DreamEvent: Walter's Writers GameThe original Description of DreamEvent 99-00. |
These positons are available:
Move One:
Hanging Ladders
Position: One
Moved By: Walter Logeman
Content:
A Dream: Thu, 22 Jul 1999
I make my way up to the fourth or fifth level of an old building, a hotel. There is a conference, of elite people, some in tuxedos, others in hi-tech mountain fashion clothes - beards. I am being chased, or simply wanting to get out of the room and climb out of a window into the night, the window then shuts, so it can't be opened again. I don't want to get back in anyway.I am on an iron ladder of a fire escape, two or three lengths are folded together and impossible to untangle while I am on them, but even if they were unfolded, they lead nowhere, there is only a 5 story drop. I am content enough on the ladder, but also unable to go anywhere.
Comment:
This dream was important to me at the time. I felt stuck. It also
has a part to play in the story of the Dreamevent that was to follow the
following December.
Links to other positions:
None, as this is the first move on the board.
Top
Added: Sunday, April 02, 2000
Move Two: Tempted to die, Isabel Allende
Position: Eight
Content:
Isabel Allende describes a dream her mother had, and how she later also had that dream.
She would dream that she was in a boat in the middle of the ocean and there was a tempest. The boat sank and she had to save the kids. She could only save one. And she had three. She would be swimming from one kid to the other trying to keep them above the water. But she knew that she would have to make up her mind and save only one. That was her recurrent dream.
I had a similar dream for a while that I had to save one of my two kids. Fortunately the dream is gone. The worst year in my life was probably 1978. I usually say that it was I973, because that was the year of the military coup but the consequences of that event were apparent to me only in 1978. In I978 I realized that all my life had been destroyed. I thought at that time that I wouldn't have another opportunity. I'd been struggling all those years to survive and then, in 1978, I gave up.
I wanted to die. And so I started having that dream my mother's dream the dream that I had to save one of my kids. I had to make a choice. And in the dream I was tempted to die in order not to make that choice. I would rather drown myself and let everybody drown so that I wouldn't be forced to make the choice of saving one of them.
Comment:
This dream is from the marvelous book of interviews by Naiomi Epel, Writers Dreaming. Bookman Press 1993, Melbourne. Pages 17 - 18.
Isabel Allende goes on to say:
"By thinking about the dream and writing about the dream I realized that I was escaping from them and from everything. It helped me a lot. I could start again. I got a job and I started working because I'd decided that my only goal was to educate my children."
Links to other positions:
Link to Move One, Hanging Ladders: While the Hanging Ladders dream does not have the life and death choices of the Isabel Allende's dream it also a dream about a dead end, about having nowhere to go. Death is an option in both dreams.
Move Three: Sophie's Choice, William Styron
Position: Two
Content:
The obvious move to link with Isabel Allende's dream is this dream or vision from Willian Styron. The dream is from the same book of interviews by Naiomi Epel, pages 272 -273.
I'd been working on a book that was not coming together for me at all. I had been slaving away at it and was getting very upset over the fact that it wasn't proceeding well. And one morning I woke up with this lingering vision. I don't like to characterize it as a dream, although I think it had the aspects of the remnant of a dream. I think there was a merging from the dream to a conscious vision and memory of this girl named Sophie. And it was powerful because I lay there in bed with the abrupt knowledge that I was going to deal with this as a work of fiction. That I had to abandon the other book I was trying to do and, because of her, because of all of the resonance surrounding her story, I was suddenly going to have to write the book which later became Sophie's Choice. That very morning, I remember I walked over to my studio and wrote down the first words just as they are in the book, and went from there to the end without any deviation to speak of. So, in a sense, you could say that the whole concept of the book was, if not the product of a dream itself, the product of some resonance that a dream had given me.
Links to other positions:
Move One, Hanging Ladders: The dead end of the book that was being written at the time of the dream, the abandnoned project has a similar feel to the dead end at the end of the chase.
Move Two: Tempted to die, Isabel Allende: Isabel Allede and her mother befor her dreamt she had a Sophie's Choice.
Top
Added:
Monday, April 03,
2000
Content:
A dream:
Tue, 21 Sep 1999 I've not had dreams I'd call prescient. I sometimes have
dreams that I seem to give me advance notice of my own direction and where I am
at in myself. For example I had a lot of dreams for a while where I was
hanging in a stuck place. No way out except for a big drop. Then I
dreamt: I slipped on a wet, natural, rounded stone floor, landed on my
side, quite gently, and was holding a glass in each hand. I looked at the
glasses with surprise; I had not dropped them in the fall, or used my hands to
break the fall. Comment: I had no idea what the dream was about, until I realised it was
on river bed rock. I was no longer hanging. I'd made a shift. I felt
the shift then in many ways in my life. One of the results of that dream
was to set up the DreamEvent! Links to other
positions: Move One, Hanging Ladders: This dream was in my mind the
resolution of the earlier dream. What seemed an impossible state in the
other dream has an almost mirraculous outcome. Move Two: Tempted to die, Isabel Allende: I
saved both the glasses. They represent two
of my creations, if not my children. In both dreams there is
a
Move
Three: Sophie's Choice,
William Styron: My sense of clarity and creativity as a result of my dream is
well summed up in William Styron's words: So, in a sense, you could say that the whole concept of the book was, if not
the product of a dream itself, the product of some resonance that a dream had
given me. Top
Position:Three
Move Four : A Glass in Each Hand
Position: Three
Moved by: Walter Logeman
Added: Tuesday, April 04, 2000
Move Five:
Moved by:
Date:Thursday, 22 Jul 1999
Content:
Comment:
Links to Other
Positions:
To Move One:
Added: Thursday 23 December 1999 Last edited: Thursday 23 December 1999
Move Six :
Position:Six
Moved by:
Date:Moved in : Wed, 29 Dec 1999
Content:
Comment:
Links to Other Positions:
Added: 30 December 1999 Last edited: 1 January 2000,
Move Seven :
Position: Seven
Moved by:
Dates:
Content:
Comment:
Links to Other Positions:
Added: 16 January 2000 Last edited: 16 January 2000
Move Eight
:
Position: Five
Date:
Content:
Comment:
Links to Other Positions:
Added: 26 January 2000 Last edited: 2 February 2000, added matrial from Phil's Post of Thu, 27 Jan 2000
Move Nine: CHOICES
Position:Four
Moved by:
Date:
Content:
Comment:
Links to Other Positions:
Added: 6 February 2000 Last edited: 6 February 2000
Move Ten:
Position: Ten
Moved by:
Date: First Mooted:
Content:
Comment:
Links to Other Positions:
Added: 20 February 2000 Last edited: 20 February 2000