Upon selecting my course schedule for the semester, I knew immediately that Dreams/391W would be the wild card in the deck. Expect the unexpected, English majors should –at least that’s my personal belief. It’s vital to take oneself out of one’s comfort zone, especially if writing is a key component of his or her life. The 21^st Century is far too fast-paced and globalized to remain provincial. Due to social networking, the masses have opened up and writing about one’s personal life is immensely more common today. This phenomenon, I think has made this class stand out. Professor Tougaw has masterfully utilized this for the purposes of cross-disciplinary context in the highly-studied yet still highly-arguable phenomenon of dreaming.

I couldn’t pass this course up, no way, no how. When I spotted it, I immediately thought that this was the sort of class that I pined for in my last school as opposed to the rote, one-dimensional approach to literature that at times bordered on the dogmatic. The class did not disappoint in the least, offering a myriad of readings that even informed some from other classes. The close setting provided the feel of more of a round-table discussion as opposed to a straight lecture course and Professor Tougaw mixed it up to maximum effect -Waking Life, the Dali exhibit, it was a veritable highlight reel. For the first time  absences were the source of wistfulness and aggravation as I raged against the bad timing of circumstance as in “Of all days…Why not? Thursday?? %&%” Even Jane Eyre was  painless, dare I say even fun at times. Shakespeare’s “A Midsummer Nights Dream” through a perspective organic to the class and title was great as was Kazuo Ishiguro’s peerless The Unconsoled. The presentations also ushered in other perspectives on dreams besides the heavy hitters –Freud, Jung and Hartmann. Other students also brought in their own ideas and enthusiasms, which were all informed and as with my essay, provided a 360-degree view that naturally lent itself to a successful learning experience.

The insight gained with regards to my own dream experiences has deepened my knowledge of the phenomena, which I previously never had the opportunity to properly delve into, though always wondered about.

The process of writing my essay left me in unchartered waters, in a sense. More accustomed to gathering sources during the actual writing process, I experienced a bit of confusion as to reconciling my thesis with sources selected previously. Once the writing process commenced, it was clear that due to the expanse of my subject, a nuanced approached wouldn’t be conducive to coherence. The delving through sources undoubtedly shed new light on the subject however, which in and of itself is significant. A 360-degree view of the subject is prerequisite to any real insight, naturally, so the endeavor has exacerbated my enjoyment of the subject material.

The organization of my essay will be streamlined according to the material covered; sub-sections will coalesce with main topics, hopefully tying it all up. New source material will weigh heavily in the rewrite of essay because of its autobiographical nature. So far this project has as been even more fun than anticipated. Furthermore, I achieved a much greater understanding of some of the concepts relating to the main texts, as there have been a plethora of clear examples provided by my subject material.

I saved my worst for last. This dream is from about ten years ago and now seems to serve as unconscious counter-weight to my many moments of opinionated bluntness.

I’m on a talk show and every time the faceless host asks me a question nothing comes out, my voice is gone and replaced by a guitar riff from a band that defines horrendous with regards to personal taste –Creed. The riff in question immediately follows the chorus of that terrible song, “Can you take me Higher.” The host repeatedly sticks the microphone in my face and that riff comes out with the slightest parting of my lips. –And the audience cheers louder each time.

As with Dream One -the Devil is a Jets fan- this one has disturbed me since I experienced it and the fact that I can chalk it up to Jungian theory makes this worth the price of admission alone.

The Unconsoled was worth its daunting size in a number of ways. It is an almost dead-pan indictment of a society that places far too much of a cultural burden upon its artists. The disassociative nature of the narration reflects the flux of an artist trying to balance pleasing an audience with paying proper attention to family. Ishiguro made this a unique story told from an equally unique perspective. I’m not sure any other writer could have pulled off what he did with such understated aplomb. A novel organic to the disassociation of the put-upon masses in this century, The Unconsoled was way ahead of the curve.

I look outside and in the next door backyard, there are children crawling around a junkyard, playing amongst a mountain of discarded tires, and junked-out cars. A radio is playing loudly and its nighttime. I go outside to protest but there is nobody around. The children play and I grow anxious when I see snakes slithering around the tires.

This dream occurred days after a confrontation with inconsiderate neighbors and is metaphorical in nature.

The Unconsoled is a deceptively complex read, never abjectly unenjoyable but painstakingly deliberate in its pacing. Despite Ryder’s seemingly all-knowing nature, he seems at times to be the only one not in on some unknown joke, pretending to understand at times when he clearly doesn’t. To the contrary, he launches into a personal conversation with a character new to the reader with little to no warning. Coupled with the ambiguity regarding location and time period, Ryder’s journey is explicitly dreamlike, making for an enthralling, if curious read.

Waking Life brilliantly mimics dream experiences and their sometimes loose relationship with the material world. Wiley suffers from a malady all too relevant to the 21^st century citizen, inundated as he is with theories and expert opinions from all sides. As result of our twenty-four hour news cycle, ubiquitous media and the ensuing overinformed populace, many get lost in the narrative of events and lose a grip on reality. To veer off on a political tangent if only to examine how this plays out topically, I’ll use an example the sharp rise in gun sales since the POTUS was elected.

Thanks to the bizarre proclamations of those in the conservative entertainment industry, many law-abiding (and some not as well) citizens are terrified that POTUS will replace the constitution with a unilateral socialism and revoke the right to own firearms. More people believe this by the day it seems and gun stores are literally running out of ammo. His clear aversion to riling the well-funded gun lobby is evidenced by still not nominating a director of the ATF and tepid support for the reinstatement of the automatic weapons ban which lapsed under the previous regime. Taking into consideration the aforementioned gun sale spike, both certainly appear to be pressing matters. Yet the pundits howl making viewers and listeners rage against a leftist liberal boogeyman that is crafted as much to sell advertising time as it is to sway votes.

Years ago, my own experiences with lucid dreaming were disconcerting, the result of seventy-two hours plus without sleep, (mainly work-related) involving a sort of déjà vu and a simultaneously collapsing and expanding nature of time that culminated in a sort of disassociation. It wasn’t as prolific as Wiley’s but an almost indescribable experience, albeit one I’ll leave unendorsed if avoided.

A raccoon is in the yard while my dog is outside. I go out to chase it away with a stick but the raccoon just sits there and my dog barks at me to leave it alone. She waits until I return to the deck before following me up. The raccoon is huge but not at all threatening and is still sitting there when I shut off the light.

My wife rouses me awake and points to a giant grasshopper standing by our window swallowing every insect that tries to get in. It turns towards us and shakes its legs in the air before returning to its task. My wife says to me its not a cricket, it’s a grasshopper then falls back to sleep. I watch it for a moment before it turns to me, making a loud bristly sound and motions me to lie down again and go back to sleep.

Dali’s 1939 World’s Fair exhibit stands at a historical crossroads; on the cusp of World War ll it incorporates a living staple of the decade and its dusty downturn, the traveling “carnie” show. In contrast, “The Birth of Venus” is featured prominently at its entrance, underscored by visitors entering between a pair of legs, as if to imply they will be reborn, as it were, by Surrealism at its confrontational finest: nude models snoozing peacefully before them. It is a dynamic exercise in voyeurism, one so deft and vivid that I imagine it easy to forget that it, after all, is a living exhibit. Even if outraged by the nudity, the visitor has played an important role in it functioning as such. It is disheartening to consider that in today’s political climate such a challenging aesthetic might provoke an even more virulent reaction than in 1939, perhaps even being shelved altogether. The dreamlike experience of it could have easily acted as an escapist vehicle for those following the increasingly foreboding news coming out of Europe at the time.