Perchance to dream ...

I have known writers enchanted with their dreams, so much so that they keep dream journals beside their beds to write down the whole dream before it fades and then they spend, sometimes, hours analyzing their dreams. Dream gazing seems to me a lot like naval gazing. At a certain time in life, when we aren't certain why we seem to be on the adult, or nearly adult, path dreams may seem like answers to Who Am I? Yes, I've done my share of dream notating and analyzing although over the whole middle of my life it was sporadic and did not fill two steno pads. They're somewhere. I didn't throw them away.

Since about the middle of November, when I discovered the site 750 Words I've finally tried the experiment one of the new age gurus calls "morning words." I can write between 750 and 800 words in less than 20 minutes -- that's free flowing thoughts, but it's also correcting misspelling when need be. I don't feel a need to inspire myself but I've been a little ashamed of myself for poo-poohing "morning words" as a useless activity. I like to prove to myself something works or doesn't. I'm not finding anything about the exercise [I think this was the 70th day in a row] helpful to either my writing or my every day life. I'm a little bit hooked by the site's game-playing aspect which awards badges for records. When I've written for 100 days without break I reach one of the higher echelons and get a phoenix badge! Whoopy-doo! And I may then stop.

But dreams -- I'm a little freaked because I very rarely awake remembering I dreamed and when I do the dream fades quickly. However, the last three days dreams have been vivid and memorable so I've written about them in the morning words -- a description and then some thoughts about their metaphoric meaning and relation to frequent dream motifs over my life. I really don't want to get into "dream work". I'm not feeling a need to look at my subconscious, I'm feeling settled and relatively serene, generally happy. The dreams have not been upsetting or frightening ones.

One had a snake in it but it was not a scary snake, in fact, more like a stuffed draft stopper thingy than a snake [go figure!]. I'm frankly a bit irritated because I think the habit of writing early in the morning in a free flow way, really saying nothing of any importance or depth, has somehow triggered these dreams. "There's the rub." Except they give me nothing to complain about, possibly writing about them is more interesting than the drivel I wrote for over 60 days. It's bugging me. The site doesn't give badges for dreams recorded, maybe I should suggest they do. They do have subject tracking ability.