this morning, i woke up because i spoke in my dream.
i was on the phone with someone who was yelling horrible things at me about someone i love. i kept trying to hang up the phone but each time i tried to turn it off, the voice on the other end got louder and louder. i resigned myself to listening to things i knew would hurt me. and the very first sentence that flew in to my ears was one of such malice that my courage flared up and i yelled back. my yelling, in the dream, woke me up.
after i got my coffee and sat down to write this morning, i realized that i don't talk in my dreams. if i do, it isn't often, and generally seems to be more along the line of telekinesis. but in this dream, not only did i speak, i yelled. and it startled me awake.
i've had a calm, slightly eerie but nevertheless good, feeling on me all day. maybe something else has been startled awake too?
i started reading some Carl Jung (work i think contemporary art theory should take a dip in) and learned about The Archetypes. especially the Animus. and how dreams factor in to our ideas about the world... all those low-lying, hidden systems of belief and accepted expectations...
generally, i'm not very interested in dream interpretation. most of the time it seems like a horoscope- stretch it enough and you can make it fit. but there's just something about this dream, this speaking, that has held my attention today.
i've also been experiencing an accelerated recall on memories lately. all sorts of things that i haven't thought about in years. and all so clear. i've been writing them down. and the more i write them down, the more i remember. the more details i find. it's both interesting and disquieting. there's a strangeness in it... an over-lapping of time: that i can be here, now, who i am in this present moment, and then a memory sweeps through and i remember exactly who i was and how it felt to be that person... and experience these two states at the same time because i'm writing it down.
anybody else ever experience this as a result of writing or making anything? a surge in memory or a drastic shift in dream environment/behavior? or have i only outed myself as the freak of the week?
10 comments:
Well, no, I haven't really shared your experience, but I used to be a very lucid dreamer (could conduct the storyline of a dream, and remembered them very well) but now it is absolutely rare for me to recall my dreams. A surge in memory sounds fascinating!
Beautiful. Trust yourself.
love,
Rebecca
thank you, sweet rebecca. i'm taking the ride. :)
susan!
i've only managed the lucid dreaming thing on a few rare occaisions and it was FUN! the surge in memory is good and odd. not repressed memories or anything *that* cool, just sharper in detail. and a flood of things that i haven't remembered or thought about in years and years and years.
I often write to emeber, angela. And I'm often amazed at how things come to me through the process of writing.
And dreams, well dreams are wonderful for getting you into your memories from strange directions.
Never underestimate your dreams, Angela, but I'd steer clear of the glib, formulaic interpretations of dreams you can get from books, even and including those of Jung and Freud.
To me dreams are idiosyncratic and the person who can best understand the possible meaning of a dream is its dreamer.
that's wonderful advice, elisabeth. thank you! i do get leary of Freud. many of his ideas about dreams and the subconcious feel like an ill fit when i try to see them inside myself. and i'm new to jung's work. he's very interesting and his ideas feel a bit more compassionate than freud's, but i will definitely bear your statement in mind as i read his work. psychology is a strange and nebulous thing. i like his focus on individuation. personality and balance and all that. but i think you are right when it comes to dream interpretation- that only the dreamer can really know for sure where they come from. as i sat with the dream longer, i started figuring things out about it and it has a basis in fear, for sure.
writing as a call to memory is an amazing thing, isn't it! and weird!!! i will follow it and see where i go and let the process be the dictator.
i´ve been with a psychoanalyst for 3 years.
i´ve felt the same going backwards in memory----
i mean, i understand you. i thought it was a common thing. to dream is to release our unconscious part of mind. (oh, my damn poor english--)
don´t worry and write it out.
i do the same, but with a difference, i use my experiences and other´s and my dreams, nightmares for my short stories and novels.
not Diary I.
just metafictional writing. it helps you to see things at a sane and fearless distance---
i do. i understand you.
love!
yolanda
"don´t worry and write it out.
it helps you to see things at a sane and fearless distance---"
thank you for these statements, yolanda. they are golden and full of compassion.
weaving. Weaving totally kicked my ass. Especially when no one else was in the weaving room and I was all alone with my thoughts and my loom. Almost too intense to bare. Memories, thoughts, emotions would just sneak up on me and overwhelm me. I felt like I was weaving everything into my piece and out of me.
alanna,
thanks for this. it is a beautiful, though painful, thing. and i've often thought of textiles as being very much like the landscape in the fact that it hides its history. a war wages across it one day... a year later lovers carve their intials into a tree where a soldier may have died, unknown. i think about that when i crochet- that the turmoil is hidden somewhere in the stitches. unseen.
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