Haiku and dreams. Dreams of the night
variety, that is. Both are equally important to me, although I'm not
very diligent about writing my dreams down each day, whereas I will
almost always write down my haiku. I hope to get much better at this,
as I value highly what my dreams are telling me. Below is my
favourite quote about dreams that sums up my feelings exactly:
Suppose someone told you
that there was something that spoke to
you every night,
that always presented you with a truth about your
own life and soul,
that was tailor-made to your individual needs
and particular life-story,
and that offered to guide you
throughout your lifetime,
and connect you with a source of wisdom
far beyond yourself.
And, furthermore, suppose that all of this
was absolutely free.
Naturally you would be astonished that
something like this existed.
Yet this is exactly the way it is with
our dreams. ~ John A. Sanford (1975), Dreams and
Healing, Paulist Press, NY
My blog title actually comes from a
dream: In it I was literally swimming in lines of haiku and only
awoke, with a sudden start, when I heard hubby's whispered
exclamations as he'd hit his leg on the way into the bedroom (or
something similar). I love water and swimming, so swimming in lines
of haiku was a wonderful experience for me. I'm currently searching out
dream haiku for my month as one of
The Haiku Foundation's
Per Diem: Daily Haiku editor's with my chosen theme of 'Dream Speak',
the title of which I took from one of my own haiku:
dream
speak...
sunlight
on the opening
tulip's
tips
So,
I thought it was about time I wrote a haiku about my above dream, and came up with this on Friday:
even
in my dreams
swimming
in lines
of
haiku
I'd
wanted to change my blog's welcome picture ever since I moved last
November, as the iconic Mount Manganui and beach scene was now in a
different region to my new home. As of Friday, I have a very
cool photo of rippling water, which I took some years ago in this
region (Waikato) with the well-known Kiwi icon of a silver fern
floating under the surface. And I've added my new haiku into the mix
to convey my two favourite things as well as to give readers, old and
new, some insight into me and my blog's title. I've always liked the image and am happy to be able to give it a fitting home at last.
During
my dream haiku search, I came across the book Inside Out: Haiku and Dreams
by Joseph Kirschner (Deep North Press, 2003). I was overjoyed when, on contacting Joseph and
telling him what I was up to, he kindly sent me a copy of his book as
a gift! Gosh, how I LOVE our haiku community :) I am thoroughly
enjoying reading Inside
Out and
am grateful to read the haiku, dreams and explanations within
it. (You can read a review by Modern Haiku here.) I will certainly look at writing more haiku from my dreams: It
could definitely be a good way to get me to write at least some of my
dream/s down each morning! After all:
Jung observed that dreams perform
restorative, corrective, compensatory, prophetic, and developmental
roles in our psyche; that to attend to our dreams is to attend to the
cry of the soul. ~ From The Art of Dreaming by Jill Mellick (Conari
Press, 2001)
