RING AROUND THE ROSIE (photo) & TRUE BELIEVER (tanka series) by Roswila

TRUE BELIEVER

she knows her purpose
is to assassinate him –
to achieve this end
she’s been thoroughly trained
in the martial arts

proof she’s both licensed
now and qualified for the job:
her long white earrings –
made of heavy linked rings
they hang onto her shoulders

as if their weight has
forced her ears briefly open,
she pauses to wonder
what she’d just heard singing
beneath the roar of her blood

but each of the rings
might as well be through her nose,
led inexorably
on as she is by the ancient
demand of imbedded belief


[four tanka on a dream of 8-24-12. Before I go on, I'll simply add that this dream really shook some stuff loose for me (in a very good way). That said, I've been reading "The Believing Brain" by Michael Shermer, a book about how we come to believe what we do, and was waiting for a belief theme to show up in my dreams. I'd already been becoming more and more aware of how illusory all perception (the source and back-up for beliefs) really is and the book supports this. But it also posits that there is a reality out there, just that it's not necessarily what we perceive/believe it to be. And how can we know this reality? The book posits by on-going application of the scientific method. Hm, maybe. The book mentions a part of our brain (left hemisphere interpreter) whose sole purpose is to put all the various input coming from the many different parts of our brain at any given waking moment into a coherent story line. As the book claims, stemming from our in-born survival mechanism of seeking patterns in what we perceive. I wonder if this is the part of the brain also responsible for our dream narratives? Especially if we understand dreams as our brain's night work filing the many bits and pieces of memories, feelings, thoughts, etc. into long term memory. Then that left hemisphere interpreter would kick in to try to make some sort of sense of each batch of filing, if you will. And if so, it would seem dreams and waking may be equally illusory, equally stories our left hemisphere interpreter creates in an attempt to make sense of a great deal of varied information. What also strikes me is that in each state -- waking or sleeping -- we rarely deeply question our perceptions. We tend to believe ourselves. Photo “Ring Around the Rosie…” by Roswila]

BRIEF INTRODUCTION TO DREAMKU (& PHOTOS): The dream-based poems posted on this blog -- dreamku, tanka, two-liners, and monoku -- are offered in the spirit of collaboration. I have done my part. Now it’s your turn to jump in and see what comes up for you. I.e., there is no right or wrong way to understand or interpret any of these dream offerings. Even my own understandings of them change over time. And it gives me joy when a reader sees something in any of them that I have not.

For more in-depth exploration:

-- a brief post about both dreamku and my photos THE AREN'TS OF DREAMKU & ACCOMPANYING DIGITAL PHOTOS.

-- detailed three-part post about dreamku: "A DREAMKU PRIMER: Writing Haiku-Like Poems About Your Night Dreams": PART ONE: Introduction & Writing Dreamku as Dream Work; PART TWO: Elements of the Haiku Form Used in Dreamku; and PART THREE: How to Write Dreamku (the second and third parts have some overlap).

-- a brief up-dating post about the three-part "A DREAMKU PRIMER" -- Important Up-date to A DREAMKU PRIMER....".

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‘til next time, keep dreaming,






If you wish to copy or use any of my writing or poems, please email me for permission (under “View my complete profile”). Roswila's other blogs: ROSWILA’S TAROT GALLERY & JOURNAL; ROSWILA’S TAIGA TAROT; and TRYING TO HOLD A BOX OF LIGHT.