TheDreamTime

I have been keeping a journal of my dreams for almost a year now. When I tell people I am keeping a dream journal they often tell me about there experience keeping a dream journal. About how they learned a little bit from it a first or didn't learn anything at all. As if I cared. They seem to assume that I am recording my dreams for the same reason they did. As if there were only one possible reason to write down the strange visions that visit it in the night. It has to be an investigation into a persons unconscious.

Why do people take family photos? The pictures they take and the ones they keep and cherish may be a window into their soul. Is that why school pictures are taken every year?

I record my dreams. I want to preserve the flitting kaleidoscopic images, the bizarre scenes and nonsensical situations. When I was young I remembered my dreams easily. Now they fade quickly when I awake. And that bothers me. The memory of something that was so clear a moment ago just evaporates. It's like trying to hold onto a puff of smoke.

My dreams are part of my life experience and so I make them a part of the record.

Are there meanings to dreams? Maybe. Maybe they are just random images. I think they are a mixture substance and trivia. Why should the unconscious be any different than the waking mind. Watch the thoughts that stream though your mind for a moment: memories, plans, worries, anticipations. Do all of them have deeper meaning? No. Some do. Dreams are thoughts, from a different part of the brain but it works the same way. It is just as confused, mixed up and out of focus as the part of the brain that's running the show now. Early childhood trauma is mixed with last nights spaghetti and sprinkled with sit-com silliness. Then a little performance anxiety is throw in for good measure.

And I think that dreams are very personal. The symbols inside the mind very greatly from person to person. Some symbols are shared, but like words they do have different meanings and interpretations. Trying to interpret another's dream is as difficult as analysing their poetry.

And trying to figure out what your own dreams mean is tricky too. If you were meant to understand them they would not be so cryptic. The conscience and unconscious like being strangers.

Stranger in the night...

OWL

April 6, 2007