by D Shapiro
When I was 16 my mom gave me a journal to write my dreams in. So a dream journal was started. The notes were hand written daily, when I remembered. Then in graduate school, I began to study different ways of interpreting dreams, and I became more serious, beginning each morning with writing the dreams from the previous night (and keeping a note pad so when I woke up after as many REM sleeps as possible I would jot down some notes . In 1999 (after 36 years of hand written notes, I switched to typing the notes each morning. In the last 19 years I’ve accumulated over 1200 pages single spaced!:)—dreams and commentary. I began keeping a table of contents trying to organize types of dreams: e.g. eros and Thanatos; bridge building; parts of self; control and loss of control ; family of origin, created family, belonging; me as observer, self-reflection; relationship to society; creativity (music, art—which I could never do, or at least have never done in waking life!); different parts of self….
This section is one I hope to get to (only limitation is mortality—written at 71.5!) and other projects that currently have priority. The impetus for this entry was a dream of our two girls, at 6 and 8, which I found in the “poetry” section. I guess I thought I could make a poem out of it. Johanna suggested it might be good to put it in the “dream” journal section of the website—a section which I hadn’t even envisioned, much less begun. So, today, Dec 7, 2018, I begin it.
Since I certainly have made every effort in life to be self-aware and reflective of my waking life, it seems reasonable to try to do the same with my “dream life.” 🙂