Holy Freakin’ Friday. I’ve just finished an all-day dream workshop conducted by Dr. Jeremy Taylor and I feel like I’m going to need some large chunks of time to reflect on what happened.

We worked on three different dreams that participants shared with the group, and because of the confidentiality of the dream work, I can’t really say what those dreams were about.

But what I can say is that it was extremely productive for the dreamers and the group. There were all sorts of ‘aha’ moments going on around the room. There was so much value in working on other people’s dreams and reflecting back to them what each of us felt as we imagined the dream as if it were our own.

Dr. Taylor has structured some strong protocols around this process; understandable given that he’s been doing this for a few decades and in some pretty extreme situations.

I thought this workshop might be helpful with my writing. And yes, it will be useful to have characters dream using strange and portentous imagery.  I might throw in a house dream as it often represents our self, so dreams of structural issues and problems in one of the rooms might be something to look at…

Or perhaps I’ll let the character discover how water often expresses emotions. I’ll leave it to you to imagine what ice means.

And here’s one for the books…boulders/rocks often represent our identity. That particular information was the most startling for me…let’s just say that a boulder figured prominently in the dream segment that I shared; a dream that I’ve wondered about, off and on, for about forty years. Seriously. I never would have guessed that one in a million years.

I have been curious about dreams from an early age. I remember checking a library book out when I was around eleven, and discovering the exhiliration of practicing the lucid dreaming they described. But like so many ideas, it got lost in my rush to be all grown-up. Imagine my surprise to discover that it might be one of the keys I need to be, well…all grown-up.

Ah, yes. Don’t worry, the irony of figuring this out forty years later is not lost on me. When I choose to be obtuse, I do it in a large and very thick way.

It turns out that this isn’t just about imagery to weave into my writing, no, this is now about my life. Then again, I’m beginning to realize that my writing is my life. And my life is my writing.  It’s all one interwoven-image laden tangled ball of string.

And now? I can’t wait to sleep: perchance to dream.