Wednesday, March 3, 2010

Disorientation

We have been talking about how one's actual geographical orientation in dreams functions. Especially the non-euclidian aspects of dream geography, and the multiple overlayering of place. But these are usually based on secondary analytic responses. What is the psychic operation we actually perform within the dream to know where we are? I posted a piece on "associative geography" at the sister icecrawler site two months ago, but I could have posted it here as well.


However, in dreams, the determination of place can be considered part of constructing the very place in the dream, and so the geographical knowledge may come much more directly and be a part of the place itself. When it isn't, one keeps jerking with imagining overlaying of the various places which have provided buldingblocks, or mere mnemonic associations.


But there are single dreams where we actually ask ourselves "where am I" and invent on the spot a method of investigating this. This is one of the basic questions of the cormorant council. Please give us your examples.


MF


PS mainly for those who read Swedish, I just posted a long dream including geographical themes (and some dream art), and a heroic appearance by the people behind the cormorant council as an explorer's expidition at the hälleflundran blog. For some reason I had written it down in Swedish.


2 comments:

zoe said...

i'm going to start asking myself "where am i?" as often as possible, until it occurs to me to do so in a dream. oddly, it seems that i simply accept my location, no matter how little sense it makes, in all dreams. for example, i'm remembering now a dream in which i was back in high school, and it occurred to me that i've just left college, and then i thought, well, anyway, i should still do as well as i can, or my performance there will come into question as well. and so all the anxieties that had been building up over whatever was going on remained. the more i think about it, the more this geography topic seems to be key for a lot of things...
i hope someone gives examples of methods they used in dreams? surely it would trigger something...

Anonymous said...

vad jag letade efter, tack