Archive for the ‘Textuality’ Category

Librarians as Stewards of the Queendom

multidimensional art, Textuality | Posted by jmoore
May 19 2011

libraryalexandria

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Due to the advent of e-readers and the ascendance of e-books there has been a lot of talk on the interwebs about what the book will become, and the future of libraries. Having worked at libraries for over 11 years, and being a writer and book lover, these are subjects very dear to my heart.

Kevin Kelly, a techno-optimist, gives a very hopeful look at some interesting properties e-books may develop, such thoughts as “dense hyperlinking among books would make every book a networked event.” In this sense, intertextual associations can be viewed in real time without having to wade through dense stacks or having to carry around a cumbersome bag of dead trees with ink on them. I also like very much his idea that readers will be able to write marginalia in digital books, and that other readers will be able to subscribe to what in a sense would become a “marginalia feed”.  Musing on these ideas incites me to want a portable e-reader of my own, something I don’t have yet. Hell, I don’t even own a personal cell phone (being a stubborn resister of certain intrusive technologies). However, I don’t like at all that digital books on a Kindle can be remotely deleted (thanks Elliott, for pointing this out). Deletion, then isn’t the only way digital books can be tampered with. A text file can easily be changed, whole paragraphs rewritten overnight, which would amount to a covert form of censorship (thanks Jake for bringing this up in discussion). 

Seth Godin, himself a great defender of publishing and books, speaks in his recent post about what the library and librarians of the future will need to become. He says people “need a librarian now more than ever (to figure out creative ways to find and use data). They need a library not at all.” It is this latter sentence which I find disconcerting. He goes on to stress that “The library is no longer a warehouse for dead books.” In my own animistic and pantheistic view, books are living things. Even when a book is not being read, it lies there in wait, the condensed essence of an authors thought vibrations. And while there will always be issues of storage and space as long as new books are being printed, libraries should not be so quick to discard books that may at first seem outdated. (Without naming institutions, I’ve seen copies of out-of-print Wilhelm Reich titles, and the very-out-of-print Cincinnati Journal of Ceremonial Magick tossed in the discard bin). Choosing which books go into a library, and which get discarded is a political act. Librarians are entrusted with the preservation of culture, and what Goethe called “the memory of mankind”. But which culture and which memories?

After inciting librarians to create more hands on teaching programs, Godin says, “the next library is filled with so many web terminals there’s always at least one empty. And the people who run this library don’t view the combination of access to data and connections to peers as a sidelight–it’s the entire point.” Computers are great tools, and I do think librarians should learn to help people use them in creative ways, but unfortunately most of what I see libraries doing is just providing access to computers. And the people using them are more prone to chat it up on Facebook or zone out on Youtube than to leverage it as a tool for doing good Work. Which of course is a broad generalization. There are people in need using library computers to get jobs, and to get on doing the other creative Work humans are capable of. Which is why Seth’s post is a call to arms for librarians who would be cultural hackers.     

But computers aren’t the only tools around. And what happens when the electricity goes off, during a brown out, or during the long descent into a world that no longer has access to the already limited supplies of fossil fuels? People will need to have a recourse to skills, that in many of the industrialized parts of the world, have already died out. Kevin Kelly proposes such a Library of Utility to be a repository of such knowledge, a place to go when civilization needs to be rebooted. The problem with this is, reaching such a library will not be a top priority during the scramble for basic resources.

The logical step, in preparing oneself for a future without cheap fossil fuel, is to learn a traditional trades,  crafts, and other valuable skills now, along with preparing a home for such a scenario. (John Michael Greer is a much more knowledgeable and eloquent spokesperson on this topic, so I direct you to his blog The Archdruid Report for very comprehensive information in this vein.)

While Public Libraries continue to be driven by popular culture and its market-oriented demands,  they often still function as great repositories of culture and arcane lore. What I think Seth misses in his post is the sense of discovery which can come from wondering the stacks and finding a nearly forgotten relic, as yet to be digitized by the over-arching arms of Google, and gleaning something valuable by opening up it’s pages at random. I do believe information can be occasionally found on the internet in a type of chance operation, but I also notice that I personally go to the same set of websites over and over again, without branching out as frequently to forage for new voices. And of course I still love the internet, it is a great way of connecting, and long may it continue, even past the unraveling point of industrial civilization. Formats change quickly, CDs are given to discrot and decay, and a well made book stands a much better chance of living into the future (with hope, seven generations hence). It is good and necessary to preserve, defend, and guard dead paper. This is a job for Multidimensional Artists who would be Stewards of Earth.

That is why I am eagerly seeking out the various libers which compose the Gaianomicon. That is why I am of a kindred spirit with the New Alexandrian Library and of the Sheneset Project.  That is why, as long as their is room, I will continue to build my own personal and family library. This multi-faceted subject of libraries is one I will continue to explore in future posts, especially as the day draws ever closer for my talk at the Esoteric Book Conference on The Library Angel and It’s Oracle.

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , ,
1 Comment »

The Lions of Dreamland

Dream, Textuality | Posted by jmoore
Apr 12 2011

active_dreamingThis book could have just as easily been called “Community Dreaming”, and therein lies its strength. I see it as a sequel to one of his previous books “The Three Only Things: Tapping the Power of Dreams, Coincidence, and Imagination”. Where that book gave the individual a useful toolkit for opening themselves up to the deeper workings of the multidimensional universe, “Active Dreaming” sets the stage for taking those personal journeys out into the community. This is of great importance. In doing so, Robert is gently helping people reach out to and create something he calls, “The Place of the Lion”. What is the Place of the Lion? Through one of the stories Robert tells he shows that it is a place of “wild freedom” where a person can see past the limiting consensual hallucinations which have placed cages around and bars around what humanity thinks is possible.

The book is filled with inspiring stories and practical exercises. Personally, my favorite section is the appendix, “Dreamland: Documents of a Possible Future.” This dreamland has nothing to do with Area 51 (thank goodness), but shows a neutral society, or “Switzerland of the Mind” which has come into existence after a technological Singularity wreaks soul loss and ecocide across the planet. The Priestess-Scientists who guide this community are using the power of dreams to help repair the planet. This book will certainly benefit those who take the time to not only read it, but work with the material laid out in its pages. It is accessible to the beginner in dreamwork, while also giving some new games to the frequent fliers who have already been playing at this stuff for awhile. Coming from one of my favorite publishers, the dream elucidated between these covers really does give a road map to a New World.

Tags: , , , ,
No Comments »

The Dominoe Project Street Team

Textuality | Posted by jmoore
Jan 25 2011

I just filled out a form to be part of The Dominoe Projects street team. It should prove to be a fun way to get in on the exciting changes sweeping the publishing industry, be a part of the change, and make some art. Perhaps you’ll join me? Give it a shot:

http://www.thedominoproject.com/2011/01/domino-street-team.html

Tags: ,
No Comments »

Describing Earth Artists to Aliens

Dream, Textuality | Posted by jmoore
Jan 16 2011

One of the many interesting dream games we play in Robert Moss’s interActive Dreamwork forums and ecourse hosted over at Spirituality & Health magazines website is the game of describing a person, place or thing to an alien. This is especially useful when celebrities or other figures turn up in our dreams. We may think we have a clear idea of who or what a person or object represents, but the practice of describing it to an alien helps to clarify essential information, often producing an “Aha!” experience along the way. Below I play the game describing some people who figured in a few dreams of mine in 2010.  spacealiens

Greetings to you my new found friends from Califrax-3. It is a pleasure to host you on our home world. As part of the orientation process I wanted to describe to you three figures who turned up in a recent dreamy of mine,  followed by a fourth who has visited me in a few dreams this year. But first lets here the dream:

Picasso Cartoon, Mapplethorpe Poetry, & Patti Smith’s Circle
December 14 2010 7:15 AM EST
I am watching an animated Pablo Picasso cartoon, drawn and animated by him. It takes place underneath the sea. Strange amoeba/birds flutter around like abstract paper cut-outs beneath the waves, dancing amidst a briny flora and fauna.

Then someone is talking to me about the film. He is a middle-aged man. He has some kind of conspiracy theory about Picasso. He then shows me some newspaper cartoon strips he has framed. The frames are huge, the size of tables. He has two other friends who have been tracking clues about Picasso and his clandestine involvements with him. Then the man is talking to me about poetry. I know we are in New York City now, and I’m suprised by his professed love for poetry. He tells me he liked the later poems of Robert Mapplethorpe the best.

Then I am observing Patti Smith and two other ladies, one of whom is pregnant. Like Patti Smith, the pregnant girl is also a poet, but she is new to poetry, and she seems more thrilled just to be part of Patti Smith’s circle. She rushes to open a door for Patti. Then I am looking at a picture of Patti Smith on a magazine cover.

Now for the Space Alien game:

picassoPablo Piccasso was the name of a man who was one of the most famous artistes of the twentieth century. He was a painter, a drawer, a sculptor, a provacateur and infamous womanizer. I know him most for his pictures of bulls, the adult male of the dos taurus species, a common flesh food source in the world, especially amongst the human bovines who live in North America. Highly sexualized, he was also highly prolific leaving an indelible stamp on the face of the modern art world, and the legacy of a large body of work. As far as working techniques go, he was known to exhaust an image, drawing it, painting, redrawing from different angles, painting in different schemes of color over and over again. What I would most like to learn from him is the habit of work and to see things with a painters eye.

robert-and-pattiRobert Mapplethorpe and Patti Smith were soul mates, though there’s was a platonic love. He preferred the company of other men to those of women, and she didn’t mind having other lovers herself. Together they charged through the 1970s New York art scene rising to prominence, Robert as a photographer whose masterful portraits and still life photos are essays in the study of light. Patti Smith is a poet who performs against the back drop of a rock band. She became known as “The Godmother of Punk” a rebellious youth movement revolving around an aggressive style of music playing (mostly using three-chords). Her own patron saint was Arthur Rimbaud, and the punk rock movement in itself can be seen as a historical extension of the bohemians and decadents who proliferated in the metropolitan areas of 19th century Europe. Perhaps it is fitting then, that Patti was named Commander of the Ordre des Artes and Lettres by the French Minister of Culture in 2005.

In my own provenance of Cincinnati there was a huge controversy surrounding an exhibition of Mapplethorpe’s photographs at the Contemporary Arts Center that caused resounding echoes throughout the art world at the time, as conservatives came into clashing conflict with more progressive minds. It also brought international attention to the Contemporary Arts Center. I was still a fledgling poet and artist at the time, counting off my days in the compulsory education system the bureaucrats of this planet still suffer our children through, and unfortunately did not attend the show. A trial ensued between those who wanted to censor the sadomasochistic pictures in question, and those who fought for freedom of expression. This was all posthumous following his death by a human immunodefficency virus, for which our planet desperately needs a cure. (Please help our scientists and healers in this regard.)

bruce_sterlingAnother figure who has shown up in my dreams a number of times in our Solar Year is Science Fiction author Bruce Sterling. Sterling is credited as being one of the original founders of the cyberpunk movement, a subgenre within science fiction. While he is not my favorite prose stylist I admire him for being a “visionary in residence”. A Texan by birth, he currently lives in Turin, Italy with his Russian wife. (Russian femme fatales frequent his short writings.) He has written around 11 novels, and a slew of short-fiction, and has won many prestigious awards within the SF genre. One of the other things I admire about Sterling is his voice as an environmentalist. At first glance his work may appear to be consumed with admiration for all manner of techno-gadgetry. A closer reading reveals his deep concern with issues such as Global Warming and the effects this will have on human culture. These are highly developed in books like “Heavy Weather” which examines a hypothetical F6 tornado sweeping through the American southwest as it is tracked and traced by a group of renegade scientists and weather hackers. “The Caryatids” examines the prospects of rescuing earth from complete environmental collapse in the year 2065, through the combined tales of four sisters, who are the clones of a Balkan warlords widow. He has written a few non-fiction books as well, his most famous probably being “The Hacker Crackdown” which tells the story of those early explores of telephone and computer networks. He is deeply enamored of the various disciplines associated with “design” and is also credited with helping to kickstart the “Viridian Design Movement” -his attempt to create an ecologically sound, yet sleek and high-tech design movement.

I thank you for letting me to take the time to discuss a few of Earths luminaries with you. Through all this I see several clues to help me in my own projects: bringing more visual imagery into my poetry and writing, try and write poetry like a photographer, whilst getting back in touch with my (cyber)punk roots, whilst not forgetting to share an environmentalist message at times. The Alien Game is a fun one to play.

Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,
No Comments »

Arcana V: Magic, Music and Mysticism

Magick, Musick, Textuality | Posted by jmoore
Nov 22 2010

arcana_v

The fifth installment in John Zorn’s ongoing series anthologizing the writings, reflections, and critical insights of contemporary musicians and composers tackles subjects that are usually brushed aside in academic music journals, namely the occult. It is no secret that musicians, from time immemorial, have approached their art as if they were approaching the sacred. Magic and mysticism are twin strands woven into the fabric of musical history and they continue to excite new developments within the music of the present day. The numinous gets lip service in popular culture when the likes of Madonna parade their studies of Kabbalah, making the pursuit of arcane knowledge more of a fashion statement then an actual path and discipline. The best of independent music however has never shied away from being overtly esoteric, and is not watered down to suit the masses or make it more palatable to undiscerning ears. This book brings together essential writings from those who are comfortably at home in the intersection of magic and music, that liminal zone accessed by shamans and session players alike. As such it is a welcome addition to the library of not only the musical aspirant, but the magical as well. Read the rest on brainwashed…

Tags: , , , , ,
No Comments »

Heavy Weather & Cephalapod Neoteny

Dream, Textuality | Posted by jmoore
Sep 20 2010

heavy_weather

 At it’s core Heavy Weather is a story of brotherhood and sisterhood, of estranged siblings who overcome their differences and reconnect at a higher level. Where Sterling’s book Schismatrix dazzled with it’s brillant portrayal of genetically altered and cybernetically augmented humanity aloft among the stars, in Heavy Weather I feel I get to know Bruce on  more personally.   

I’ve had three dreams about Bruce Sterling this year. One involved taxes. In another my dream version of Bruce told me I needed to start podcasting my fiction, something I fully intend on doing. In the third I met him on a suburban street in Austin, went to a college stadium, and then went trash picking together. (I got a cool turntable made out of stone and some weird phones.) By the third dream I knew I needed to read some more of his fiction, though I’d been following his blog “Beyond the Beyond” for awhile.

I’d started Heavy Weather once before, but put it down. It wasn’t the right time for me to read it and I got distracted by something else. This time was the right time to read it and I flew through it like an F6 down Tornado Alley.

The future portrayed by Sterling is unfortunately all too plausible. We are already seeing the Heavy Weather he wrote of – freak hurricanes, tornadoes, etc, all fed by global warming. The hopeful aspect of the book is the band of hackers who are researching the weather. They can’t stop it, but they can do a lot to understand it better and that might do much to assuage the difficulties when it hits. Personal dramas unfold amidst. 

not_a_gadget

Jaron Lanier’s book “You Are Not A Gadget” has also been a recent fascination for my eyes. He gives everyone who reads the book a lot to chew on, especially those who’ve been force fed the idea that we should inherently trust computer algorithms and that mobs are “smart”. I definitely agree with his idea that physical objects should be brought back into music distribution. I listen to mp3s, but don’t love them. I do however cherish my vinyl records. …And I think that is why collectable vinyl has been on the upswing since filesharing has become so easy, with bands releasing exclusive and limited pressings of albums or alternate versions, etc. I especially like the last section of the book where he explains the concept of Neoteny, which the oxford english dictionary defines as “the retention of juvenile characteristics in a (sexually) mature individual”. He notes that the lag time between birth and when we consider ourselves “adult” is growing. Our childhood is extending. He equates Bachelardian Neoteny with a sense of wonder, as opposed to Goldingesque Neoteny (aka  William Golding’s “Lord of the Flies” ) where cruelty and conormity dominate.  You’ll have to read the book yourself to get the full scope and scoop. The book ends with a nice meditation on cephalopods, and his equation “Cephalopods + Childhood = Humans + Virtual Reality” and his ideas on Postsymbolic Communication.

Like Rudy Rucker he dreams of a computer that is not based on current programing protocols. He says, “The point of the project is to find a way of making software that rejects the idea of the protocol. Instead, each software module must use emergent generic pattern-recognition techniques…to connect with other modules. Phenotropic computing could  potentially result in a kind of software that is less tangled and unpredictable, since there wouldn’t be protocol errors if there weren’t any protocols. It would also suggest a path to escaping the prison of predefined, locked in ontologies like MIDI in human affairs.”

I sure hope he makes a breakthrough in this regard.

Tags: , , ,
No Comments »

Schillerndes Dunkel

Musick, Textuality | Posted by jmoore
Aug 30 2010

schillerndes_dunkelI’ve been gazing through this book for weeks now. It is a beautiful treasure. Read my review of it here.

No Comments »

At Home in the Do-It-Yourself University

Textuality | Posted by jmoore
Aug 20 2010

I am a textually promiscuous creature. I have strings of one night stands with books, read what I want from them, and quit. If I really like what I find I may hook back up with the book for a second helping. If it is really good, I may go on to have a passionate affair with the text. Whereas in marriage I am monogamous, my booklife has led me into an open and ongoing  polyamorous engagement with the written word. The pursuit of knowledge is enlivened by the thrill of the chase.

secrets_of_a_buccaneer_scholarA few recent titles are helping me make heads and tails of my voluminous readings. The first is by James Marcus Bach, son of Richard Bach (who wrote the ever popular Jonathan Livingston Seagull). His son James is a high school drop out who none the less found his place in the world as an expert in the field of computer software testing. I can relate to James on many levels. It’s a wonder I made it through the tribulations of high school. I didn’t fare much better in college, which I did drop out of, even though I attended one of the most liberal and radical academies in the United States, Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio. I did do a lot of learning while at Antioch, but mostly outside of class: how to use and work at a library (a primary skill that has taken me very far, praise be Herochiel), pirate radio (I’m still on the airwaves to this day, though now on an FCC sanctioned frequency), and getting my feet wet in a more or less professional recording studio; musick has always been one of my passions.

It didn’t take much longer than a year at Antioch to realize that college wasn’t for me. I knew the fields I wanted to pursue: dreams, writing, radio and musick, among others. I knew that I may have to create my own fields. I also knew that I could do a lot of learning on my own. I tended to read the things I found at the library, things I was intensely interested in, made my own notes and wrote my own essays about.  Since I wasn’t doing well in the school, and hated living in the dorms, I knew I should go back home, get a job, get my own place and start working towards my dreams. Secrets of A Buccaneer Scholar: How Self-Education and the Pursuit of Passion CAn Lead to A Lifetime of Success is a gem of a book for all free spirits who feel restricted by the shackles universities tend to throw on the imagination. Granted, at Antioch I could have leveraged the available tools to my advantage if I’d been more mature. Even so I would have put myself in horrible debt. No one should be burdened with an education whose cost is the size of a princely mortgage. Knowledge and wisdom should not come with a caveat of indentured servitude.

Lifelong learners will enjoy this book for its useful tips on self-education. I  especially liked his ideas on creating a personal syllabus. James Bach also gives tips on buccaneering at work, on how to hack your way into desired professional positions, even if credentials, like a college degree, or types of work experience are lacking. I hold it to be true. In life, if something is desired enough, with feeling backed by effort, those dreamed of heights can be reached.

diy_u2 Another excellent book I’ve been dipping into is DIY U: Edupunks, Edupeneurs, and the Coming Transformation of Higher Education by Anaya Kamenetz. The first sections tackles problems like the one I mentioned above: the increasing cost of a college education and the disastrous effects this is having on our society. It already seems evident to me, so I skimmed over this part to the next section where she elaborates on various innovations, solutions, and models that bypass the hallowed halls of higher learning all together. While many of these solutions are in their infancy stages, it is nice to have some alternatives proposed. DIY is the future and we are living in it.

mindperformancehacksThe third book in this trilogy of educational transformation is a 2006 title from O’Reilly. Mind Performance Hacks: Tips & Tools for Overclocking Your Brain, by Ron Hale-Evans is bursting to the brim with seventy-five exercises to set your mind on fire, and give you a little boost on the path towards becoming a Mentat Jedi. Broken down into sections on memory, information processing, clarity, math, mental fitness, and others this is a trusty little guide to keep at hand, useful in those moments when you’re feeling intellectually sluggish. Some of my favorites are “keep a dream journal”, “play board games”, “learn an artificial language”, “consume your information in chunks”, “deck yourself out”, and “stash things in nooks and crannies.” Humans learn by playing games.

I’ll be keeping these around as I continue to develop my own curriculum vitae.

Tags: , , , ,
No Comments »

Bob Brauns Joyful Noise

Musick, On the Way to the Peak of Normal, Textuality | Posted by jmoore
Jul 14 2010

bobbraun1

Bob Braun was, and to some degree is a main stay on Cincinnati’s Art Damage radio program, on WAIF 88.3 FM. That is how I discovered him and fell in love with him. As a local Cincinnati celebrity on radio and tv he had a penchant for making bad records. Many were printed on small or vanity labels. However his one Top 40 hit, “Til Death Do Us Part” was released on Decca. I think it is now time for Bob to move out into the wider world.

Bob is the subject of a recent essay I wrote entitled “Where Would I Be WIthout Bob Braun?” for an anthology about thriftting called “First Hand Stories From Second Hand Stores”. The release date is September 4th, 2010, and is being made as a chapbook from the great folks at Aurore Press.  On that day there will be a reading and release party at the Comet in Northside, Cincinnati.  Expect a full fledged episode of “On the Way to the Peak of Normal” to be dedicated to thrift store record finds in the week(s) surrounding the event, also.

 
icon for podpress  A Few Songs from Bob Braun [14:34m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Four Songs from Bob Braun:

1. I Write The Songs

2. Feelings

3. ‘Till Death Do Us Part

4. Closer To You

What follows is a teaser excerpt from my essay:

On my shelf of vinyl records, the playful ditties of Charles Manson sit comfortably alongside the exotica of Martin Denny and the schmaltzy waltzes of Lawrence Welk. The esoteric jazz of Alice Coltrane commingles with the Gnostic revelations of Current 93. The moog sounds of Debussy and maudlin reflections of Tom Clay peacefully exist with the full on feedback provided by Flying Saucer Attack and the warped surrealism of Nurse With Wound. While I bought some of these LP’s and 45’s new, I acquired the bulk of my collection in second hand thrift stores, flea markets, yard sales, or saved them from the trash.

But even if I had enough records to make a mountain, and had not one by Bob Braun I would be as nothing; Bob Braun brings the love. Thanks to thrift stores I have many of his albums.

To a certain generation of Cincinnatians he is an icon of that bygone era when local media still had some chutzpa. I know it may be hard to believe, but local flavor on the airwaves and television screens was once as palatable as goetta and chili seasoned with cinnamon, cloves, and chocolate. Now the congloms are in charge and all they serve is government cheese.

Bob’s career in the entertainment industry began when he was just a wee lad of thirteen years old….

J. R. Bob “Braun” Dobbs provided by the generous courtesy of Walter / Kreese.

Tags: , , , , ,
2 Comments »

Some Notes on Keeping a Journal

Textuality, Writing as Magick | Posted by jmoore
Jul 11 2010

dream journalI’m almost 31 years old now, and I’ve been writing since I can remember. Looking through old school papers my Mom had saved I found my first science fiction story from around the third grade called “Space Quest”, and I remember the stories that I wrote as assignments in second grade already had chapters. But I started keeping a diary about my life in the 6th grade, a practice I’ve kept with throughout. I have a filing cabinet in the closet in my study/library/writing & music room filled with old notebooks and journals. It’s full now, and the journals I now keep spill onto my bookshelves -themselves already full, double rowed or with stacks of more books and papers in front. I write all this to say that over the years I’ve experimented with a number of ways of keeping my journals organized. This is how they stand now. Perhaps this set up will be helpful to others:

1. I keep a small moleskine or other durable memo pad (unlined if it can be helped) in my pocket, or next to me on my desk at work or when at home, at all times. This also sits on my nightstand for capturing things during the odd hours of night, morning or what have you. This pocket notebook is essential for writing down keywords from dreams, synchronicities as I notice them, intuitive flashes and ideas as I get them. First, I am a dreamer and a writer, but at this time I’m still working the proverbial day job at the local library (a great place for my ongoing researches in any case). The work for an essay, article, or story doesn’t stop when I put the pen down (it usually just joins the other one already in my pocket anyway); and as I get back to earning the green reality tickets we’ve all agreed upon to trade with by consensus (and perhaps stifled imagination) I continue to compose the story, essay, review, poem, etc. in my mind -especially, if I’ve just come back from my hour lunch break, which is really an hour break so I can write. The pocket notebook allows me to write some notes down, that I can get back to later, and I can sketch them in on the fly without annoying my co-workers too much. Anyway, they should be keeping a journal as well.

2. I used to keep separate books for my waking thoughts and my night dreams. These were black hard bound blank page notebooks. As I take my journal with me everywhere I go, along with a book or two  I’m reading, this set up became too cumbersome. As I started working with my dreams on a regular basis, it became apparent, that I was often writing about my waking thoughts, day time events, synchronicities, what I was reading, etc. and my dreams, all in context with each other, so the separation began to feel artificial. I now no longer worry about it. What I did do, though, and this I got from Robert Moss, was start keeping my stuff in a binder. I can’t stand to write on lined paper, so I take blank paper from the office and punch holes in it. Keeping things in a binder allows you to go back and add in some thoughts at a later time about a dream or event -especially useful, as pointed out in Robert’s “Dreaming True” book- when you’ve had a precognitive dream, or various types of “life rhymes” experiences.

3. Although I do not separate my dreams from my waking experiences in the journal any longer, I do have a few sections in my binder. A) Dreams, Waking Events, Ideas, Thoughts, etc. I index these by title/subject/theme at the beginning of each month. B) I already mentioned that I am a writer. If I don’t write I get really depressed and feel like I am not only letting myself down, but feel negligent for not doing what I know is part of my purpose in the world during this incarnation. I write poetry, stories, articles.  To stay organized I keep current drafts and print outs of finished pieces in a second section of my binder. c) Although I will often write about things I am reading and listening to in the fist section of my journal -as what I read is often based on research leads and cues from dreams and coincidence.  I also try to write at least a page or two of thoughts/notes/feelings about books and articles I’ve just finished reading, more if it is particularly important to my own path. Photocopies of relevant material, printouts from blogs, magazine articles and other stuff, along with my marginalia may also go in here.  As a huge music fan with my own radio show I also write music reviews for the independent music website Brainwashed.com. Printouts of the reviews of the albums I’ve listened to and written about also go in this section, because oftentimes the music I listen to is just as important to me as what I’ve been reading.

4. Lastly, I have a travel binder. This is the one I put in the bag that goes with me. (Interestingly enough I bought the bag at a yard sale from a lady who is a member of the International Association for the Study of Dreams -before I knew she was a member.) When it starts getting too full, I take a month or two’s worth of dreams, drafts, and reading/music thoughts out and put those in separate large binders. So far I fill up about one large binder full of dream stuff per year. The drafts, printed copies of finished pieces, and reading notes fill up separate binders.

I’ve got a review to write now. You’re on your own when it comes to storing all those diaries you’ll be filling up.

This post started off as a comment over at the new Dreamgates blog by Robert Moss, where you’ll be sure to find me joining in the various discussions. Find it at the following address:

http://blog.beliefnet.com/dreamgates/

Specifically my comment was on this post: Why You Want to Keep A Journal

http://blog.beliefnet.com/dreamgates/2010/06/why-you-want-to-keep-a-journal.html

also of keen interest: Games to Play With Your Journal

http://blog.beliefnet.com/dreamgates/2010/06/games-to-play-with-your-journal.html

Tags: , , , , , , ,
2 Comments »