NIMIETY (photo) & BEFORE & AFTER (paired dreamku/haiku) by Roswila

BEFORE & AFTER
(a paired dreamku/haiku)


overcast river
she returns to the dark rock
split by the tree

* * *

standing before a gate
overgrown with dense green vines
no turning back


[these dreamku were dreamed/written in 12-08 and 3-08, respectively. They can also be considered haiku, largely because the scenes could actually have happened in waking life. They’ve been posted here, years go but not as a pair. I stumbled across them reading the three old steno -- small spiral bound -- notebooks in which I used to hand write my dreamku. Many of those old dreamku I turned into monoku and edited in other ways. Much of this I did on top of previous old edits. The books are barely legible now, with all the scratching-out and arrows, but are still a good record to have. The only other place the vast majority of these appear is on my blogs. The last hand entry was made in May of 2010. Now, everything is on my computer (with almost everything also posted to my blogs). In those earlier years, I also kept a dream journal. A single, three line dreamku was just a “highlight” that was still capable of calling up the entire dream for me. Then I transitioned into letting the dreamku be the total record I kept of any dream (i.e., no dream journaling anymore). And I began to see that after years had passed a single dreamku, on a single aspect of a dream, no longer always had the entire dream tethered to it in my memory. So these notebooks are also a reminder of how and when dreamku began evolving from the three-line, single poem form as above, into its present mostly lengthy blend of dreamku, tanka, two-liners and monoku. This blend of forms that more fully records an entire dream and sometimes more than one dream. Photo “Nimiety” 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....".

* * * *

‘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.