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Am I Only Dreaming?



(Post by Kirsten)

"One night, the skyline as I left New York/was a garden of neon flowerbursts/the celebration of a history." ~ from "Flying," by Sarah Arvio

There's a pull during these long afternoons at home--the pull of a warm bed, soft sheets, welcoming pillow. How many of us are taking more naps than usual these days? And how many of us are dreaming vivid dreams? (There's conversation about this online, actually--#pandemicdreams has become a thing, probably due to so many people taking so many extra naps!) What happens in dreams that makes our brains rearrange, reconfigure, and reimagine the world? And what can we do with these reassembled realities when we wake?

Literature has a long, rich relationship with the world of dreams. The just off-center (and sometimes completely off kilter) imagery of dreams, as well as the freedom and limitlessness of time and structure one experiences in dreaming, have long been great fodder for writing. Here's a list of novels that include dreams, just to give you a small sampling of the possibilities. (My favorite on this list is the extremely strange and haunting dream young Jane has in Brönte's Jane Eyre.) Poets, too, often make use of the inspiration that arrives in dreaming. Here, below, is a trio of dream-poems for your reading today:

"Birds Appearing in a Dream," Michael Collier

"The Land of Nod," Robert Louis Stevenson

"Flying," Sarah Arvio


But now it's your turn to write from dreams! My first piece of advice: keep a dream journal. Put a piece of paper or a journal by your bedside and as soon as you wake up, scribble down whatever words or imagery are lingering in your mind. (This is a fun and interesting practice to keep, just in general! And the more you practice retaining and writing down your dreams, the more easily you remember what you've dreamed, as well.)

Second, whether or not you are able to keep that dream journal, try writing from dreams, about dreams, or around dreams. Give a character a vivid (and maybe endless?) dream. Begin with the odd, out-of-alignment imagery of a dream, but then make that imagery the "real" reality of your story. Or attempt a poem that borrows a line or an image from one of the dream-poems I've given you here. Where can you go from this model poet's start? Let your mind wander and your pen carry you into another world.

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