tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14072474.post8201277631716266189..comments2023-11-03T06:36:27.305-04:00Comments on Phronesisaical: My Little Empirehelmuthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09069600766378586919noreply@blogger.comBlogger7125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14072474.post-67305962250191162312008-05-26T03:03:00.000-04:002008-05-26T03:03:00.000-04:00I don't think I'm making up that alter-ego. It's p...I don't think I'm making up that alter-ego. It's pretty much me, after all. But you're right about the continuity. Dreams tend not to work that way. And, in this case, they often don't as individual dreams - they're par for the course dreams, with no clear narrative and displacements in time and space. But that they go together startled me. And, really, I don't think I'm doing all that connecting work while awake and just not realizing it.helmuthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09069600766378586919noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14072474.post-20754616570204709092008-05-19T23:20:00.000-04:002008-05-19T23:20:00.000-04:00I sympathize with the fear and certainly hope not ...I sympathize with the fear and certainly hope not to have been complicit in any murder, real or dreamed, but if the experience is the marvel it seems it's not something easy to meddle with consciously. I concede the city part is cool, but what grabs me is the implication that our dreaming self isn't born anew each night with incidental resemblance to the nights before, but has a memory and is an extension of those nights in the way our daytime self is--independently and as if behind a Wall. It's the discovery of an alter ego, whose existence we've denied on waking every morning since we were infants, except it/he/she really exists...or so says the dream.MThttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02341704109256270557noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14072474.post-74649047322011739982008-05-19T08:38:00.000-04:002008-05-19T08:38:00.000-04:00The epiphany was indeed a dream epiphany, rather t...The epiphany was indeed a dream epiphany, rather than something that happened when I woke up. Or it may have happened in that strange middle state between the one and the other. Dreams are clever trickster beasts, so the possibility that one dream was a synthesis dream of previous dreams that never actually existed is a possibility. But I've written down dreams in the past and have a sort of waking record to myself that they actually existed as separate dreams and separate places. The making-sense dream might still just be that - a dream that links up others that really are only separate entities, so there's nothing that's taken place over time but just one moment of linkage. That could be. There's reason to be suspicious. Dreams usually aren't so cleanly narrative, with beginnings and ends and all that.<BR/><BR/>But even if this is the case, it doesn't matter for the idea of a city constructed neighborhood by neighborhood, maybe especially because the epiphany took place in the dream rather than me consciously forcing some overall story onto a collection of dreams. The only problem is that I might have killed off this process by writing about it.helmuthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09069600766378586919noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14072474.post-16540341019754484332008-05-19T02:56:00.000-04:002008-05-19T02:56:00.000-04:00Anyway, not to be blasé--I think this is super far...Anyway, not to be blasé--I think this is super far-out, whatever it is.MThttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02341704109256270557noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14072474.post-42505405659666230222008-05-19T02:52:00.000-04:002008-05-19T02:52:00.000-04:00And what about the discovery that my landscape is ...<I>And what about the discovery that my landscape is one continuous city rather than many, as I had always thought?</I><BR/><BR/>I think I have had a dream epiphany like this--that is, a dream that I experienced as making sense of dreams from nights dating back to my childhood and startlingly implying that my sleeping self was as continuous as my waking one, with its own memories. And I swore the mother of all dream vows that I would write it down when I woke, but I didn't, because I suck at remembering my dreams...except perhaps while dreaming. So thanks for reminding me! At the same time, I have a party-pooping concern that the epiphany could be just a dream epiphany, and not a real or true one--as in, these suddenly unified dreams weren't actually related until the dream relating them. Or as in, were these truly past dreams being perceived as related or was their attribute of "being from the past" just a part of your dream. Do these not seem like sensible concerns? Maybe they wouldn't to me, if I remembered more or better whatever your post is reminding me about in my own dream life.MThttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02341704109256270557noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14072474.post-34589051680351158112008-05-19T02:44:00.000-04:002008-05-19T02:44:00.000-04:00This comment has been removed by the author.MThttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02341704109256270557noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14072474.post-81042346127186981612008-05-19T00:40:00.000-04:002008-05-19T00:40:00.000-04:00Helmut,Italo Calvino would be proud. And I say th...Helmut,<BR/><BR/>Italo Calvino would be proud. And I say this even though I never got to know Calvino intimately, in his native city or any other for that matter. Still, he got to know me and to shape me and my expectations, when I travel through cities that are new to me, in much the same way that you suspect your serial dreams are constructing for you a soul that you have lost or, perhaps, never before recognized as your own.<BR/><BR/>Yes, Italo Calvino would be proud of your narrative attention to the theme of loss ... something about which Plato, with his inner-outer dyad of the impossible city, would have nothing to say except that you are, of course, merely remembering the truth.<BR/><BR/>KituAnonymousnoreply@blogger.com