surviving in the year 2017.

BEST REALIZED THROUGH A JUVENILE RHYME. NOT ONLY TO KEEP IN LINE WITH THE MENTAL POSSIBILITIES OF THE TIMES (OUCH.). BUT MORE IMPORTANTLY, AS A REMINDER OF POSSIBILITY, FROM THE BEAUTY AND CAPACITY OF CHILDHOOD. FROM WHENCE WE CAME.

feel. deal. heal.

heal. feel. deal.

deal. heal. feel.

“There are no new ideas. There are only new ways of making them felt” (Lorde, 1984)… and so my wish for us all is that beyond the lie of coincidence, we may see how it is both written, and simultenously, waiting to be realized.

I am finishing this from a place I have not been before…

I can not stop counting my breathes.

I can not stop thinking of each one I exhale.

It feels as though I have let it out so far that each new breathe comes in a panic.

a little too late, but just in time.

Each breathe I exhale feels as if it will be my last.

and so with that, I remind us, “do not mock a pain you haven’t endured”.

IT IS WRITTEN.

One afternoon two years ago, on the way to drop off food and money for my D.A.D., a friend called asking for the title of my blog which he was helping to create a website for. I did not yet know the audience for which I intended to write. I hadn’t much imagined it. How to come up with a title, for a purpose I consciously knew little about? Still, I spoke it out loud,

“What about ‘drowning in dreams’?” I nervously joked, “ I know it seems dark, but does it make sense?”

He replied, “It’s perfect actually. It is the right kind of weird”.

Neither of us knew what exactly it meant, or what this project would be about. We hadn’t discussed its subject matter. The intent. The purpose. But we both knew it made sense. Somehow, in some way, we knew it was right. And so, in a sense, it was conceived before I had ever typed a single word. 

FEEL.

I hadn’t given much thought to what drowning in dreams might actually mean. I knew I felt uneasy referencing drowning in a time of tremendous suffering for those being swallowed up or washing up on the shores in their last attempts to flee ongoing violence and displacements, but as I see it, none of us are outside of these realities. We are embedded in the making and unmaking of violent ongoing realities, which shape diverse experiences. We are complicit in upholding systems that continue to support and make possible the senseless violence which continues to bleed our planet. Perhaps, this is best considered through the ideas of ‘genealogy’. Those genealogies, histories, legacies, processes, that accompany geographies of migration, through which we may all be merely trying to survive. So many of us are drowning from the legacies, and ongoing violence of colonial and imperial conquest. So many of us are just trying to stay afloat.

DEAL.

The first few posts I wrote were also from a place of tremendous pain. They were extremely difficult to write and experience together simultaneously  But it had to happen. I felt as though I was drowning from the weight of so much loss, at a time when I was so terribly needed. This is the unaccounted, intangible work of caring that so many mothers feel. The fact of being needed so incredibly much, and the inability to escape it. Your heart beating outside of your body, forever. Vulnerable and attune to each ache and possibility. The overwhelming love of it all is also an unbearable pain and immense weight to carry. In the midst of all of the pain, it began happening.

HEAL. 

‘Drowning in dreams’ is dominated by ideas of overwhelming sensations. Dream interpretations center around the fear of being overwhelmed, whether by difficult feelings, emotions, anxieties… possibilities. Additionally, it has been conceptualized in relation to struggling to survive as a person. In this sense, it is simultaneously about the anticipated ‘fear’ of/or the potential of a feeling, set of emotions or anxieties, and also about trying to exist alongside these ‘fears’. Some have suggested that dreams about drowning can also be productive in offering the dreamer hints to search their waking life for what can be seen as threatening or burdening. It is beyond ironic that I chose this as the title of this project. Actually irony seems to imply happenstance. Which this is not.

IT IS WRITTEN.

For as long as I can remember, the most frightening nightmare I have had, on numerous occasions, is related to drowning.

It is the image of a building on the shore of a vast ocean where the waves are growing and growing at such frightening depths to engulf all that is in their wake. The infinite height, depth and weight of the water is terrifying, and the fear is two fold.

It is first centered on the sheer magnitude and potential of the waves/water themselves, and secondly, about the fear of being completely engulfed, immersed, powerless. I have had this reoccurring nightmare for many years of my life, never able to grasp the meaning. Until now. The signs were there all along, but it is only now that I am able to start piecing it together. I couldn’t have known what I know now, then. 

HEAL.

In January my daughter, four years old, starting piano lessons. It is absolutely fascinating to put this in conversation with my academic work. I find myself reflecting on the power of the mind to balance and oscillate between, amidst and through multiple levels, layers, mediums, aspects. Learning music involves so many layers and levels of understanding, so much simultaneity and multiplicity. Students first begin by numbering each finger, matching these to notes, developing this through repetition and reimaging them through notes and connecting that to their fingers. Reading music while engaging their bodies to physically play. Balancing tempo. Counting beats. Playing in unison. Learning notes. Reading notes. Writing them. Composing them. Linking the body to the mind with conscious intent, all with children who cannot yet read a complete word. It is unbelievably beautiful to see them engage in such complexity at such a young age and it begs the question as to why as adults we seem to have such limited cognitive or imaginative abilities most of the time. It is as though the more we know, the less we can envision. It is as though it may only be one or the other, not both, not all, not a lot, at once for conflicting reasons, embedded in genealogies, histories, geographies, simultaneously in the past, present and future. Not to say, everything and nothing. But to encourage us to think in multiplicity, complexity, nuance.

Concentrate. We sung.

People are dying.

Children are crying.

Concentrate.

FEEL.

“IF WE FEEL THAT THINGS ARE CALM, WHAT MUST WE FORGET IN ORDER TO INHABIT SUCH A RESTFUL FEELING?” (PUAR, 2007).

Are we living a dangerous dream, which we might only hope to be awoken from?

I remember a time about four years ago after I had my daughter where I exhausted to a breaking point dealing with my dad after having become a mother for the first time. I sought the help of a professional… we weren’t vibing enough to build a relationship, but within fifteen minutes of speaking she said,

“Why do you feel so guilty for loving him? It’s okay you know. You are allowed to feel that way. The first thing you need to do is stop feeling guilty, or bad about this feeling you have”.

Just as the all encompassing wave cries. Show compassion. For your pain. For yourself. For Others. It’s okay to feel. There are so many of us, trying to survive our lives while suffering greatly, in largely unconscious ways. But giving ourselves space to feel might be that first step, necessary in order to deal. To dream of a time where you may in fact, heal. Allowing compassion to guide you to a knowledge, made possible through pain, into a world which you are connected to profoundly. And so they say, the end is simultaneously the beginning. But healing does not erase. It is not something emerging out of nothing, of complete newness. You retain roots, connections, linkages, depths, and… maybe these are the threads that allow us to know the true beauty that anyone who has been brave enough to feel their suffering, knows.

Mogahed writes about the ocean as “breaktakingly beautiful” (45), but notes, it may be just as beautiful as it is deadly. “Water, the same substance necessary to sustain life, can end life, in drowning” (45). She connects worldly life as the ocean, and our hearts as the ships. She explains that we can use the ocean to lead us to our final destination, but the ocean is only a means, it is a means of seeking a higher purpose, “Imagine what would happen if the ocean became our end – rather than just a means” (45). Thus,  she explains, as long as water stays outside of the ship it will continue to float, but if water starts to enter into the ship, it begins to sink.

In my reflection on my recurrent nightmare, the waves can be apart of that ocean which reflects this worldly life. It is those very real painful realities that torment the swimmer. Perhaps it was a message all along to fight the very urge to be consumed by worldly matters to which you lose control to and are ruthlessly at the mercy of.

DEAL. 

So what are these dreams in which we may find ourselves drowning? Dreams represent in many ways an experience beyond our waking consciousness, ‘imaginary’, or ‘imagined’, beyond our reality, without boundaries. We are ‘free’? While this idea of freedom is largely located in spaces of the subconscious mind who is able to unless in the safety of a dream state, a la Freud and Jung. In popular culture, dreams have been considered aspirational or motivational and as part of imagining more, better or different worlds.

Traditionally conceptualized (in Eurocentric accounts) as related to the ‘subconscious’. Beginning in the psychoanalysis, dreams have been dominated by thinking that views them as part of unconscious desires (Freud, 1913). In another way, neuroscientifically, dreams are considered as mere responses to changes in brain activity (Hobson and McCarley 1977), while in popular culture, dreams are understood as imaginative experiences of waking life that feel like a dream, a state of mind that represents a release from reality, a vision resembling a dream life state, something notable for its beauty, excellence or enjoyable quality, a strongly desired goal or purpose, something tied to the fulfillment of a wish. And before this, for centuries before, dreaming has been linked to spiritual, supernatural, Godly forces. Often seen as divine messages, as spaces for the divine to communicate. And interestingly, today, in the most contemporary work on dreaming, scientists argue that ‘dreaming’ which is linked to sleep, is productive and necessary at many levels, and has implications for conscious, waking life.

Despite the many interesting ways that dreams can be conceptualized, the power of dreams in general cannot be denied. As many have argued, dreams have no boundaries and this makes them significant worlds of influence, allowing us to imagine things beyond our current realities, and inducing desires towards future attainment. Sounds important to retain, but also significant is the possibility of what ‘productive’ work dreams may provide. To consider this we can ask a basic, yet profound question as to why we dream. Some scholars note that there is no one reason but rather a number of theories that span many disciplines such as psychiatry, psychology and neurobiology. For some, the idea that dreaming is linked to memory processes, and can be seen as an extension of waking consciousness such that we may reflect on experiences of waking life as constituting a space where we can work through difficult, complicated or unsettling thoughts, emotions or experiences. Even more interesting is dreaming as linked to sleep. This is conceptualized as a cycle, culminating in Rapid Eye Movement (REM), the space where the most vivid, ‘real’ dreaming occurs, and as it happens, where modern science has erased the divine, we find connections in current work on dreaming. In which many cultures understood dreams in profoundly different and more significant ways for living. They have been considered as spaces for healing and for understanding the future (Patton, 2004). As Patton explains, ancient cultures saw dreams as part of “enigmatic parable”, highly valued, and often see as potentially divinely sent “fraught with meaning about the future, and having the potential to heal or offer solutions to life’s biggest problems” (Leddy, 2013). Thus, dreams were understood as spaces of healing and had the potential to impact waking life. From these early conceptualizations, explanations for dream content formed the basis of most, early theoretical insights on dreaming. For the most part, psychoanalysis dominated this thinking (which occurred well before the discovery of REM linked to modern brain science), explaining dreams as part of repressed desires (Freud), and complex reasoning in relation to mythic narratives (Jung). This thinking is seen in opposition to contemporary brain science which largely challenges the idea that dreaming is “meaningful, privileged, and interpretable psychologically”, and rather argues that dreams are the “simple reflection of the sleep-related changes in brain state” (Hobson, 2002, 1-2). BUT. since the discovery of REM sleep, researchers such as Winson (1990) have explored the neuroscientific aspects of REM sleep and memory processes together. For Winson, dreaming was very meaningful and significant and related to memory processes, a process through which we form survival strategies and evaluate current experience in relation to these strategies (Winson, 1990). Thus, dreaming here is a reflection of an individual’s strategy of survival, where the “subjects of dreams are broad ranging and complex, incorporating self-image, fears, insecurities, strengths, grandiose ideas, sexual orientation, desire, jealousy and love” (Winson, 64). Winson therefore argues that the characteristics of the unconscious and associated processes of brain functioning however are very different from what Freud thought. Rather than being solely about untamed passions and destructive wishes, he argues that the unconscious is a “cohesive continually active mental structure that takes note of life’s experiences and reacts according to its own scheme of interpretation” (Winson, 1990, 67). Thus, rather than disguised consequences of repression, their unusual character is a result of the “complex associations that are culled from memory (Winson, 1990, 67). Dreaming can therefore be understood as a form of consciousness that unites past, present and future by processing information from the past and present as part of preparations for the future.

Interestingly, during REM sleep, the state in which the most vivid dreams are experienced, the inhibition of spinal motor neurons by brainstem mechanisms that limit motor abilities is also simultaneously experienced, and thus REM sleep is also defined as “an activated brain in a paralyzed body” (Carskadon and Dement 2011, 19). While in REM sleep “motor neurons are inhibited, preventing the body from moving freely” (Winson, 1990, 59), “eyes move rapidly in unison under closed lids, breathing becomes irregular and heart rate increases” (Winson, 1990, 59). Thus, when we dream, we feel our freest, when in fact we are paralyzed. Building here, some scholars argue that REM sleep in fact constitutes a may constitute a proto-conscious state, “providing a virtual reality model of the world that is of functional use to the development and maintenance of waking consciousness” (Hobson, 803). As he explains, waking consciousness is defined by awareness of the external world, our bodies and our selves and the awareness of our awareness, however, “When dreaming we are also consciously aware; we have perception and emotion, which are organized in a scenario-like structure, but we erroneously consider ourselves to be awake despite abundant cognitive evidence that this cannot be true” (Hobson, 2009, 803). Thus, when we dream, we wrongly think that it is real (lived), as they are abstractions from fully lived conscious reality. Dreams are thus, both lived and imagined simultaneously, but we all face the problem that all dreamers and dreams face, which is the “failure to recognize its own true condition, its incoherence (or bizarreness), its severe limitation of thought” (803). Thus, dreams conceal and potentially ‘hide’ aspects of their reality. However, as Hobson highlights, dreams also can reveal and have implications for full consciousness. He explains that some argue that the connection between sleep and psychology is tied not only to the mere deprivation of sleep, but the denial of dreaming (occurring in REM sleep). Specifically, he argues that this is the most detrimental force in triggering cognitive deterioration (Hobson, 2009, 803). Dreams, are therefore understood as a necessary counterpoint to our conscious state, whereby as Hobson argues, the “integrity of waking consciousness depends on the integrity of dream consciousness” (Hobson, 2009, 803). Thus, “what we may need to navigate our waking world is an infinite set of charts from which we may draw the one best suited to an equally infinite set of real-life possibilities” (803). Hobson asks, if REM sleep precedes dreaming, what happens before dreaming appears? He argues that the brain is preparing itself for consciousness, “a lifelong process, an innate virtual reality generator, the properties of which are defined for us in our dreams” (Hobson, 2009, 803). Thus, dreams are both a necessary component for our conscious state and are implicated in our lived realities, and are simultaneously, inherently limited in their inability to recognize their state for what it is. Significantly though, dreams are as much preparations for waking consciousness as a reaction to it. “We are as much getting ready to behave as we are getting over the effects of our behaviour” (Hobson, 2009, 803). 

Interestingly, just like sleep, dreams are also vulnerable to disruption from mental and physical health related problems, seen at times, in the form of nightmares. At once, that which seems outside, the nightmare which can not possibly be the dream, is in fact both outside and within at once, embedded into our everyday, expressed in our anxieties, manifest in our relationships to each other and to spaces.

In addition, as we can see in popular culture, for individuals dreams have been tied to values and conditions of possibility, as escapes, as aspirational, as powerful motivations, as goals, and as ambitions, but they may be simultaneously nightmarish, stressful, disturbing, frightening, recurring, haunting.

Understanding our connections to ongoing pain in the world and violence in our everyday realities, fear and suffering in our lives, we need a deep, nuanced, historically grounded genealogical approach that allows us to uncover the dependencies and relationships that shape the everyday realities of a diverse people. Dreaming therefore is significant as it is the most “universal, enduring aspect of being human” (Breus, 2015), and thus we might ask about the influence of dreaming in our waking lives, and whether there is any way that dreams might help us live better. There are views that support the idea that dreaming is a creative portal and new studies argue that dreams may assist in daytime functioning, whereby “… dreams may be fertile territory for influencing and enhancing our waking frame of mind” (Breus, 2015). Therefore, dreams are not only abstractions but have real, lived consequences in our daily lives (Hobson, 2010). “dreams provide us with insight about what’s preoccupying us, troubling us, engaging our thoughts and emotions. Often healing, often mysterious, always fascinating, dreams can both shape us and show us who we are” (Breus, 2015). Dreams can show us who we are. They can expose us to our most vulnerable. The dream of drowning was a necessary nightmare for me that was waiting to be realized. And in another way, it is important for us to consider how to survive in the year 2017 with compassion and dignity, to expose the many ways in which the dreams of some are built on the nightmarish realities of others.

Collectively, we are witness to atrocious levels of violence on a daily basis, in its balanity, as a permanent feature of our lives, and sadly, in order to survive, many of us believe that we must distance ourselves. But dreams have something important to teach us. As dreams connect the past and present for futures, so to do we hold in our existence, genealogies. Dreams, both imagined and lived, in their multiplicity and diversity, implicate historical genealogies that undergird contemporary, present, lived realities, and these shape the possibilities for futures. Perhaps, we must accept the painful anxieties, which torment us as part of a process of both implicating ourselves in the atrocities of today, and simultaneously understanding our pain as part of our journeys, as part of the genealogies, which accompany us, and as apart of the journeys that may heal us.

And to those breathes…whose count I can not stopping keeping. the weight of which feels impossible to escape. thank you. for the reminder of the burden and blessing. Of the dreams which we must be held to account and for the breathes without which we can could not exist.

And so, as the innocent rhyme shows us,

ALLOW YOURSELF TO FEEL.

PUSH YOURSELF TO DEAL. 

WORK TOWARDS BEING ABLE TO HEAL. 

But don’t forget that sometimes you must also,

CELEBRATE MOMENTS WHERE YOU HEAL.

EMBRACE WHAT IT MEANS AND JUST FEEL.

AND WITH THAT STRENGTH, MOVE TO DEAL.

And one day,

ONCE WE DEAL.AND COLLECTIVELY HEAL.

WE JUST MIGHT FINALLY FEEL OUR DREAMS COMING TRUE.

But, we will be written into history one way or another, so in order to survive the year 2017, we must remember…

“The truthfulness of dreams is related to the dreamer”.

 Coming next… “A significant thing: it is not the head of a civilization that begins to rot first. It is the heart” (Cesaire, 1955).