On The Appreciation of Dreams

Posted on August 19, 2004 in Dreams

Rachel Ann asked what I thought yesterday’s dream meant. I’m tempted to hand her a dictionary –a standard Webster’s — and bid her to look up each word because that’s my attitude about dreams. I don’t go plumbing them for subconscious revelation.

Recent science shows that dreams begin with random firing of neurons while our eyes, darting about behind their skin curtains, look for something to grab. They catch the flash of a capillary pulsing or a stray photon creeping in next to the tear duct. Out of these fragments our cerebellums build images. As the dream progresses, it may take on a larger organization, directed by the brain’s desire for a story. I’ve often seen this happen which is why I record dreams and, when they ramble poetic, share them here.

But what does the elephant mean? students of Freud and Jung may ask. I reply as Hemingway did to a literature professor that the elephant is an elephant, the trailer a trailer, and the people what they are. When I want to understand my feelings, I investigate those. I just liked this dream and put it up because I have been getting out of the habit.