When I was in graduate school, it was not uncommon to hear mostly fiction writers disparage others who basically wrote about their dreams. The line of thinking was such that it was an easy way out of writing a story, or at least that's how I heard the line of thinking. Perhaps the thinking-line was different. In any case, I was reminded of that before, during, and after reading
Anne Boyer's chapbook
Selected Dreams with a Note on Phrenology. What I was also reminded of was how it's almost always a good policy to never listen to graduate students. Even when I was in school, I was reminded of books that I had read about certains cultures and one in particular where it was common for people to have a meal in the morning and to relate to one another the dream/s each of them had the night before. I think I need to find this book, this information again, because I need to be living with that tribe. I think it's a wonderful activity, because the unconscious is made manifest, is not pathologized, is welcomed, is given space in waking life. Of course, I think we're never actually only dealing with our conscious minds, or perhaps I should just say that I don't think I'm just dealing with my conscious mind. I mean, when one has those "strange" internal talks--who's the other speaker? Boyer's book is a collection of--it's hard to know--fragments of dreams, and fuller, longer dreams that, presumably, she's had. The dream pieces--Borges'
Dream Tigers suddenly pops ups to me--are fairly mildly broken by a diamond symbol, elicting transition. Boyer does not believe entirely that everything she's written actually happened in the dream/s, but she thankfully allows the dream/reality mixtures to occur nonetheless. The dreams are filled with fears, anxieties, "real-life" people with new interests, and so on. Here is one sequence:
My daughter and I were shopping in a warehouse district full of underwear stores. One store had many rooms like a house, and in each room were shiny Lycra and nylon underthings: cinchers and girdles and minimizing bras, some yellowing, collected in piles.
We left with our tour guide and on the sidewalk one block over, students were gathered wearing spirit gear and shouting. Then I could see--they were telling girls to leap from the third floor window of a building. One girl jumped: she wore jeans: she pedaled her feet through the air. The crowd moved as if to try to catch the girl, but if they caught her, I couldn't see. They shouted for another.
