating being snatched up by the giant predatory bird… nothing… the wind has picked up the pace and snatches my breath… i gasp and open my eyes… i find myself atop one of the steel eagles that grace the lofty Chrysler Building in NYC… i am terrified… the wind is strong… my hair whips my face… i am too scared to look down… but i do… and now my palms are wet, sweating… i cannot hold on, i lose my grip… but wait! i am typing…
i am sat at a desk, in the middle of a forest, and i am typing… typing incoherent words on a sheet of stiff, white paper… The typewriter is old and battered and clunky… a pale blue Olivetti electric typewriter… my curious eyes follow the flex… it is plugged into a giant snail… the sound of my fingers tapping the keys rattles my brain… the words make no sense… the words make me shiver… i open a cupboard… an old farmhouse style larder- just like the one my Aunt Mary had at Fullerton Farm… i open the door and find hundreds of tins of Baked Beans… i close the door… but the door is a mirror now… i stare at my own reflection… i smile to her, but she does not smile back… she is naked… pale, gaunt… two headless horses appear behind me… one black as night, The other white as snow… the white one speaks to me in a language i cannot comprehend… but we start to dance… the floor beneath me turns to silver sand…
the sun is beating down on me… i pull the quilt around me and nestle into the comfort and familiarity of my bed, despite the madness of these visions… visions i have no control over… i cannot make them stop… they come, in a flood… my mind is a fairground… i look at my hands… six fingers on each hand… i cut off the tips of my fingers with a large pair of shears… they are bleeding… i put on a pair of bright yellow rubber gloves and go outside into the night… there are two moons in the sky… both are full and resplendent… the night is cool… i am alone… i look to my left and the buildings start to crumble and fall… an apple falls from the sky and rolls towards me, stopping at my feet… It speaks to me… beckoning me to take bite… i pick up the lilac apple and bite into its soft, juicy flesh… it tastes salty… so i throw it away… it explodes on impact… in the distance, i hear a child’s voice… it is my lover’a son… he appears out of nowhere, wearing a flappy bird t-shirt and red jeans… he is barefoot, as i am… he takes my hand and tells me to follow him… i do…
suddenly, i find myself, alone, inside a computer… i look at my hands… i am made of pixels… i peer through the screen and see a morbidly obese man, sitting on his sofa with a boxful of donuts… he is playing a computer game… he is controlling me and my movements… he is controlling the CGI world i now find myself locked in… i like it here, but i cannot stay… i call out for my lover’a son… but he is gone… he has left me a note… it reads “gone fishing, be home Tuesday!”… i smell coffee… i look down and find myself in a bathtub full of warm, steaming coffee… it stains my skin… my lover appears… he dries my wet skin with a cloud, gently patting it dry… he lovingly combs my wet hair and strokes my face… we kiss… and float out the wind into space… we swim through the stratosphere and look back at Earth… it looks radiant and blue… i take a bite… it tastes like battery acid… the shock cuts my tongue and i spit out blood and a chunk of France… “it never used to taste like this…” says my lover, his eyes filled with tears… he spits a mouthful of India out into the blue stratospheric air… he fades into the night… “soon…” he says, blowing kisses as he dissolves into the ether… i find myself in a deep, Belfast sink… the cold tap is turned on and the sink is filling up with tiny sea horses and goldfish… they sparkle and shimmer and swim around me… but i need to urinate…
i open my eyes, climb out of bed and make my way to the bathroom across the hall… my legs are shaking… i feel weak… perhaps sleep will come soon… i hope for a dreamless sleep… but instead, i find myself in a field full of rabbits… hundreds and thousands of rabbits… rabbits of all different colours… the pink ones are my favourites… odd… i hate the colour pink… but they are the friendliest… i reach up to the sky and reel in the sun… i hold it in my hands… it burns, but only momentarily… my cold hands chill its fire and it turns from burning amber to brittle blue… the sun shatters in my hands… i am left holding fragments of turquoise glass… i throw the shards up into the air… they tinkle and twinkle against the sky, like dying light… The tranquility of their peaceful chimes turns into an ugly chaos as the fragments of harmless light turn into bullets… they rain down all around me… everything has turned to dust… children lie dead around me… women scream… another bomb goes off… the ground shakes, like the thunder of the apocalypse… there is no colour… everything is grey… the course of death… i hear the wail of an electric guitar… someone, somewhere is playing a guitar… it wails, like a wounded animal… i cover my ears and crouch down, holding myself… crying… i open my eyes and see a young deer, chewing a leafy twig, at the foot of my sweating bed…
the pillow is damp… i turn it over and, with trembling hands, i gulp down a glass of cold, clean water… i close my eyes… please let me sleep… a dreamless sleep… please… these rapid fire flashbacks of former trips inside my minds eye and visions of my subconscious’ innermost thoughts and fears, as surreal as they are, are raping my brain… i am exhausted… i want calm… i want to feel well again… i look at the time… three hours have passed… i have been away for three hours…
i take two more pills, and water… and close my eyes…
but wait! my feet are covered in sand…
Sunday Evening Art Gallery Blog — Dreamcatchers
DREAM CATCHERS
An ancient Chippewa tradition
The dream net has been made
For many generations
Where spirit dreams have played.
Hung above the cradle board,
Or in the lodge up high,
The dream net catches bad dreams,
While good dreams slip on by.
Bad dreams become entangled
Among the sinew thread.
Good dreams slip through the center hole,
While you dream upon your bed.
This is an ancient legend,
Since dreams will never cease,
Hang this dream net above your bed,
Dream on, and be at peace.
What are Dreams?
October is for Dreams
What are dreams?
This question has haunted mankind since primitives woke up laughing – or screaming – in the middle of the night.
There are plenty of websites, books, and discussion groups that offer theories and facts about the ethereal state of the human mind. I leave it to you to peruse the wavelengths to find your own technical explanation.
I would rather talk about the magic of dreams. The sensations that linger long after you are on with your day (or night). The memory that hangs at the edge of your thoughts that whispers … I can almost remember… and I remember feeling… but the words won’t come. It’s the world that you can almost reach – if only you could stretch farther, remember harder, sleep a little longer.
Dreams are the involuntary conjuring up of images, sounds, ideas and feelings as well as other sensations during sleep. Of course, it is possible to wake up, have a conscious moment of reality, then fall back asleep, either continuing the same dream path or steering it in a different direction.
I know that I am a direct participant in my dreams – it’s not like I’m watching a television show – I am the television show. I conjure up faces I’ve never seen, faces I used to know, and faces that don’t belong with the bodies I see. I go places I’ve never been, experienced things I’ve never experienced, and often wake up wanting more.
Studies have shown that dreaming is important to our health and well being. Not being allowed to dream can lead to anxiety, depression, lack of coordination, and more. Not being allowed to dream is different than saying we don’t dream. We all dream. It’s just that some of us sleep harder than others, our dreams deeper and harder to recall.
What about nightmares, then? Are they part of the normal processing of life’s hardest lessons?
Nightmares are almost the other end of the tunnel. We get stuck, we can’t change course, and so we wander through the world of horror and emptiness and terror. Upon awakening we realize we are safe, but tell that to me when’m driving down a cliff side with my son in tow or I hear monsters in the room below making their way up the stairs. We try and reason our way out of our terror, mostly by telling ourselves it’s only a dream. Other times we burst into the waking world with our hearts pounding and our heads swirling, glad to have escaped the talons of the night one more time.
Researchers say nightmares are often caused by stress, conflict, fear, emotional problems, and medication, among others. In this day and age, who doesn’t suffer from anxiety? Kids yelling, spousal conflicts, traffic jams, attitudes at work – it’s hard not to take the ebb and flow of life as an insult half the time. So we seek refuge – or expression – in dreams.
What I would like to do during the month of October is explore this world through the eyes of others who have been here. Writers, poets, artists – both the heavenly and the ghastly – and experience this mysterious, elusive world through their eyes. Their dreams. Their creativity.
And as the month goes along, feel free to share your own dream worlds. Authors you enjoy, websites that fascinate, music that sends you into that world where no one can follow.
And yet where everyone you know exists.
Flash Fiction Dreams
October is for Dreams
This flash fiction piece was inspired by my first novel (yet to be published), about a woman who drives through a cornfield, crashes into an old oak tree, and wakes up in small town 1880.
Was it a dream? Or did it really happen? Who is to say?
Pretzel Dawn
Her car streaks down the highway in the granite dawn, her heartbeat matching the thrum of the tires. Fluorescent pinpoints from distant skyscrapers become nothing more than blurred starlight as she madly races towards her destiny…a destiny she has waited to fill longer than she can remember.
A sliver of apprehension cuts into her thoughts. A foreboding, like a ghost crossing her path. Why is it an effort to remember the number of the exit? Why does the city in the distance waver as if seen through crackled glass?
Metropolis turns into suburbia and then into country, yet she cannot slow down. Eventually the Buick veers from the concrete onto the tarmac of some long forgotten road lined with the skeletal remains of fall. Her window is open, the last breath of night air chilling her, thrilling her. It’s not far now. Instinct drives her forward ― instinct and desire. He is somewhere ahead, pacing on the dew-covered grass beneath the maple archway. Watching. Waiting. She senses the sparkle of his chocolate eyes, his scent of sweat and hay and the muskiness from his turn-of-the-century charm.
The road ahead is shadowed. She doesn’t remember the giant oak tree on her last drive through this part of the countryside, nor the weathered barn in the distance. She cannot remember many details of her last visit — but it doesn’t matter. Her heart pounds faster as crimson streaks highlight the horizon. She cannot bear to let him slip away again. Not without a word, without a touch. He is dark and deep, passion and fury, a flicker of days gone by. He said he would wait for her, and she promised to return.
The car’s acceleration slows, and tears of frustration well in her blue eyes. She is lost. Too many turns. Too many distractions. She cannot tell cliffs from moors, fields from meadows. The dark crimson glow over her shoulder is now a soft magenta ribboned with blue. She is running out of time. Hills to mountains to boulders along the side of the crushed gravel road, yet this has to be the way. The road twists in a pretzel design, dead-ending at a forest dark and primeval. She drives to the maple archway at the edge of the wooded glen and stops.
He stands at the hedgerow, a masculine glow in the twinkling dawn. She fumbles and stumbles through the tall brown grass and into his arms. She has made her way back through time. Her need reaches out to him in the pale light of morning, his response soothing and gentle. His loving words curve and twist around her soul and down into the abyss of her dreams, curving and twirling and tumbling and swirling until they slowly turn into echoes from a conch shell. Eternity disappears in a starburst of angel wings, only to reappear as the soft drone of the morning alarm.
Once again, she has returned. Awake. And alone.
October is for Dreams — Dream Poetry
October is for Dreams
My thoughts this cool October evening drift to the twilight mist that exists between worlds…the world of dreams. I also love to share the thoughts and creations of other dreamers.
Tonight let me share the magic of my friend and fellow blogger Brenda Davis Harsham. Her blog, Friendly Fairy Tales, is full of poetry and flowers and everything dreamy. Here are her thoughts on dreams.
If I Remembered My Dreams
If I remembered my
dreams,
I’d have great stories
with ambushes and
car chases through
city streets. I’d easily
evade cross-dressing
grandma clowns
and black-feathered
ballerinas.
I’d be chased
by giant grasshoppers.
I’d get away
in the nick of time.
I’d soar over over treetops
in a hot air balloon.
I’d solve impossible
theorems.
I’d invent a spaceship
or stow away in one.
I’d speak Spanish,
know the names of
all the stars,
and birds would take
seeds right from my hands.
Instead, I sleep as deep
as the Mariana Trench,
and if I swim with lantern fish,
dine on sea cucumber
or comb my hair with jellyfish,
I will never remember
or wake to tell the tale.
Take some time and wander through Brenda’s website https://friendlyfairytales.com. You’ll be glad you did.
October is for Dreams
I admit it. I love Fall.
Not just because I am at the end of my hot flash phase. But the smells, the sights, the feel of warm afternoons and cool evenings, gorgeous sunsets, cuddling under blankets, and since I love the night time, earlier sunset times so I have more snuggle writing time.
Lately my world feels like its drifting in and out of the dream world. My dreams, others dreams, the magic and absurdity of our subconscious as it dances at the edge of twilight, gives me the sensation when I wake that I just had the most incredible adventure.
If I could only remember it.
So throughout the month of October, I’m going to hang around the dream world, bringing you poetry from other dreamers, pictures, stories, tales and myths. That way you can pull your blanket up a little closer to your face and hide when you must, play along if you want.
Four years ago today I wrote a blog about dreams. How perfect to start the month off getting lost in the shadows. Hope you enjoy.
To Dream or Not To Dream…That Is The Question
One of the yin-yangs of hormone fluctuation is sleep, or lack of it. Between hot flashes and finding a comfortable position, my REM’s make rare visits, leaving my consciousness floating in the bubbles of semi-sleep through the world of dreams. Now, many people say they don’t dream; others leave a notepad on their nightstand so they can record the ching chang jumble that comes out in the middle of the night. I believe we all dream, but length, depth and retaining capacity is what makes everyone’s claim different.
Scientists and talk show hosts tell us our lives are influenced by anything and everything, and our dreams are one way of dealing with all of it. Dreams, and their alter ego, nightmares, can result from everything from eating pizza before bed to an argument earlier in the day. Dreams can be triggered by stress, anticipation, having too much time on your hands or, more likely, not enough. Scary movies, sappy movies, long distance phone calls — everything can leave a chip in your mind that can explode into a myriad of dreamy scenarios.
The great thing about this flight through those shadowed clouds, though, is the variety of experiences it presents. I doubt my conscious mind could make up half the things my subconscious does. And if it could, would it be as fun? In my dreams I interact with bosses from 20 years ago and talk to family members who are no longer with me. I wander the halls of my grade school, look out on Lake Michigan from a high-rise balcony, and walk through castles of long ago. I have driven off cliffs and been chased by unseen dragony/monster things. I have stood in a shadowy alley talking to Edward Norton and had coffee with Kiefer Sutherland. I have run from building to building to building, either looking for something or trying to get somewhere, and have jumped and bounced and flown my way across the landscape.
Where in Jove’s name do we get these ideas from?
Being a writer, I often bring some of the unearthliness of my subconscious and put it into forms that entertain me and others. Without analyzing every laugh and tear, I try to bring these esoteric beings into my writing. The more nonsensical, the better. Other people transform their dreams into paintings, gardens, photography, and card making. So why not writing?
Of course, the down side of dreams is that they don’t always give you a direct answer to your cosmic questions. It is fairly obvious that when I dream of my son as a toddler rather than a college kid, I am searching for the olden days connection we had when I was omnipotent and he was subservient. When I am wandering through corridors and cross loading docks and down long hallways filled with shops and warehouses and theaters I am lost in more ways than I care to admit. But instead of interpreting these dreams as portents of bad things to come, I would rather see them as insights to the possibilities that lie ahead. We have the ability to choose which meanings we take to heart and which we toss out. We can choose to see rain in the clouds or we can just see clouds.
The best course is always to choose a little of both. Don’t ignore the clouds that are thunderheads, and don’t step out of a plane to bounce on their springy tops. But let those clouds be dragons or snakes or ships. Notice the thread of reality that runs through the middle, then make what you will of the rest. Don’t worry what others think your dreams mean, or if you can’t remember their endings. The old adage that it’s the journey that counts, not the destination, makes as much sense to your unconscious state of mind as your conscious one. Take that journey and run with it.
As for me, I’m looking forward to tonight. I told Kiefer I’d meet him at the coffee shop sometime around eleven. Maybe I’ll even ride my dragon there.
A Friend’s Trip Through Alternate Reality
Reflections of altered states, altered lives, is what writing — and life — is all about. It’s how I feel when I read, how I feel when I write. And there are times when I wish I could stay in those altered states a bit longer…
Enjoy this post from fellow blogger Tom Rains..
We long for altered states in life. Is this a bad thing? Is sobriety, the unaltered state, more virtuous? Is it more rational? Is it more real? Or should we aim to exist in altered states as much as possible? It seems like everything we love in life is similar to a drug-induced experience. Sometimes, […]
You’re Never Too Old To Get Going
I have finally done it.
Big talker, little dooer, did it!
I booked a flight to North Carolina for the beginning of August to meet my bestest buddy for a girl’s weekend.
I know that doesn’t sound like a big deal to a lot of you. But I’m 63, and it’s the first time I’ve actually disappeared with anyone other than my hubby and family except for an overnighter.
I have friends and family who travel all the time. Some is for business, some to visit family. I myself have travelled through my life too: Disneyworld, Cancun, San Francisco. But it’s always been with someone or a lot of someones. There’s always been a husband or kids or in-laws in tow. Which was/is wonderful and the way to see the world.
But there’s also the dilemma of “me”.
There always have been reasons to stay close to home. Jobs. No jobs. Kids. Illness. Family plans. Friends. Like everyone else, my life has had its share of ups and downs, and not one of the ups included running away except maybe to Kohl’s. Timings change, too — when I have time and/or money, they don’t have time and/or money. I don’t have vacation when they do. And so on.
My best friends have changed through the years, too. I love all the people who have filled my life. Each stage has been a support group for me as we all weathered the same storms. But you move, they move, people change jobs, get new husbands/wives, and the distance creeps in between you.
One of my best friends just made the big move to the East Coast almost a year ago. We text and talk, but it’s just not the same. So one day she said we should meet half way for the weekend. The stars aligned. And I thought — if not now, when?
So I made the plane reservations last night.
Why is this such a big deal?
Only because it’s the first thing in a long time that I’ve done for me. And only me.
I don’t have to do what everybody else wants. I don’t have to babysit the dogs, sit in a boat all day (and not a pontoon either), eat Chuck e Cheese, ride the rides only the kids want to ride, watch football, or any other thing that others tell me to do. Sometimes my friends and I, my family and I, are like chocolate and onions. Both great, but not on the same plate.
I get to go to North Carolina and do the sort of things my husband rolls his eyes at. I plan on strolling the Art Galleries, hitting up a big art fair, and spending a day touring the Biltmore Estate. I get to drink wine, eat little bits of whatever inspires me, and sleep in a bed that someone else has to make.
Plus I get to do girl stuff. Giggle, cry, plan, lament. I get to play with my future dreams, cry at the ones that never really made it, googaw over my grandkids, talk excitedly about redecorating my house, share secrets from my youth, poopoo my job — along with paint my toenails and go sit in a hot tub somewhere.
These are the things that you can only share with someone who gets you. Husbands do their best, but they just don’t have the girly touch.
You’ll never have enough money, time, or vacation. Big deal. Don’t be on your deathbed, lamenting that you should have gone to the Mall of America with your besties 5 or 10 or 20 years ago. Take your bff. Your cousin. Your daughter-in-law…just go and do it YOUR way!
Wait till I hit Vegas next year…
Dream A Little Dream
In my late night cannot-sleep mental meanderings, I often think how cool it would be if the afterlife were nothing more than eternal dreaming. Long after the neurons stop flashing, I’d still love to exist on a dreamplane someplace. Meeting people, doing weird things, drifting here and there, trying to make sense of nonsense.
Although the way I dream, I’d still have to have a “cosmic” wake up now and then.
They say we all dream. It’s just that some of us linger in the twilight longer than others. Hence, not enough deep sleep equals insomnia, dark circles under the eyes, and weird dreams.
Do you remember your dreams?
I would love to remember more of mine, although the more tendrils I pull out of the dream base, the more nonsense I find.
I do a lot of walking from building to building, making my way through warehouses, offices with eternal hallways, crossing city streets, and back through theaters and more underground buildings. I do a lot of “boss” dreaming, too, past and present, in offices I’ve never seen in my life. Strange people show up in my dreams, often TV or movie types, people I’ve often never given second thought to. I also still dream of my mom, although she’s been on the other side for 30 years.
Of course, weirdness is relative. I’ve seen godzillas in the distance but never a unicorn. I’ve flown and jumped off buildings and been able to take giant bounces down the street but have never gone to another planet. I write a lot of time travel stories, but I have yet to dream about going back in time.
In other words, I don’t encounter my daytime daydreams in my nighttime ones.
Maybe on some level that’s a good thing. Not being able to distinguish dreams from daydreams might be the first step to insanity. And I’m already a deal off-kilter.
But then, that would lead to quite an interesting writing career. Wasn’t Edgar Allan Poe and H.P. Lovecraft a bit on the “eccentric” side? (see http://brainz.org/10-writers-who-were-mentally-disturbed/ for a little eye opener).
I wonder what Stephen King or Dean Koontz dream about?
Maybe I don’t want to see where those tendrils go…
TunnelVision
Listening to some mellow middle-of-the-road music yesterday, I began feeling a little melancholy. A little sad. But not for the reasons you — or I — would first think. A few fellow employees have retired these past few days, and I find that I’m saying goodbye, not to those who are moving into the glorious sunset of the future, but to my own last days before into that same glorious sunset.
The retiring of two more “oldies” was an inevitable step towards the future. The changing of the guard, so to speak. Stepping out the door were two more of the microfiche and typewriter world, making room for the tablet and Bluetooth generation. And while that is the natural order of things, I found my dreams of being someone, something, more, walking out the door with them. And I didn’t like that feeling.
The working world is built for the fast, the curious, the nimble. It moves too fast for those who grew up on record players and black and white TVs. The harder I try and keep up, the further behind I fall. Which is also the nature of things. But when I looked at the picture poster boards of those who have left, I saw young workers, bright workers, working and laughing and making the working world a better place. Forty years worth of working and laughing and making the working world a better place. And suddenly those 40 years were gone in a heartbeat; a glance backwards to that ever-growing tunnel of used-to-be.
Through their 40 years I see my own timeline. I see flashes of my kids playing soccer, or sitting on Santa’s lap, or singing in the grade school choir. I see my first job as a linofilm typist and my most exciting job working in downtown Chicago and my failed job as a bed and breakfast owner. And as the retirees walk away from the only life they’ve known for 30 or 40 years, I wonder where my own past 30 or 40 years have gone.
In the melancholy of the last few days of their structured work place, I find a lifetime’s worth of struggle and passion disappearing in a puff of smoke, replaced for a moment by a cake with too-sweet frosting and a card signed by well wishers. How can one’s life achievements be reduced to a single goodbye? To a “thanks for the memories” speech?
I want to stand in the middle of the street and scream, “I am so much more!”
Yet looking backwards it seems I never got a chance to prove it. The fog obscures my vision, 20 or 30 or 40 years looking the same as 2 or 4 or 6 months ago. The mistakes I’ve made, the choices I’ve made, may have brought me to this place, but so would other mistakes, other choices. Life is really a game of craps, throwing the dice a symbol of pretending to have a say in anything. We are our DNA; we are our chemical imbalances and out superstar achievements. So we have to work with what we’ve got.
The tears that stung and blurred my eyes were not so much for the old guard passing as they were for my own life passing. Wondering if all there is to life is 40 years and a super sweet cake. Guess I’ll just have to wait until my own super sweet cake comes along to see how I weather the foggy storm of retirement.
Suddenly the music changed. Kick Start My Heart. I cranked it up. And all I wanted to do was smush that retirement cake into someone’s face.
Damn, I love being me.
The Gazing Ball
When you look into the gazing ball, what do you see?
Do you make a wish?
Do you see infinity?
Is it a reflection? Or an inflection?
You are never too old to look into the gazing ball.
The reflection is only the beginning.
I feel a new project on the horizon.
A new chance to
Create
Play
Research and
Wander.
What do YOU see when you look into the gazing ball?
What Is True Success?
So many things make us happy; so many things make us sad. So many times we wished we had turned left instead of right; so many times we are soooo glad we did turn right instead of left. Sometimes I get really sad that I’m soon going to turn 60 — where has my life gone? Other times I look back and am sorry my mother never made 54. I’m sad that I had breast cancer; other times I’m so glad they found it when they did.
Life is packed with highs and lows, yellow and blacks, snow and scorching heat. That’s what it’s all about. That’s what it’s always been about. For us, for our grandparents, for George Washington and Kublai Khan and St. Joseph. I’m sure they all had a hundred things they wanted to do at one time, too. Just like us. We all want to be appreciated for what we’ve done. What we’ve become. We all would like to think that our time here on Earth has been for the Greater Good.
This is not a confessional blog; this isn’t a tell-all or a bad news bomb. I’m sitting on my sofa this cold Sunday afternoon, looking at the bare treetops in my front yard. Of course, you know me — I’m also watching football, eating lunch, doing laundry, getting ready to write some in my latest novel, wondering what I’m gonna wear to work tomorrow. I’m also thinking about the fun I had with my grandbaby this weekend, thinking of taking some drugs for my achy legs, and feeling guilty I haven’t played fetchie with my dog today.
That’s really what this blog is about. Sometimes I feel I should be pushing this blog harder, trying to share the Word with more readers. Other times I think I’ve run this horse to the finish line, and should start a new creative venture. Yet more often I think I’ve let my writing simmer on the back burner for so long it’s started to dry up and stick to the pan.
How do you know if you’ve succeeded at what you tried to do? What is the measure of success? Big paychecks often are an indicator; good health, always. Waking up every morning is a success all on its own. Family? Kids? Making the perfect apple pie? All of the above are successes if never done it before. Success has always been measured from the heart first, from the masses second. And often it takes on a meaning more cosmic than one thinks. I think I make the best spaghetti sauce this side of the Mississippi. If you don’t agree, does that mean it’s not good? Of course not. All it means is that I can eat it all myself.
Writing is the same thing for me. What is being a successful writer? Have I ever been published? A short story here or there in the past 10 years. Have I won awards for my creativity? No. Have I ever I gotten a call or email from a publisher? No. Do I think I’m a successful writer? Yes. Definitely. I’ve had people say positive things about my stories; I’ve brought smiles and tears to readers. I’ve written 4 novels, 1 novella, 32 short stories, 42 poems, 84 blogs, and 3 novels in-progress. I think that’s being successful. Why? Because Ive continued to do what I love, no matter what the result. I’ve had fun making friends, creating worlds, and trying things that make me uncomfortable. I encouraged people to believe in themselves, given life to middle-age heroines, and never killed off the main character.
There are still so many paths to follow, worlds to explore. And that’s only after I play with my grandbaby, fetch my dogs, pet my cats, cuddle my husband, go to work 40 hours a week, clean my house, grocery shop, get together with family and/or friends, and dozens of other responsibilities. Life has only so many hours, and I’m still struggling on squeezing a few more out of every week.
So what this all boils down to is that I’ve driven the Humoring the Goddess train long enough. Hopefully I’ve encouraged you to believe in yourself, have fun with your life, and laugh as much as you can. There are so many things you can’t change, so why not toss your hands up and laugh and move on? You’ll know the things you CAN change..that little voice in your heart/head/soul is always there to remind you. Your job is to listen.
I have enjoyed entertaining you all these years more than you know. I have learned so much from you. I might try another blog, or finish one of my novels, or sit and spew poetry until I feel nauseated. I’m sure I’ll be back and visit sometime. If I start something new I’ll post it. I will look foward to hearing from you and YOUR projects. You will always find me at my email world… humoring_the_goddess@yahoo.com.
There is always a path ahead of you. Always. It’s up to you which one you take, or how often you turn left or right. In the end, none of that matters — the only thing that matters is that you keep walking.
Keep Humoring the Goddess…and Loving your Life…
Claudia Anderson
To Dream or Not to Dream…That Is the Question
One of the yin-yangs of hormone fluctuation is sleep, or lack of it. Between hot flashes and finding a comfortable position, my REM’s make rare visits, leaving my consciousness floating in the bubbles of semi-sleep through the world of dreams. Now, many people say they don’t dream; others leave a notepad on their nightstand so they can record the ching chang jumble that comes out in the middle of the night. I believe we all dream, but length, depth and retaining capacity is what makes everyone’s claim different.
Scientists and talk show hosts tell us our lives are influenced by anything and everything, and our dreams are one way of dealing with all of it. Dreams, and their alter ego, nightmares, can result from everything from eating pizza before bed to an argument earlier in the day. Dreams can be triggered by stress, anticipation, having too much time on your hands or, more likely, not enough. Scary movies, sappy movies, long distance phone calls — everything can leave a chip in your mind that can explode into a myriad of dreamy scenarios.
The great thing about this flight through those shadowed clouds, though, is the variety of experiences it presents. I doubt my conscious mind could make up half the things my subconscious does. And if it could, would it be as fun?
In my dreams I interact with bosses from 20 years ago and talk to family members who are no longer with me. I wander the halls of my grade school, look out on Lake Michigan from a high-rise balcony, and walk through castles of long ago. I have driven off cliffs and been chased by unseen dragony/monster things. I have stood in a shadowy alley talking to Edward Norton and had coffee with Kiefer Sutherland.
Where in Jove’s name do we get these ideas from?
Being a writer, I often bring some of the unearthliness of my subconscious and put it into forms that entertain me and others. Without analyzing every laugh and tear, I try to bring these esoteric beings into my writing. The more nonsensical, the better. Other people transform their dreams into paintings, gardens, photography, and card making.
Of course, the down side of dreams is that they don’t always give you a direct answer to your cosmic questions. It is fairly obvious that when I dream of my son as a toddler rather than a college kid, I am searching for the olden days connection we had when I was omnipotent and he was subservient. When I am wandering through corridors and cross loading docks and down long hallways filled with shops and warehouses and theaters I am lost in more ways than I care to admit.
But instead of interpreting these dreams as portents of bad things to come, I would rather see them as insights to the possibilities that lie ahead. We have the ability to choose which meanings we take to heart and which we toss out.
The best course is always to take a little of both. Don’t ignore the clouds that are really thunderheads, and don’t get the idea of stepping out of a plane to bounce on their springy tops. But also let those clouds be dragons or snakes or baby diapers. Nod at the thread of reality that runs through the middle, then make what you will of the rest.
Don’t worry what others think your dreams mean, or if you can’t remember their endings. The old adage that it’s the journey that counts, not the destination, is just as true in your conscious state of mind as in your conscious one. Don’t read more into your dreams than what is there. And create whatever you want from them.
As for me, I’m looking forward to tonight. I told Kiefer I’d meet him at the coffee shop sometime around eleven. Maybe I’ll even ride my dragon there.
Humoring the Goddess 