Dreams and Ghosts

 

Andrew Lang, the Scottish author of the perennially popular Color Fairy Stories, also wrote one of my favorite books on dreams. Titled The Book of Dreams and Ghosts, it was first published in 1897. As the title suggests, Lang’s focus is on dream encounters with the departed. He affected a cool skepticism towards his subject material, which allowed him to slide us right into the deep end, recounting cases of timefolding and interdimensional travel in dreams.

As a consummate storyteller, Lang was always alert for the story value of his material. His main question of dreams is which dreams make the best stories. He concludes that the dreams that make the best stories are those that reveal the “unknown past”, “the unknown present” and the “unknown future”. 

Dreams only form subjects of good dream-stories when the vision coincides with an adequately represents an unknown event in the past, the present or the future…If we dreamed of being present at an unchronicled scene in Queen Mary’s life, and if, after the dream was recorded, a document proving its accuracy should be for the first time recovered, then there is matter for a good dream-story.  

His references to his own dream life, though modest and brief, suggest he had experiential insight into his subject: “In dreams…we see the events of the past (I have been at Culloden fight and at the siege of Troy”).

He collects examples of shared dreams and uses that term for them. In one case he cites, three members of the Swithinbanks family (the father and two sons) dream the mother’s death on the same night and discover in the morning that the dream was fulfilled.

 Lang gives several examples of dreams that revealed the location of lost objects. Thus a lawyer dreams that a check he has lost is curled around a street railing – and finds it at that exact place when he goes looking for it. A girl in Lang’s family dreamed that  missing ducks’ eggs were at a place in a certain field, where they proved to be. An “Irish lady” dreamed a lost key was lying at the root of a certain tree, and found it there.

Picture: Andrew Lang by W.B. Richmond for Century magazine.

 

Dreams are the novels which we read when asleep

 

Notes from a Reading Life

“Dreams are the novels which we read when asleep,” according to an anonymous “writer” quoted by Charles G. Leland in the preface to his anthology The Poetry and Mystery of Dreams, published in Philadelphia in 1855. Perhaps the writer was Leland himself. It’s a curious anthology, originating in the ancient idea that prophecy and poetry are intimately connected; did not the Pythia speak in verse? Leland even finds room for a Bohemian drinking song, translated from “Czech-Slavonian” by himself:

Drink good beer and never fear, 
Love the girls both far and near!

He comes again and again to his beloved Chaucer and Chaucer’s ringing validation of dreams:

Dreames be significations 
As well of joy as of tribulations, 
That folks endure in this life present: 
There nedeth to make of this none argument

"A tale is not beautiful if nothing is added to it."
- Tuscan proverb quoted by Italo Calvino in the introduction to his collection of Italian Folktales, which contains many wonder tales translated from Tuscan dialect, including "The Sleeping Queen" (La Regina Marmotta).,recorded from te oral narration of a laborer around 1880. The manner of the queen's awakening could keep Freudians and Jungians and anthropologists arguing for weeks. For Calvino it is enough to declare that "folktales are real". 
In the course of his journey into folklore, he tells us, "the world about me gradually took on the attributes of fairyland, where everything that happened was a spell or a metamorphosis...I had the impression that the lost rules which govern the world of folklore were tumbling out of the magic box I had opened."

The Rawi and the Evil Queen

 October 11, 2020

dream

The Rawi and the Evil Queen

In the dream from which I returned at 3:30 a.m., I am in the body and situation of a scholarly prince in a Muslim country. I am working on a new version of a text and tear up several drafts before I have the following:

The rawi came to the sultan with a composition he had forged. His recitation was false but once heard it became true.

In my dream, I do not get further because I have to deal with a plot being hatched by the evil queen, who wants to hold me captive. I need to reclaim a key from her. She has really scary war paint. The whorls of color around her dark eyes in her whitened face give the impression that you could fall into a black hole. I feel no fear in her presence. My dark-skinned, black-bearded cousins are on my side in this palace intrigue.

~

I come back from my dream excursion excited and intrigued. Good story, this one! No analysis required or appropriate. As is my habit, I write and email my full report to myself on my phone before getting out of bed.

Then I look for the meaning of rawi. I discover that in Arabic a rawi is a "reciter"or "announcer'. The rawis preserved great pre-Islamic literature through oral transmission. They might have the ear of sultans or of large audiences. They were often accused of fabrication.

I so love my dream-directed research assignments!

A Note on Practice: The Stories from Second Sleep

Much of my best night dreaming. as in this example, is done in or around a second phase of sleep, which used to be called simply, "second sleep". When I lie down at night, I am usually ready to have some industrial sleep for a couple of hours, with or without significant recall. Then, after waking and maybe reading for a couple of hours, I am ready for the adventures to begin.

My discipline is to record as much as possible when I return to where I parked my body, whether that is at 3:30 a.m. or 5:00 a.m., or whenever. I may linger in the dream locale for quite a while in the fertile hypnopompic state. I want a fresh story to write in my essential book, my journal. I agree with the ancient dreamer, Aelius Aristides, when he says in his Sacred Tales, “Each of our days, as well as our nights, has a story.”

Illustrations for Firdausi's Shahnama (Book of Kings) by Muhammad Zaman (top) and Mu'in Muhsavvir (bottom). What is going on around the eyes of the div (demon) in Muhsavvir's picture from the story of Rustam somewhat resembles the getup of the evil queen in my dream.

Dreaming with Robin Williams

Sarah Sera Sera is a wildly creative and entertaining dream teacher, performance artist and storyteller in the Portland,Oregon area. Her flair for comedy is such that it is not surprising that she attracted a dream mentor and playmate with the face and personality of Robin  Williams. When I gave an advanced group the assignment of selecting nine dreams that had made a mark in their lives and weaving a story from them, Sarah selected nine of her dreams of Robin Williams. She then produced a wonderfully funny script that I hope will be performed on stage. You can read the full narrative if you follow the link at the end of this delightful guest blog I asked Sarah to write, with Robin, to introduce their oneiric relations. She just messaged me that Robin says “Feel free to give her writing assignments as you find entertaining. But she is unlikely to follow the rules.”

Guest blog by Sara Sera Sera

I turned on my computer and started an email to Robert Moss. It’s 5:30 AM. OMG, why am I up and writing to Robert Moss at 5:30 AM?

In my mind's eye, the archetype expressed most recently and accurately by the late, great, Robin Williams appears in midair to my right.

“You okay, kid?” Robin asks.

I’m glad he’s wearing a festive long winter hat. I smile. He’s in a four poster bed in midair in my apartment. Don’t worry, it’s not creepy. He’s also wearing an old time white nightshirt.

I sink under my weighted blanket. “My chest hurts, my friend. It feels like I’ve been stabbed repeatedly.”

Robin lifts a candle. He is using the base of a candle holder I remember from my father’s family cabin when I was little. “Nice touch,” I think.

Robin shines the candle light on my bed to look at me. He yawns largely. I can see something is very awry about his hat, but the light isn’t bright enough for me to make out what’s off.

“What were you dreaming?” He asks.

I pick up my cell phone. I look at the notes to see what I’ve written.

“In my dream, I dance where comedy meets with tragedy. I see the storyline glimmering upon the surface of waters, and when I see the specific fragment I would like to know, I stretch out my hand and lift the glimmering gold line. The line wraps around my arm and I gather the song from inside the fragment and become that song.”

Robin blinks at me. He twists his face in a strange expression, slightly dazed.

“I’m going to need a lot of coffee for that one,” he says. “Is it time to get up? I guess I’m up now.”

I don’t move, it’s still not even 6am yet.

“OK. I request paid assistants from the universe,” I reply.

“What do you think I am?” Robin asks. “You think the universe sends me to just anybody?”

“Yes,” I say. “And now that I’ve begun to channel you, you once again get to bring new life to people in new ways. So, yes, I do think anyone can invoke you. But… I get to be your favorite story teller for the next little bit of our journey.” I wink at him.

Robin must have got bored with my monologue, he is looking at a room service menu. I don’t know where he gets these ideas, I don’t have room service here. Oh wait – that’s genius. I’ll put in a request to the universe. The universe loves me. “Excellent idea, my friend! Ahem… Universe? I want room service options, here, on site.”

Robin looks at me over his reading glasses. “You could easily make your own coffee and flavor it with good intentions”.

Robin chuckles. Now he’s reading a newspaper. I’m glad he keeps the old school traditions alive. Its so nostalgic to read a paper.

“Alright. What are you planning to work on before you make coffee?” Robin asks.

“I haven’t committed to getting up yet.” But now I’m thinking about coffee and that may be the best course of action. Robin is a wise guide after all.

“Alexa,” I say, and stop short. I just heard a dolphin squeak when I said Alexa. Oh that’s right, I have a bad cold. Perhaps that’s the explanation for why my chest feels like I’ve been repeatedly stabbed.

I try again, pressing on thru the inhuman squeaking that should be my voice. “Alexa, play Xanadu Soundtrack.”

Robin groans and falls back on his bed holding a pillow tightly over his head.

Olivia begins to sing, “Come take my hand, you should know me, I’ve always been in your mind… You know I will be kind, I’ll be guiding you.”

“How does this replace your other submission, ‘9 dreams and Robin Williams’?” Robin asks.

Olivia continues singing over Robin as if she doesn’t know he is speaking. “Building your dream, has to start now, there’s no other road to take.”

“Simple. I’ll post that essay on “I Am Always Dreaming”. This is submission becomes a teaser. It’s long enough to intrigue the fans of your school in Anamnesis and the department of “Comedy from Tragedy”, but it’s not so long that people pare inspired to send ‘TL;DNR’ comments to Robert. I’m polite that way.” I pause as I feel a wave of déjà vu, and realize it’s actually déjà reve. “I think I’ve dreamt this conversation before.”

“You have to believe we are magic…” Olivia is on a roll and unstopable! I start to sing along, but quickly stop when I realize the voice of the dolphins isn’t fond of singing in English.

But Olivia didn’t stop. When I recover from my coughing fit, I hear her sing, “I’ll bring all your dreams alive, for you.”

Read the original “9 dreams and Robin Williams” over at https://iamalwaysdreaming.com/blog/f/9-dreams-and-robin-williams.

Dream Stories

I dreamed of conversing with Roger Caillois in French before I started reading him, and sought out his published works to honor my dream. I found that he was a wonderfully gifted French dream explorer and literary adventurer, a friend of the Surrealists, a student of games and myths and a traveler in the realms of stones and minerals.
     He edited a remarkable anthology titled The Dream Adventure, which sows many fertile ideas about the relationship between dreams and story. The anthology has three parts. The first is a lively introduction by Caillois distinguishing two fundamental approaches to dreams – that of those who wish to interpret dreams, and that of those who wish to enter and explore the dreamspace itself (which is vastly more exciting and creative).

      Then comes a selection of dream experiences from classical Chinese texts, many of which show the influence of Taoist modes of soul journeying. In one of the Chinese tales, a man on his way home is shocked to hear his wife partying with strangers inside a temple. He grabs a loose tile and hurls it, breaking plates on the table and scattering the revelers. When he returns home, he finds his wife rising from her bed, chuckling over a funny dream in which she was partying with strangers in a temple, then interrupted by someone throwing a tile that broke the crockery. “This then,” Po Hsing-chien (776-827) concludes, “is a case of dreaming spirits being encountered by a waking person.”

      Another Chinese tale, P’o Sung-ling’s “The Painted Wall” – written long before Through the Looking Glass or What Dreams May Come - a man called Chu enters a picture and marries the beautiful maiden he admired in it. Recalled to the other side by his companions’ shouts, he turns and sees the maiden in the picture now has the topknot of a married woman. How can this be? A priest responds: “Visions have their origins in those who see them.”

      The third, and major section of the book, is devoted to dream-inspired short fiction. As all good writers know, while many dreams come fully shaped as stories or scripts, it can be a challenge to turn dreams into effective fiction. If we start by revealing that the action takes place in a dream, we may set the reader at a distance, losing the magical “just-so” quality of an actual dream experience. So some of the most dreamlike fiction may never mention the word “dream”. Caillois has hunted with great skill for stories in which dreaming is an integral and thrilling part of the action.

        One of my favorites is “The Distances” by Argentine writer Julio Cortazar. In this chilling story, Alicia dreams again and again, with increasing vividness and detail, of a sad woman with broken shoes on a bridge in the cold of Budapest; they beat her; she is miserable and alone. When she marries, Alicia persuades her husband to take her to Budapest, where she’s never been. Out walking, she finds herself drawn to the bridge from the dream. In the middle of the bridge is the sad woman with the broken shoes. They embrace and Alicia knows ecstasies of joy. As they separate, she begins to scream – because she sees the smartly-dressed form of Alicia Reyes, hair slightly mussed by the wind, walking confidently away…they have switched bodies.

      Another of my favorites is “The Brushwood Boy” by Rudyard Kipling, who was no stranger to the possibilities of dreaming. In Kipling’s story a boy and a girl who have never seen each other in waking life start meeting each other in dreams and have high adventures that often begin at a pile of brushwood near an ocean. As the years pass, they continue to meet and adventure in their shared world, which defies the laws of ordinary reality. Decades after the first of these dreams, they meet each other in waking life, recognize each other, and come together as a couple.

      I do not know what inspired Kipling to write this tale, through perhaps I should, since I once lived in a house in East Sussex that he visited and was just over the hill from the setting that inspired “Puck of Pook’s Hill”. I do know that the premise of “The Brushwood Boy” – that in dreams we may live continuous lives, shared with others – is quite correct, and (if better understood) would transform our consensual notions of reality. I know this because one of my soul-sisters and I started meeting each other in the dreamspace when we were nine years old, more than three decades before we met in waking life – and have been sharing adventures in parallel realities ever since.

The Case of the Bishop's Pig and Other Dream Stories from Andrew Lang

One of my favorite books on dreams is Andrew Lang’s The Book of Dreams and Ghosts, first published in 1897. The prolific and popular author of the “color” series of fairytales affected a cool skepticism towards this subject material, which allowed him to slide us right into the deep end, recounting cases of timefolding and interdimensional travel in dreams.

    As a consummate storyteller, Lang was always alert for the story value of his material. His main question of dreams is which dreams make the best stories. He concludes that the dreams that make the best stories are those that reveal the “unknown past”, “the unknown present” and the “unknown future”.

Dreams only form subjects of good dream-stories when the vision coincides with and adequately represents an unknown event in the past, the present or the future…If we dreamed of being present at an unchronicled scene in Queen Mary’s life, and if, after the dream was recorded, a document proving its accuracy should be for the first time recovered, then there is matter for a good dream-story.

His references to his own dream life, though modest and brief, suggest he had experiential insight into his subject: “In dreams…we see the events of the past (I have been at Culloden fight and at the siege of Troy)”.

    He collects examples of shared dreams (and uses that term for them):

-          Five members of the Ogilvie family, in different locations dream that a family dog – a poodle called Fanti – goes mad. Subsequently, the poodle lives on, sane and harmless, for the rest of his natural life. However, Lang does not comment on the fact that an action was taken in one of the dreams, in which the family threw the dog into the fire.

-          Three members of the Swithinbanks family (father and two sons) dream the mother’s death on the same night and discover in the morning that indeed she died that night,

Lang also gives several examples of dream tracking (my turn) in which dreams reveal the location of lost objects, making allowance for the possibility that the dreaming mind may simply be making better sense of details half-observed in waking life:

-          a lawyer dreams that a check he has lost is curled around a street railing (he dropped it when he went out to post letters)

-          a girl in Lang’s family dreamed that the missing ducks’ eggs were at a place in a certain field, where they proved to be

-          an Irish lady dreamed a lost key was lying at the root of a certain tree

Lang’s story collection includes one of my all-time favorite accounts of dream precognition, which I discuss in Conscious Dreaming as The Case of the Bishop’s Pig. Here is Lang’s original version:

THE PIG IN THE DINING-ROOM.

Mrs. Atlay, wife of a late Bishop of Hereford, dreamed one night that there was a pig in the dining-room of the palace. She came downstairs, and in the hall told her governess and children of the dream, before family prayers. When these were over, nobody who was told the story having left the hall in the interval, she went into the dining-room and there was the pig. It was proved to have escaped from the sty after Mrs. Atlay got up.

“Millions of such things are dreamed”, Lang comments. At first sight, the dream is of “the common grotesque type” – except that it proved to be a quite literalistic preview of an incident that was played out in ordinary life. The Case of the Bishop’s Pig reminds us that we don’t want to skip asking whether elements of a dream could be played out in the future, even when the dream content seems “weird” or “grotesque”.

Art: Prize Pig, Cardiff by Richard Whitford (1872)

Three: Truth Caller, Green Skin, Birthday Waters

1

Truth Caller

She stands straight as a spear. Young, tall, ivory-skinned. The fall of her hair: straight and long as a horse’s tail. Her clear bright eyes reach into secret places. They make deceivers squirm. They are the eyes of a truth caller.
    I know where I want her to be. I move her like a chess piece to the edge of the concourse, where the people who come here for power and show must pass. Let them see her and tremble for the consciences they left behind. She stands straight as the spear of Athena.

2

Green Skin

I sample the fruit before I join my hosts at the table. It is green-skinned, small and round. When I try to peel it, the skin does not readily yield the flesh. The pieces drip through my fingers. The green fruit is good eating, neither sweet nor sour.
    At the table, they give me a platter of the green fruit, already sliced. I see I am meant to eat the skin. I have brought some of the green balls with me. I bite into these, enjoying the play of teeth and hands, eating skin and all, before I take a fork to what has been sliced and prepared. I am filling with green fire.

3

Birthday waters

My companions and I have agreed to meet on a remote, rocky shore in the cold dawn, to make a ceremony of renewal. Our clothes are simple, homespun or merely skins, in the style of this ancient time. This is the birthday of our cause. The waters are chill, the sky is leaden, but we will perform the act.
    My place is apart from the others: a high natural platform of rock jutting out from a sea cave, above the waters, which turn and roil here as if something vast is stirring in the deep.
    I stand back now, as observer. My mind hovers above the scene like a sea bird. I see the companions who have entered the sea from the pebbled beach. They stand waist-deep, watching the man on the high ledge. I was in him, and he in me, but now there is distance between us. I will witness his passion, not join myself to it.
    There is something of the holy man about him. And the king, and the fool.
    His garments fall away from him like tree bark. He drops into the sea with his two legs pressed together. The people on the beach shriek like gulls.
    The man from the rock is gone for a long time. The others begin to doubt that he will return. One by one, they drift away, seeking warmth and food and solace.
    Only a child will see when the drowned man returns.
    On that day, the world will change. Even the child may not remember what the world was like before, except in the dreams of an old man.
     These are birthday waters.

Sometimes all the dreamwork I feel called to do is to write (or draw) the scenes that stay with me as well as I can and let them speak for themselves, as creative acts. These three vignettes came from my dreams in the early hours of Friday morning.

The Bloodied Hedgehog: Dream as Flash Fiction

I decide to swim the lake from bottom to top. It’s a hundred miles, I figure. I manage the distance, but there’s no way I can swim back without stopping. So I get out and find a bicycle. It must have a motor, because now I can thread the traffic on a busy road, following the median. There is a big American flag up ahead, so I think Canada must be that way, beyond a border post. I am not planning to go there today, so I find another form of transportation.
     I’m now in a huge gasoline tanker with a double cabin. I park it on a side road in the middle of the night to catch a nap. When I wake, I’m concerned maybe I don’t have enough gas to get where I want to go in the tanker. I don’t notice the irony of driving a gas tanker that is running low on gas until I look back on this. I could do with some help. I can say I just happened on the tanker and was trying to do the right thing with it.
    To support this story I paint my face to look like an American Indian from a tribe I know only by name. I come to a family farm where a father is giving instructions to his grown sons. He looks like a decent sort so I present myself to him. He’s no hayseed. He has a lawyer’s wits and he sees through my disguise. He tells me it’s the last day of a big native powwow and if I can get in there they will give me the right cover, but to do this I must stop pretending to be the wrong kind of Indian and present myself as the kind I truly am.
    So I wipe off the paint and enter a general store full of Indians where they have big pots of soup and corn mush on the cookers. A broad, flat-faced woman sizes me up, says she knows me. I tell her I often feel I have met people before, somewhere out of this time. It’s like opening a top drawer in a chest and having a bottom drawer fly open.
    She talks about someone she thinks I must know. “When other people bring a bottle of wine or a six-pack to a party, he shows up with a bloodied hedgehog.”
    “Don’t you mean a porcupine?”
    “No. A porcupine has quills you can pull out and wear. A hedgehog doesn’t.”
    “Hedgehogs are cute.”
    “Not this one.”
    No bloody use for a bloodied hedgehog, we agree. I realize that I am speaking without closing my lips, the way her people speak. We don't say “porcupine” because there is no P in Kanienka talk. We say it their way. Anen:taks.
     I guess I’m in.

Sometimes all I want to do with a dream is tell its story. The shifting modes of transportation here are fascinating to me as symbols. I am intrigued by the irony of driving a gas tanker that may be running low on gas. I am excited by the prompt to recall my connections with a Native American people whose language and customs I was led to study by big dreams many years ago. I remember once having to slam on the brakes when I was driving a Mohawk family in northern Ontario because they had spotted roadkill, a dead porcupine, and wanted to harvest the quills for jewelry. But first and last, with this report of a dream from last night, I want the satisfaction of serving up flash fiction like hot soup from that country stove.

Drawing (c) Robert Moss

The Audience with the Rememberer

A woman traveler describes her experiences in an extraordinary land, to the astonishment of people who know this country only from a book. They learn from her that the land of legends is real. She learns from their book what the anomalous events and conditions she has experienced may mean.

This was the 50 word report of a dream, as I recorded it on waking on the morning of March 23, 2003. The legacy of the dream was a sense of wonder, and a keen desire to know more. However, the details were flown, and I had no time to try to journey back inside the dream, because I was catching an early plane and needed to get dressed, finish packing, and rush to the airport.
     A good friend named Carol had agreed to assist me in leading a workshop, and we were booked on the same flight to Chicago, en route to places West. After we had claimed our seats and survived the automated safety briefing, I told Carol what I remembered from my dream. "What do you want to know?" she asked, following our regular dream-sharing process. "I want to know more about everything. I want to know all about the land of legends."
     Gently, Carol started a line of questioning that brought the dream alive in my mind. As I responded, I started taking frantic notes. Soon they had filled a dozen pages of my journal, and were already more than notes. They were becoming the first draft of a story. When I got to my hotel, I typed it up.
    It recounts the adventure of a young woman named Constantina. On her way to her sister's baby shower, she slips into another reality, into a strange country known to her people only through "a book compiled by an itinerant schoolmaster who was charged with sacrilege and forced to flee into exile. It is a land that is hard to describe, because it has more angles.” 
     She meets the Rememberer, a prince of the city with a forked beard, half white and half black. Their audience takes place in a pool shaped like a figure 8 or lemniscate symbol of infinity. The Rememberer is submerged below the waist. He communicates through a tablet composed of lines and waves of some electric force. It crackles like a toaster or an old bar radiator about to explode. The flashes conform to an unknown but coherent alphabet of signs. 
     When she returns home, there is a great public gathering where people ply her with questions. They ask her for her feelings about the strange man. She tells them, “I felt his indifference, the indifference of one who has seen the birth and death of suns and has outlived everything he ever loved. What I mostly noticed was his smell. It was the smell of attar of roses, cut with turmeric. And his eyes. His eyes are bottomless wells.”
     And so on, and on. When I was finished typing, I had 4,000 words, raw and strange, organized by dream logic and poetic resemblance. 

This was a quite magical experience of dream retrieval. So much can come back to us, from the other side of the wall between the worlds, when we allow it to come. The process can be greatly assisted by a caring friend who knows how to tease us to bring back more. It truly prospers when we don't interrupt ourselves by asking, Am I making this up?
    All of this came back to me when I lunched with my friend Carol and recollected in conversation how she had helped me to bring through this story. Alas, I had left my story unfinished. I had meant to go back to the draft, after that trip, and see what it wanted to become. I did go back, in a break in my travels, and developed my journal notes into something closer to a publishable story. But I could not find that version when I was choosing and polishing some of my stories for my collection Here, Everything Is Dreaming. Maybe it was time to complete it. 
    I went looking for the draft and found the journal version I have excerpted here, but not the more elaborate second draft. It seemed that the second draft had never made it to my electronic data base. I did find the drawing I made, which I titled "The Audience with the Rememberer".

    Then another friend recounted a dream that, while scary, had given her the gift of a terrific scene and a marvelously wicked villain for a novel she is writing. 
    I felt an acute desire to get back to completing one of my own dream-driven stories. Yes, I could work from my journal entries with that raw first draft. But I would really like to resurrect the second draft and remember where I had taken the tale, or where the tale had taken me. Surely I had hard copy somewhere in my house.
    With some trepidation, I confronted the hundred documents boxes (no kidding) in a storeroom in my basement, many of them allowed to languish for years. Where to begin? On a whim, I pulled out a box that had unrelated materials on top. Brushing these aside, I found, in the second folder below, a typed draft of "The Rememberer". This gave me a little shiver of recognition; the shelf elves were in friendly mood.

    My second draft is the length of a novella, but (as I said) unfinished, containing many mysteries, not all of the kind that can ever be figured out by the reasoning mind. Yes, I remember: I have a significant dream-directed writing assignment to fulfill.

"Audience with the Rememberer" (c) Robert Moss

Andrew Lang on the best dream stories

Andrew Lang (1844-1922), a prolific Scots author best-known for his popular "color" books of fairy stories, wrote a book on dreams that is one of my favorites. Titled The Book of Dreams and Ghosts, it was first published in 1897. Lang affected a cool skepticism towards this subject material, which allows him to slide readers cunningly into the deep end, as he recounts case after case of timefolding and interdimensional travel in dreams, based on research ranging from Classical literature to Highland folklore and reports from his neighbors.
    As a consummate storyteller, Lang was always alert for the story value of his material. He raises the question: Which dreams make the best stories? He concludes that the dreams that make the best stories are those that reveal the “unknown past”, “the unknown present” and the “unknown future”. In other words, he especially likes dreams that reveal episodes in regular life that were previously unknown but can be subsequently verified. If we dreamed of being present in "an unchronicled scene" at the court of a long-dead queen, and a document confirming what we witnessed were later discovered, "then there is matter for a good dream-story."
    "Perhaps nothing, not even a ghost, is so staggering to the powers of belief as a well-authenticated dream which strikes the bull's eye of facts not known to the dreamer nor capable of being guessed by him...What we need is a dream or vision of the unknown past, corroborated by a document not known to exist at the time when the vision took place and was recorded."
    Here Lang describes a core element in the discipline I call dream archaeology, of whose findings I give many examples in my own books, including Dreaming the Soul Back Home and the forthcoming The Boy Who Died and Came Back.
     Lang's references to his own dream life, though modest and brief, suggest he had experiential insight into his subject and that he believed he was a time traveler in his dreams: “In dreams, we see the events of the past. I have been at Culloden fight and at the siege of Troy."
     He understood that dreaming is social as well as individual, and that we meet others in our dreams and may find we have memories of these encounters. He made a collection of reports of shared dreams (and used that term for them) including the following:

- Five members of the Ogilvie family, in different locations dream that a family dog – a poodle called Fanti – goes mad. Subsequently, the poodle lives on, sane and harmless, for the rest of his natural life. Lang leaves us to speculate on whether the dog's fate was changed when one of the dreamer's took action in his dream, throwing the poodle into the fire.

- Three members of the Swithinbanks family (father and two sons) dream the mother’s death on the same night and discover in the morning that indeed she died that night,

Lang gives several examples of dream tracking (my term) in which dreams reveal the location of lost objects.

- a lawyer dreams that a check he has lost is curled around a street railing (he dropped it when he went out to post letters)
- a girl in Lang’s family dreams that the missing ducks’ eggs were at a place in a certain field, where they proved to be
- an Irish lady dreams a lost key was lying at the root of a certain tree, where it is subsequently found.

He allows that in such cases, the dreaming mind may simply be putting half-observed data together better than its waking counterpart. But he also tips us a huge wink that dreamers may see such things because while the body sleeps, the dream self is out and about a-roving.