Squidmek

Our plane has just crashed (I just flew down south to Atlanta last week), and we seem to have landed in Africa. There is myself and three others walking among the wreckage. I soon realize that one of the other survivors is a famous actress, only I cannot say who she is. I see that there is a large ape picking among the plane parts. She comments that the ape was on the plane, which surprises me, but what really scares her is that he has not taken off the suit yet. I then see a large zipper on his back. She steps into some mud, and slips. She falls through a pipe, down a hill--I am with her the entire time, watching as if in a close-up--and into a muddy river. We all begin to discuss how we might get her out.

This is a relatively old dream. I had it on the night I saw the remake of Night of the Living Dead, about two years back. On the way back from the theater, I see a man who I often see late at night--very tall, and very large--walking home from his job at a local hospital (not the dream yet). Only this time he is obviously sick, coughing up, lots of gutteral sounds. I later fall asleep and dream of my walk home, much like it actually happened, only, the window of my bedroom is taken up by his face looming in, as if the face of a giant. He is then on top of me, his eyes are blood shot. I experience a typical incubus dream, with pronounced sleep paralysis. Have I reported this dream already? I'm not sure. It remains one of my most disturbing and realistic dreams.

I'm particularly interested in two dream-types. I've been trying to recall what I dream of most, and I have noticed two recurring themes that have repeated themselves for as long as I can remember. One: the "chase dream". I am often chased, but these dreams are characterised more by their violence then anything else. The chase is usually by a man with a weapon, and he is almost always intent on killing me. Their is usually some awareness of EXACTLY what he is going to do if he catches me. I am usually very, very frightened. What is intersting to me is that I love horror movies, particularly very real and disturbing movies. And I have for as long as I can remember. I know there is some connection, but I wonder which predates the other. Two: The "teeth" dream, as in my teeth are falling out. This one I find is just as popular among other dreamers as the "chase dream" is. Yet I would imagine that the theme--or is it the symbology?--behind teeth is not as universal. AND this dream brings a much more unanimous concensus of interpreation than the chase dream does--they say, "It's about financial concerns."

A great side-effect of this class: I have gained some control over my dream content. When waiting for sleep I often go over in my head material for a story I'm currently working on--plot, characters, etc. And I have since--only in the last few weeks--noticed that I am now often dreaming around my story ideas, which always results in some kind of story development, whether it be bad or good. Tonight I plan on writing some story concerns down before I sleep. I'm excited to see if this practice brings any dream results.

This was one of the most valuable and challenging reading experiences I've had. There is a freedom in Ishiguro's approach that absolutely charged me as a writer. One can easily forget that all of the rules have not yet been written for fiction. It is far likelier to encounter experiment in the visual arts and simply accept it as part of the experience; I rarely make a judgement on the artist any deeper than "I like it," or not when in the context of experiment. However, in fiction it I find its a very different relationship between the artist and the recipient. It's much more intimate, and there are so many more assumptions on behalf of the reader and the writer. When in the realm of fictional experiment its tough thing to respect those boundaries and trusts without disturbing the reading experience--an experience that demands so much more time from the recipient, when comparing the reader and the viewer. Most of the time i find experiment, especially book-length experiment, to be superficial, maybe tiresome, maybe even masturbatory. The Unconsoled--say what you want about the book--pulls off 500 hundred strange pages of experiment, and I was not once bored, insulted or uninvolved. Rather, I was intrigued, baffled, and even moved at times. That's a great reading experience. It taught me a good bit about reading and writing.

I 'm having a blast doing this. There is nothing I like better than to have the luxary of reading and researching something I am truly fascinated by. And the Bible has been a source of fascination for me for my entire reading life, Revelation in particlar. the most illuminating facet so far has been the profoundly essentila place dreaming has had in the invention and evolution of human belief. Problems I'm having: the scope of the project, and keeping it in mind. The ideas keep reaching toward other areas, areas of equal interest, but areas that will not allow for a concise paper. I'm taking a few days off from the paper so I can get some distance form it.