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felt like no two ways about it
Last night I dreamed I was making my way up a not-too-steep mountainside amid not-too-thick pines, across occasional not-too-rocky spots, with a woman who had come along along the way & was continuing up with me, our paths just sort of naturally converging. We walked on, talking of writing and language, among other things. Really connecting. I may have been supposed to have known her before, but, if so, not for long. Wish I could remember better what we'd been talking of. I lay in bed an extra 15 minutes this morning trying in vain to raise more of it to consciousness.
As she & I reached the top of that bit of mountain, we came to a wooden viewing platform, its broad planks worn gray by time & weather. We looked out briefly over the lay of the moderately wooded, moderately rocky valley below, and at the sky---we were on an outcropping on something of a cliff edge. There was a park-service-style bathroom up there around one side of the platform; my companion went in to take advantage of it. Outside I noticed that a poem had been printed on a broad-plank railing around the little structure/building (vs. the on the outside edge of the elaborate deck-like platform). The title of the poem was in a different color---like a grayish light green; the rest was in darker letters. I thought it must have been printed by something like a printing press adapted to stamp such things on such things. I went to read the poem but was interrupted.
Another woman was calling up to me from a lower platform attached to the side of ours, about 10 feet below. She was sitting down, down there, on a piece of the weather-worn Adirondack-y furniture, checking proof copies of the cover of something ---it was in C*rrent M*thematical P*blications blue, but it was the cover for, it said, the W*shington C*llege Republican, with a picture of Geo. W*shington thereon. Took me a minute to see "Republican"---maybe my mind was searching for "Review," which was the R in WCR, the lit mag/rag we published at my school. I'd been thinking, when I'd seen the poem stamped on the wood, of the Broadsides series, my favorite publication of the college. They were one-sheeters. Cool.
The woman below seemed to be more or less K*thy W*gner, who wasn't yet on the faculty when I was in school---she was an alum writer, back in town and hanging out often enough that the writers knew her. And liked her. In the dream, though, she knew who was in the bathroom and she wanted me to get some information from/on this relatively new acquaintance of mine. The scoop in question had something to do with some drama involving the woman's father and some other confusing family member stuff---the others were female relatives, and there was an element of tension in it. There were lots of details (I can't remember now), but the powers that be didn't know how it all fit together. K*thy spoke, as she continued to look over proofs, as if she herself could just ask and find out, but I might have better luck, or get better info. And she acted as if it were assumed I'd do it---for the institution, as its agent. And that I'd not let on why I was asking.
I knew right away I wasn't going to do it. I knew exactly where my loyalties lay. And when my fellow hiker rejoined me, and we turned & took a few steps away from the mysterious K*thy-W*gnerian woman, I started in to tell the girl the story of what had just been asked of me, and how.
It had nothing to do with the "Republican." There was simply no doubt in my mind. I was gonna spill the whole thing, cuz our connection beat any loyalty to an institution, or to people I liked who were, at the moment, representing the interests of one. It wasn't that I knew it was the right thing, or a wise thing, or even a reasonably appropriate thing to do; it was just that I knew it was what I was going to do, and that was all there was to it.
It was the pleasure of such certainty, I do believe, that made me wish the dream had gone on longer, and had me wanting to coax it out to register with my waking mind, so's to have it with me longer that way, if not the other.
Houseguest read or heard recently that the content/plot of a dream doesn't matter so much as does how you feel about it, how you felt about it within it while it was going on. Hadn't thought of this distinction myself. It's a way to ponder dreams, anyway, and I like pondering them. Heck, I like just having them. Especially the vivid ones.
Off to have another now, maybe.
As she & I reached the top of that bit of mountain, we came to a wooden viewing platform, its broad planks worn gray by time & weather. We looked out briefly over the lay of the moderately wooded, moderately rocky valley below, and at the sky---we were on an outcropping on something of a cliff edge. There was a park-service-style bathroom up there around one side of the platform; my companion went in to take advantage of it. Outside I noticed that a poem had been printed on a broad-plank railing around the little structure/building (vs. the on the outside edge of the elaborate deck-like platform). The title of the poem was in a different color---like a grayish light green; the rest was in darker letters. I thought it must have been printed by something like a printing press adapted to stamp such things on such things. I went to read the poem but was interrupted.
Another woman was calling up to me from a lower platform attached to the side of ours, about 10 feet below. She was sitting down, down there, on a piece of the weather-worn Adirondack-y furniture, checking proof copies of the cover of something ---it was in C*rrent M*thematical P*blications blue, but it was the cover for, it said, the W*shington C*llege Republican, with a picture of Geo. W*shington thereon. Took me a minute to see "Republican"---maybe my mind was searching for "Review," which was the R in WCR, the lit mag/rag we published at my school. I'd been thinking, when I'd seen the poem stamped on the wood, of the Broadsides series, my favorite publication of the college. They were one-sheeters. Cool.
The woman below seemed to be more or less K*thy W*gner, who wasn't yet on the faculty when I was in school---she was an alum writer, back in town and hanging out often enough that the writers knew her. And liked her. In the dream, though, she knew who was in the bathroom and she wanted me to get some information from/on this relatively new acquaintance of mine. The scoop in question had something to do with some drama involving the woman's father and some other confusing family member stuff---the others were female relatives, and there was an element of tension in it. There were lots of details (I can't remember now), but the powers that be didn't know how it all fit together. K*thy spoke, as she continued to look over proofs, as if she herself could just ask and find out, but I might have better luck, or get better info. And she acted as if it were assumed I'd do it---for the institution, as its agent. And that I'd not let on why I was asking.
I knew right away I wasn't going to do it. I knew exactly where my loyalties lay. And when my fellow hiker rejoined me, and we turned & took a few steps away from the mysterious K*thy-W*gnerian woman, I started in to tell the girl the story of what had just been asked of me, and how.
It had nothing to do with the "Republican." There was simply no doubt in my mind. I was gonna spill the whole thing, cuz our connection beat any loyalty to an institution, or to people I liked who were, at the moment, representing the interests of one. It wasn't that I knew it was the right thing, or a wise thing, or even a reasonably appropriate thing to do; it was just that I knew it was what I was going to do, and that was all there was to it.
It was the pleasure of such certainty, I do believe, that made me wish the dream had gone on longer, and had me wanting to coax it out to register with my waking mind, so's to have it with me longer that way, if not the other.
Houseguest read or heard recently that the content/plot of a dream doesn't matter so much as does how you feel about it, how you felt about it within it while it was going on. Hadn't thought of this distinction myself. It's a way to ponder dreams, anyway, and I like pondering them. Heck, I like just having them. Especially the vivid ones.
Off to have another now, maybe.
no subject
I think anyone outside your head who tries to interpret your dreams will at best say something about themselves or the author of their dream interpretation book.
So I'll just say that I enjoyed the images, and they remind me of my recent trips to Sleeping Bear and Mount Rainier.
no subject
And that's very much like what art does, sometimes, partly. Can do. For me. Though I sure used to get up in arms about the utilitarian and theraputic "what that makes me feel" part of people's experiencing & talking about art. Very funny to me now, to think back on that purist that I think I thought I was; also satisfying, to know I have come to be able to mesh, not just to reconcile, this personal "use" aspect of aesthetics with (what I now consider) that absurdly reduced stance of contextlessness in which it's a miracle any of it meant anything big to me at all.
I still carry that simply liking/digging/loving of images, sounds, turns of phrase, technical juxtapositions, pure vibrating harmonies, devices I can or can't name/identify---and all that left- and right-brain "pure" stuff. But now I have something else too.
This morning as I left the bedroom, having decided not to make the bed just then, and walked into the kitchen, it flashed into my brain that I am, after all this life, coming into my own. That I have begun to come into my own. That I actually have come into my own, lots. Or a good hunk. Something like that. This phrase, this idea of coming into one's own.
Another of the many pleasures of age is this openness to a new sector of aesthetics.
Probably sounds like a bit of a stretch coming off your comment. What can I say. I didn't get much sleep last night, and this is practically a raw verbal info dump of reaction.
But let me add: somebody outside your (one's) head/skin can have advantages of perception simply from that different POV. I guess I'm thinking of friends and/or therapist saying things like "What I'm hearing is ____," where that ____ can be major lightbulb stuff, or turn into it with a little seasoning of its own. By speaking to us indirectly, such as they speak to us at all, dreams may make it easier for us to provide something of that trick for ourselves, as their absurdity or postulated encodedness can be the impetus toward considering ideas or possibilities that wouldn't occur to us in more ordinary mundane musing.
Of course I use Rob B's vaguely/"lite" literary horoscopes as such fodder too. It's a game I like. And one I do find useful, with my history of being kinda lousy at getting in touch with what-all's going on with me emotionally. It's actually fun to me to practice with these tools. And I wouldn't argue with you that it's not---at least among other things---a silly game. :)