Dreams...

The dreams presentation that my group did for the class was one of the most incredibly rich presentations that I have been a part of. I must say though for those of you in Dr. Sexson's literary criticism last semester, the Don Quixote skit I was luckily a part of, took the cake! Dreams are so powerful and full of meaning but so often people look past them, can't remember them or consider them to be "dumb" or "embarrassing"! They are none of that! Dreams are incredible, it is a moment in which you are part of a completely different world, a world in which only YOU can be. No one else sees your dreams or can experience them the way you do. Dreams are the one thing that you have that are completely YOU!

I was amazed at the dreams chapter in Kane's "Wisdom of the mythtellers" and found it difficult to even convey what I was thinking. The section that I studied most thoroughly in Kane's chapter 4- dreams was "Each has its own dreaming" on pages 131-134. I was both astonished and confused at the information regarding the metaphysical world in relation to mythtellers. It is the separation of the actual world from the dream world. In this dream world, pieces of nature are spirit, not entities in this universe. Nature is an energy, a mental energy. The mythtellers connect this energy back to dreaming. The dream state or world is one in which the mythtellers language is song and image, rather than concept. This was shown in Kane through "The Earth Shapers" story at the beginning of chapter 4. Dreams like the oral world are layered and connected to the idea of boxes within boxes which we have seen before. Dreams are potent in a talismanic box which also represents the world of Gods. The talismanic box is a symbol of memory or we could say it is "consciousness within consciousness, within consciousness, within consciousness". The energy mentioned before creates infinite layers (made up of songs). In these layers, humans drift through, unable to hear each detail of the dream consciously. Also in the dream world, nature is personified. For example, the earth itself dreams (of beauty, etc.) and the flame distinguishes boundaries. These boundaries include: Light versus dark, potential versus actual, and the spirit world versus this world. Dreaming is an act of creating, which is an act of remembering. Most importantly, we must remember that "in the act of doing nothing, one is dreaming".

I would also like to say that Kane's chapter 4 and Dr. Sexson's article "re-membering Finnegans wake" were closely connected for me in the sense that each discusses dreams and the act of dreaming being a remembrance. Why can we not forget certain memories when we try so hard? Why must we always be thinking of certain people when all we want to do is forget them? We can ask ourselves this as often as we want, but for me there is only one answer. That answer is this: We can't forget and we never will. Everything is stored in our dreams. Perhaps one day we will "forget" something or someone, but eventually it will come back to us. It will always come back to us because our dreams do not allow us to forget or let go of it. Our dreams are our memories and our memories are our dreams. Suppress it, but it will find you! Your dreams create you. One who thinks they cannot dream or that they can run from their dreams is sadly mistaken and why on earth would one want to do that?!

Dream to remember and remember to dream...