Skip to main content

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.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Putting on Masks

* Photo credit (Post by Kirsten) There's a lot of conversation right now about masks, which--we know--are in short supply and are very much needed to keep medical professionals and other folks protected. As we humans tend to do, however, we've taking this real need for masks and run with it creatively, and people are coming up with some inventive and wild self-designed face protection . Of course, this is not new. Masks have a rich and interesting history , and have had a role in so many facets of human culture, including art and religion, war and medicine, theater and labor. They protect us, yes, but also allow us to hide ourselves, to transform our identities, to summon within ourselves a sense of empowerment or mysticism beyond what we experience in our typical daily lives and routines. Here are a few examples: Lady Gaga (of course) Vader (also a given in any conversation about masks) But how about this beautiful 1953 mask by artist Chukwu O...
Post a Comment
Read more

Staying in Place & Breaking Time

"Chronology doesn’t interest me. I don’t like its linear map. I avoid its signposts." ~ Sinéad Gleeson Time is weird right now. My family and I have been more or less only in our own home for three weeks. I'm losing track of days. I looked at the calendar recently and was shocked to see that it was still March. Still March , I thought. How? The days are both long and short, time simultaneously stretched and compressed in this period of both utter sameness and wild, uncharted newness.  You're probably feeling this too.  It has me thinking about time's fluidity and fragmentation, and it has me reading fragmented narratives. One of my favorite examples of a fragmented narrative is the incomparable Bluets , by Maggie Nelson--her meditation on the color blue, but also, of course, so much more. Another is Anthony Doerr's novel All the Light We Cannot See .  (Both of these, by the way, include mature content that may not suit readers of all ages and sensib...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Art of Losing

* Photo credit (Post by Kirsten) Oh no! It's late, and this post nearly got away from me! Do you find yourself losing track of what you thought you had a hold on? I'm struggling with this more and more, the longer our social isolation period continues. Not only has time begun to lose its shape for me, but so--apparently--has the physical world. I've lost my glasses twice today. This morning I misplaced the coffee cup from which I was, just a moment before, drinking. And forget about ideas! (No, really -- forget about ideas.) We're all under a little more stress than usual, and stress can negatively impact memory.  (But don't worry--your memory will bounce right back as soon as you're under less stress.) Today's writing prompt borrows from this phenomenon: * Write about a person who has lost something. What is missing? Where is it? Why was it lost? How does the person feel about the loss?  You can read "lost" here as "mis...
Post a Comment
Read more