Public Dreaming: The 1st Anniversary Post of SoJourn(al)!

The First Birthday by Frederick Daniel Hardy

Thanks to all the fellow dreamers, bloggers and visitors who have participated in SoJourn(al). Especially to Poet Tree, who has kept interest and continued to comment with unslaked interest in the content of Private Dreams to Public Art.

In the first year, this humble blogspot has garnered 10,000 pageviews from all over the world, including a whole lot from Russia!

Na zdorovye!

With a high of over 1500 views a month, that is more than many online literary journals!

In my first year of publishing creative writing, my imagination roamed freely into experimental literature as a visual experience. With a mainstay of dream journaling as a rooting practice in creative writing, and through imaginative reflections on dreaming and its awe-inspiring influence on the entirety of human culture throughout the ages, especially in art, literature and music, I have embarked on a path of creative development as a full-fledged dreamer. 

My blog, regularly updated with creative dream fiction and original poetry, features my art alongside as a complementary art form drawn from the seamless worlds of consciousness and dreaming. Inspired by the tremendous creative insights, which fulfill my being after reflecting on the wealth of imagery in dreams, whose sensual experiences are pregnant with symbolic mythopoesis, I have endeavored to experience my greatest passion, the act of creative writing, as a visual art form. 

What I originally referred to as spatial literature began its journey in the public mind with the asemic writing / post-literature community, where my work was first featured on The New Post-Literate: A Gallery of Asemic Writing. After only a few months, I have received ten exhibitions - in print, online and live at local galleries. 

The dream lives on in my daily life through the creative work of making new art, and in the unconscious wellspring of raw intentionality, to truly be an example of my art, as a positive and vibrant force of individuality. This is the greatest dream that my art reveals to me.

May We Continue Into All Forms of Consciousness to Create the Public Dream of an Art-Full World!

________

In a reprint of a philosophical musing on the experience of interpreting dreams through creative reflection on prominent imagery, or symbols, I have taken a step in another direction, a less conventional one, and one also corroborated by Freud (see my post: Free Association Beyond Symbols: The Interpretive Art of Freud) where the act of writing, is a willful and conscious movement towards free association, with an emphasis on free, which aligns with my creative aspiration, to see the entirety of my self through the lens of creative thought and its subsequent outpouring in language. Such is my raisons d'être for the SoJourn(al).

After contemplating the recent series of interpretations based on the application of generic dream dictionary usage, I have experienced the truth that in fact, the interpretation is in the writing, that meaning that in creatively writing the dream with imaginative insight into the narrative structure and enlightening detail, the interpretation is made, not as a definition or forecast, but as an act of creative impression in the waking mind of the public collective, where art and dream interfuse in a subtle rendering of meaning in the act of envisioning the import of the imagery on waking, through conscious language, yet still poetically, in a language that minds the unconscious relativity of creation, as a holistic creative act in tune with the entire phenomenal experience of being human. That finally, the dream and its interpretation are one.

As seen on my post: The Dark Ages Revivified by the Colour of Welsh Dream-Lore 

________

Interpretive Meaning

Interpret meaning in creative writing

Interpretation is the writing of creation

Meditating on dreams and the fleeting mind is to interpret

Creation is interpretation

The creative mind is interpretive

The world is open to interpretation

Create, and the mind is interpreted

Creation is the seamless measure of dream

When the unconscious is invoked in waking, a part becomes whole

Interpretation is literal recollection, a voluntary gathering of the involuntary

What is the outcome of a conscious recollection of the unconscious?

Writing is a means to creative interpretation

Writing is one way to mind the unconscious

When writing is a creative act, the mind is open to interpretation

When writing is a creative act, interpretation gives meaning

Thought, when creative, is meaningful

Silence, when thought, is interpreting

Be silent, think, and write a new interpretation

Interpretation is meaning

Interpretation is interpretation

Interpret meaning with meaning

Mean to interpret  

Free Association Beyond Symbols: The Interpretive Art of Freud

The Dream of Prisoners by Moritz von Schwind
(appears in Freud's 1920 publication)

"Interpretation based on a knowledge of symbols is not a technique that can replace the associative technique, or even compare with it." Sigmund Freud, A General Introduction to Psychoanalysis. p. 124

See my earlier post, The Dark Ages Revivified by the Colour of Welsh Dream-Lore for an intuitive lead into this analytical reasoning on the act of interpretation, as confirmed by Freud.

_________

Highway travails, backseat blues, the wrested grapple on leathered frowns presses my skull to the glass with thinly worn agreement with current circumstance, transitory. I pipe up, “Now! I need a bath!” The car halts at a gated stopover, wherein curious attendees ask for a fee. The lockjaw tension spills out into an arts fiesta of European nostalgia. 

The Rose, or the Artist's Journey by Moritz von Schwind

I call out to the crowd, “Now! I have a poem!” I begin muttering, unconfident to truly belt out the words, poorly edited and written with fine ink on a magazine page. The people in the room simply continue on, unalloyed with the anti-climactic triumph of my ever- softening voice. As I saunter outside, away from the dizzying crowd, drunk on their high horse of serendipitous camaraderie, I wade in hollow memory. 

Apparition in the Woods by Moritz von Schwind

Repeating two names, Rem and Rom, as nicknames to the famed feral twins of classical Roman fate. Unnerved by the mysterious blank, open backdrop of mental awareness rusting and pasted over with tasteless eyes, I reason and devise a new way. Alone, into the darkest, thickest patch of forest, I tread the unknowable, pathless, fearless and out of mind, out of time.  

________

Following the wave’s break
Chilling the surf in its open, living mind

Shedding tears
Upside into the sky’s unbroken cavity

When fish jump
And break surface of mental clarity with life’s untamed spontaneity,

When life emerges
And takes of its observant few what prophecies are foretold by nature

...

To die the impatient death of youth
And brush past the envisioned self

Struggling to go together with soul
To the summit of human glory

- excerpt from "Borrowed from the Ancients"

Engineering the Unconscious

“…there exists a barrier in you, all our minds, which prevents these hidden and unwelcome impulses of the unconscious from emerging.” (Dr. Ernest Jones) 

“…the very idea of examining and analyzing one’s inner feelings was a threat to their absolute control.”

“By analyzing dreams and free association he had unearthed, he said, powerful sexual and aggressive forces which were the remnants of our animal past. Feelings we repressed because they were too dangerous.”

“If human beings were driven by unconscious irrational forces than it was necessary to rethink democracy.” 

- from the film, "The Century of the Self" (Part One on YouTube)

________

We wait aimlessly. The school cafeteria transforms into the living room at my grandparent’s house. The light brown rug gives off a beige boredom, as I sit amongst friends and family, waiting, so patiently, as if for the return of Christ. Eating is drudgery. There is an unlikely foment of pleasing silence about, precipitated by my power-hungry relatives. I have had enough. I clasp my hands and in a manner to mock Christian prayer, I bowl over carelessly in front of my father and uncle. “Christmas is within you!” I say to them with lifted humor. They smile with vagrant attention as my grandmother proceeds to welcome me to sleep downstairs. As I take up her offer, the entire upstairs rumbles with festivity. Smoke pours in dreamily as brass instruments are uncased and steamed with the strong breath of celebratory music. “Is it time?” I ponder, wistfully.

________

Christmas

"Symbolizes family togetherness, reunions and celebration. It is also representative of new beginnings and fresh starts." (iDream)

________

There are four deities.
Each represents a characteristic prevalent in creatures, stones, places, and thoughts.

Creatures are animals, plants, water and air.
Stones are celestial bodies, crystals and money.
Places are meaning, stories, songs and art.
Thoughts are actions which emanate from the center of being, the heart.

Each of the four deities has an age,
and each has a name with which it is remembered
by People.

The first deity is called,
Haumah; Nation,
the second is
Hakhalah; Community,
the third is
Mishpachah; Family,
and the fourth is,
Aahtzmi; Self.

Today, we are in the age of Aahtzmi.

- excerpt from "Deadly Vision Part I"

To Read Is To Possess A Transference

"It is a regular observation that when you talk to an individual and this individual gives you insight into his inner preoccupations, interests, emotions, in other words, hands over his personal complexes, then you get slowly and really really into the situation of a sort of authority, you become a point of reference, you know you are in possession of all the important items in a person's development. Now you see, that creates an emotional relationship to the analyst, and that is what Freud calls the transference which is a central problem of analytic psychology. It is just so as if these people had handed out their whole existence and that can have very peculiar effects upon the individual; either they hate you for it or they love you for it, but you are not indifferent to them."

- Carl Jung, from "Matter of Heart" (Parts 4-5 on YouTube)  

________

A dream that will not drift from memory begins where I stand carefree in an old-fashioned English telephone booth on a paved street corner. There is a usual urban backdrop. The telephone booth curiously extends upwards as upon a ladder to unknown heights, yet I am unmotivated to climb it, especially as I am attacked on all sides! Furious, battered felines of all shapes and sizes, tattered and dusty, some with thick coats and others with scrawny short-haired bodies, skeletal and mangy fiercely claw at me. Their hissing and deviltry is a forewarning to my native sense, as I only barely escape their wrath, fighting them off after an intensely overwhelming standoff. 

________

Cat

“To dream of a cat denotes ill luck, if you do not succeed in killing it or driving it from your sight. If the cat attacks you, you will have enemies who will go to any extreme to blacken your reputation and to cause you loss of property. But if you succeed in banishing it, you will overcome great obstacles and rise in fortune and fame.

If you meet a thin, mean and dirty-looking cat, you will have bad news from the absent. Some friend lies at death’s door, but if you chase it out of sight, your friend will recover after a long and lingering sickness.” (iDream)

________

The willing sink in their seats.
Pure elements rain on the few.
They are felt, inspired.

The air is too hot.
It is dreamed with steam and smoke.
Waking is consumed with the taste of ash.

The Phoenix appears in ultimate silence.

Insects and weather play in hiding.
It is no theft, distraction, or hiding.
yet imbued with meaning.

Blink and you will see.

- excerpt from "An attempt at ethnographic science!"