AFTER THE FOURTH OF JULY

[photo: webshots.com]

As I was going through my files for ideas for today's post I ran across this old piece, written in 1984. The memory it references is of a Fourth of July in my childhood, so it seems appropriate to post it now, if a day late.

This piece is not what I would call successful writing. I've edited it many times, both expanding and contracting it, and finally left it as the flawed but deeply felt piece it is.

I am also hard pressed to categorize it. It's not a short-short story, nor is it really a prose poem. So I'll simply leave it as a childhood memory; maybe, a vignette.

NOW AND THEN

The evening is dreary. A car slips by spewing water across the sidewalks. Its headlights briefly splash twin asterisks of light on my rain wet window pane. How much they look like sparklers...

I can still smell the pungent odor of the last sparkler my father lit. My spirit jumps in sympathy with my towheaded brother's rabbit path around our father. "Please, please, please Daddy, one more, one more!" Phssst, fizzle and Daddy answers his plea. We all stand, momentarily content to be silent and together as the brief beauty burns down...

Long after the bright stars on the window have gone, a tender glow remains, cradled by the night.

* * * *

It just now struck me as I proofed this post that its nostalgia echos the card for today on my Tarot blog (link at bottom of this post), which is about The Six of Cups.

Resource: New Pages.Com, Online Literary Magazines, listings for online publications.

‘til next time, keep dreaming,

Roswila
[aka: Patricia Kelly]
****If you wish to copy or use any of my writing or poems, please email me for permission (under “View my complete profile”)****My other blog: ROSWILA’S TAROT GALLERY & JOURNAL.

REVIEW OF DREAM EXPLORATION, by Robert P. Gongloff

DREAM EXPLORATION:
A New Approach, by Robert P. Gongloff

Llewellyn Publications, Woodbury, MN; 2006;
ISBN 0-7387-0818-6; Llewellyn.com

After many years of dream work, reading of relevant literature, writing stories and poems based on dreams, and so on, I was excited by the idea of a new approach to dream work. On reading "Dream Exploration" I was not disappointed.

If one comes away from this book with only one thing -- how to determine the theme of a dream -- one will have gained a great deal. Gongloff’s descriptions of how to determine a dream’s theme clarified why some of my own dreams seem to "unzip" with ease, while others remain relatively closed. That in the former instance I am identifying the theme: the underlying question that one needs to be asking and addressing in one’s waking life.

Gongloff also makes a somewhat uncommon recommendation to keep a day journal -- notes about the day before going to sleep. This is an extremely valuable suggestion. I have been keeping a detailed daily journal for many years (for other reasons than dreams) and find it a tremendous aid to dream work. I stumbled across this deeply reciprocal relationship between my day and dream journal by accident, working it out as I went along. Gongloff outlines clearly how it can be done.

However, Gongloff’s system is not for the casual dream worker. Though I hasten to add that it does have a tremendous amount to offer, if one is willing and able to put in the time and effort that would be required to learn and apply his elegant and detailed system. I believe it would be ideal for a dream worker who likes or wants a prescriptive approach. Someone new to dream work who has the requisite dedication, could also do quite well with this book as it covers the basics and outlines a very clear structure for the process.

This book includes many charts, sample dreams and possible evaluations of them, instructions, categories, a good bibliography, and so on. Gongloff is also very thorough in offering practical ways to apply what you gain from dream work to your waking life.

In fact, given the breadth of his system I would say this book is ultimately not about dream work, but about life work – day and dream work. About listening for the questions and where they direct our attention, so that we may grow into those souls we sometimes glimpse in waking mystical moments and in the most numinous of our dreams.

* * * *

‘til next time, keep dreaming,

Roswila
[aka: Patricia Kelly]
****If you wish to copy or use any of my writing or poems, please email me for permission (under “View my complete profile”)****My other blog: ROSWILA’S TAROT GALLERY & JOURNAL.