The Book of Dreams

By James David Audlin

"Dreams are essential to me. I do my best to pay attention to them. Not only do I often write them down, but I think about them for years afterwards. It is occasionally made clear to me that they are meant to be turned into stories or poems or plays, or even songs. ...

Dreams can be funny, irritating, frightening, profound, exciting, and everything else – but always sacred. Some of these dreams have been clearly prophetic, some came at significant moments in my life, and all of them are moving. ...

If nothing else, I hope you will find these dreams entertaining. More than that, you might appreciate this window into the craft of a writer. Best of all, perhaps you will sense through them how sacred and powerful the voice of Spirit is and be encouraged to listen for that voice yourself.

For these dreams are not mine, in the possessive sense; they are all of ours; they are Spirit’s."

--from the Preface

• Language: English
• Publisher: James David Audlin
• Release date: Dec 5, 2011
• ISBN: 9781466087545

James David Audlin

James David Audlin is an American author living in Panama, after previously living in France. A retired pastor, college professor, and newspaper opinion page editor, he is best known as the author of "The Circle of Life". He has written about a dozen novels, several full-length plays, several books of stories, a book of essays, a book of poetry, and a book about his adventures in Panama. Fluent in several languages, he has translated his novel "Rats Live on no Evil Star" into French ("Palindrome") and Spanish ("Palíndromo"). He also is a professional musician who composes, sings, and plays several instruments, though not usually at the same time. He is married to a Panamanian lady who doesn't read English and so is blissfully ignorant about his weirdly strange books. However his adult daughter and son, who live in Vermont, USA, are aware, and are wary, when a new book comes out.

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Not every dream I have ever had is included in this book, since I didn’t remember all of them when I awoke. Not every dream I remembered was recorded. Nor is every dream I recorded included herein – just those I think are of general interest, especially those that seem to evoke powerful archetypes. I leave out those few that merely reconfigure my ordinary daily experiences, that mean something only to me, or are too fragmentary, or are better appreciated by way of the literary or musical works that took shape from them. The latter are clearly marked as such if you consult the rest of my œuvre. Moreover, by its very nature, this book can never be finished. If ever one day I declare it finished, what, then, of the dream I have that night? What of the dream I have just before my death? As the folk song has it, Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily, life is but a dream.

I do include some poems and stories that were written directly as part of the dream experience, or very soon thereafter as part of the process of remembering and recording the dream. I also include some poems and stories that were written on dates significantly removed from the arrival of the dreams themselves when these works describe the dreams as accurately as the original notes but more engagingly. Other works not included herein (most often because of their length) that were based on dreams are listed in an appendix, though in certain cases the original descriptions of some or all of the dreams that inspired these works are given herein.

Only the first names of personal friends are given, in order to protect their privacy.

At the end I provide some notes on the poems, not so much interpreting them (which I consider not only difficult but also unuseful: the dream is its own message; let the dream be the dream!) as giving some background information and reflection that the reader might find interesting. I refer the reader to The Circle of Life, which discusses in detail how one best goes about contemplating a dream. I also provide a brief thematic index that might help the reader to trace certain themes in dreams over the decades.

Dreams are essential to me. I do my best to pay attention to them. Not only do I often write them down, but I think about them for years afterwards. It is occasionally made clear to me that they are meant to be turned into stories or poems or plays, or even songs. Among the most amazing experiences in my life has been playing the part onstage that I was in the dreams that became my full-length plays.

Dreams can be funny, irritating, frightening, profound, exciting, and everything else – but always sacred. Some of these dreams have been clearly prophetic, some came at significant moments in my life, and all of them are moving. I believe that when we are in dreams we are in a higher plane of existence than this physical world. I talk extensively about the Spirit World in The Circle of Life – a book that, by the way, was given its title in a dream.

If nothing else, I hope you will find these dreams entertaining. More than that, you might appreciate this window into the craft of a writer. Best of all, perhaps you will sense through them how sacred and powerful the voice of Spirit is and be encouraged to listen for that voice yourself. For these dreams are not mine, in the possessive sense; they are all of ours; they are Spirit’s.

Table of Contents

Preface

Three Early Dreams

An Unknown Date Probably in 1973 – The island God was living on...

19-20 June 1973

Late June 1973

15 July 1973

10-11 August 1973

An Unknown Date in November 1973

27-28 January 1974

An Unknown Date in 1974 – Written by the Wind in a Year of Pale Roses

An Unknown Date in July 1974

26-27 July 1974

13-14 August 1974

21-22 August 1974

8 September 1974 – Instant Coffee

5-6 January 1975 – Dream with Music and Three Black Candles

13-14 April 1976

8-9 December 1976

25 February 1977

An Unknown Date Probably in 1978 – Rhiannon

7 June 1978 – Fragments: a rainy city night as I sleep

17 May 1980

6 August 1980 – The Story

20 June 1981 – The Swings

20 June 1981 – A Dream

22 May 1982 – Concentration Camp

An Unknown Date in October 1982 – Seek Ye First

An Unknown Date in June 1983

16 November 1983

30 April 1984

An Unknown Date in January 1986

An Unknown Date in November 1987

2-3 January 1988 and 17-18 December 1988

30 September 1988

1-2 October 1989

An Unknown Date in February 1990

16 April 1990

24 August 1992, 23-24 October 1992, 25-26 October 1992, an Unknown Date in November 1992, and 13-14 April 1996

14-15 February 1993

11-12 June 1993

15 July 1993

24-25 September 1996

8-9 November 1996

6 May 1997 – In Search of the Lost Chord (for Marvell and Villon)

28 May 2000 – At the Gates of Heaven

30 July 2002 – Lullaby

8 October 2003

An Unknown Date in April 2005

3 April 2006 and 15-16 June 2006

22-23 September 2006

30-31 August 2007

27 December 2007

4 January 2008

1-2 January 2009 and 3 February 2009

28 February 2009

3-4 March 2009

4-5 September 2009 - The Unicorn

16 January 2010 - Lex Onda Beach

17 June 2010

5 March 2011

11 April 2011 - Sar, Gatherer of Moonbeams

17 August 2011

21-22 August 2011

26 August 2011

30 October 2011

Notes on the Dreams

Thematic Index

Other Works Based at Least in Part on Dreams

Three Early Dreams

N T

There are three dreams that I remember from when I was very little. They came to me when I was just beginning to learn how to talk.

In the first one I was in Heaven, with a lot of other people. We were wearing white robes, and we were standing on clouds. We were holding strings, with which we were (for lack of a better word) fishing through, or between, the clouds, for things below them – presumably on this earth. I kept pulling up practical, useful things, but made of gold; the one that I remember best is an old-fashioned iron, of the kind my mother had at the time, which she would heat on the woodstove before using on the laundry.

The other two impressed themselves on my memory, no doubt, because they were nightmares. One was of a speeding train coming off the rails and tipping over; the train was not adult-realistic but fanciful, more like the trains featured in children’s book drawings. The other was of a church on fire, and I (I think I was the pastor) was hurrying to get people out and grab valuable things before getting out myself; this dream was quite realistic.

An Unknown Date Probably in 1973 – The island God was living on...

N T

The island God was living on

lay somewhere to the west

and my boat

was creaking with the glow,

the sails full of sound.

I went slowly,

past the shores of dying virgins,

over patterns of speckled waves,

through dark continents of violet clouds.

I rowed, though it was getting darker,

and the wind blacker,

and my oars were cold

with the wet of the water, wind

streaming in slow currents over my brow.

I was dreaming I found a fortress

built into an island,

and electric eyes we knew were ahead of us

somewhere in the swamp.

Grey walls and the fields of a fortress

at the undiscovered Western Pole.

We slipped through the wires

in the steel sky before a storm,

and entered the place where God lived.

The circle was immense indeed,

greater than the globe of silence

where I used to live, strangely silent myself,

in a blackness filled with dreams.

And the island from which

that awful light

was receding back to

was always just ahead.

19-20 June 1973

N T

There was an earlier part to this dream that took place in a city, which I forgot upon awakening. There was the feeling that someone was chasing me, or looking for me, and not with good intent.

I was riding a bicycle by the side of a road at night, out in the countryside, with the hope of getting away from my pursuer. Often cars sped by me, headlights marking their passage. There were very large chunks of gravel strewn on the road’s shoulder, where I was riding; I remember thinking that if I were to go faster I would probably lose my balance and fall over because of them. After quite a while of riding I thought that I had better sleep somewhere; somewhere where I wouldn’t be found by my pursuer.

I saw a dirt road going off from the highway on the other, left-hand side, at a thirty-degree angle from the direction in which I was heading. Taking advantage of a lull in the traffic, I rode across the highway and went up the road. It was dusty and stony. Immediately after entering it the road went up a grade for a while. As the incline tapered off it turned to the right a little so it ended up being parallel with the highway – which, however, was masked from my sight by trees, mostly evergreens. I rode on, appreciating the relative silence of being entirely alone, and feeling relatively safer.

The woods were unbroken for a long time, but eventually I cam to an open area, with the road running through it. It was slanted a bit toward the highway, which was now at the bottom of a forested hill to my right. The glade was carpeted with a light-green-colored moss, and everything was lit by the moon, which had risen since I had left the highway. Here I slept for the rest of the night, dreaming the dream described below.

When day came I left the bicycle where it was, wishing to reconnoiter a bit before deciding where I would go. Walking farther along on the road, I soon came into farmland. Set a way in on the left was a big stone farmhouse, partially overgrown with vines. There was no barn, just a couple of smallish sheds. At first I was afraid that someone malevolent might see me, but I reflected on the fact that I had been here a long time ago with my family, and it had been safe then. Briefly the childhood memory passed through my mind. Then I took in my surroundings.

The sun was bright and warm; it was perhaps 10:00 a.m., and my guess would put the month as August. I think I was about twenty in the dream. Both sides of the road had drainage ditches. The one to the left, the farmhouse side, was choked with long grasses and mints, and the like, and the one on my right (which was closer to me) was just dirt, and nearly dry. The road-edge bordering on it was sharp, as if a flash flood had done the cutting. Beyond this ditch was a grassy hill on which a few deciduous trees grew, that went down to the highway, which here could be seen, devoid of traffic, looking quite mundane in the morning light. Here I woke up.

* * *

The second dream, though longer and more involved, will be harder to relate. After awakening I only remembered some discontinuous scenes. It came to me during the night of the preceding dream.

It began, as well as I could remember, in a house, in which I had been living for about a fortnight. After the others who lived there with me had left to run errands, I sat around the house, puttering about in my usual manner. I went out and sat on the porch, but as I sat there I became something in between greedy and horny.

I went in and flew about the house, illogically looking for anything that might help. I considered looking in the room of a girl my age who lived there (she was related to me in some way, a cousin, perhaps), but realized that there would be nothing that I could use. Briefly I considered the possibility that one of the residents might have a dirty magazine I could read, but that thought left.

Much of what now follows I have forgotten. I think the others came home, and then, for some reason, I had to undertake the enterprise that follows. As far as I can remember, it had nothing to do with my greediness/horniness.

It seems we were all to go to some special area in the nearby countryside, an area in and about grassy hills, there to get one of the prisoners [quotation marks denote the potential inaccuracy of a term] of the area. They were human: quiet, dark-haired, brown-skinned, slow of wit perhaps but not stupid, and always resigned to their fate. I had a list of articles; I think they may have been the names of various foods. I have forgotten how – perhaps it was as an enticement – but this list was to be employed to get a pig.

I sat on a grassy hillside with a female pig, a little farther up the hill to imply that I was greater than she (I had, at least on the surface, the common ideas about pigs). For this reason I couldn’t see her face, but

Reviews for The Book of Dreams

[xnfec · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Peter Reich is Wilhelm Reichs son. He was a very small boy when his father died in prisons. This book is his memoir of his father and those times. It is a moving story and well told