Passing though a neighborhood, I notice something though thick metal fencing. There’s a charming abandoned house deep within a private lot I’ve never been in, to the right of a flat patch of dried grass. I thought it had been redeveloped years ago and was long gone. It’s just a neglected barn-looking thing but it’s surprising and nice to see it again. I take pictures through the fence.
I’ve been having trouble lately getting myself to write down the dreams. The habit comes in cycles; I admit it. Sometimes it seems like there’s certain more powerful dream that overwhelm me, make me resent how relevant or insightful they are. Often I just get sick of having so many dreams end up in the hopper (that’s what I call the large backlog of unpublished, partially-edited dreams clogging up the back end of my site — currently sitting at 376). Even though I’m aware that these are fully for me, and that I can go look though them at any time, there’s something bothersome. Perhaps it feels a little like disrespecting those dreams. I know, too, that those are remembered more poorly — the longer they sit back there, the less likely I am to review them. So I want them published. But what’s the solution? Occasionally I’ll tell myself to strap myself in and power through the more recent ones. I’ll get through 3, maybe 5 if I’m lucky. And that could happen once every few months. Maybe more. Meanwhile, it’s not a big change. Turns out I mostly don’t remember most dreams. Worse, it seems that when I do go to the extra effort to carefully document them, the memories of writing them down can overwhelm the feelings from the dream itself. Such a delicate balance.
This has been an interesting experiment, this dream journal of the last 6 years. But it would seem I’m starting to come up against diminishing returns. I need to change something. I want it to be more than it’s been.
It occurs to me, not without some savor, that I’ve been meaning to pen down some of these dream journal meta-critiques for awhile. And it was a dream of an abandoned barn house that did it…