Saturday Memory for 8.22.26
August
23
Today, I am remembering this earlier post.
Russell’s Sentences
Doing What a Dream Demands
The very idea would strike most people as silly, ludicrous, nonsensical.
I do not take demands from anyone easily.
Well, maybe from my wife, Frankie.
But from a dream?
Actually, I do so quite often.
But not easily.
Not just demands, but suggestions, hints of direction, and other such.
Several plates are laden with dream tasks.
But the dream was clear.
Write in single sentences, no gathering of sentences into paragraphs.
Reminding me of a literature professor who declared that a close reading of any text required rewriting the text as single sentences.
Something akin to not seeing the trees for the forest, in a reversal he was known for.
Don’t be surprised then to see me write something in lonesome sentences.
Preaching to the choir. In medias res. Of writing what has ensued from a shirt dream 23 years ago in which YOU instruct me to go get a book. Yep. In a 23 year mission to follow ONE dream, look what you did here?! ?
Perhaps the most demanding or taxing aspects of this dictum “Doing What a Dream Demands,” occurs when the “demand” puts one in conflict with just about everything the community can support, such a conflict for example as an aspect of reality seeking to be lived in the individual for the sake of wholeness but to so act conflicts with community values. This kind of conflict reminds us of Jung’s repeated admonition about the importance of integrating the shadow. Sadly shadow work is now merely a faint intellectualised memory in Jungian circles.