The Power of Five (7)—Dream Interpreters

Click here for the introduction to the Round and Square series "The Power of Five"
One year ago on Round and Square (27 June 2012)—Bricolage Bibliothèque: Introduction
Two years ago on Round and Square (27 June 2011)—Flowers Bloom: Introduction

[a] Flow RF

Below, I list the "Five Dream Interpreters."

If you read the entry on pharmacies the other day, and thought that they were just a little corner of life, only relevant when we have a cough (or diarrhea), you will not make that same mistake today. Let's just get this straight—you dream a lot. We all do (almost all of us), and a whole bunch of people over the millennia have been thinking about it. This is not new.

But fascination with it won't go away.

[b] Nap time RF

We dream; we think. Sometimes we remember our dreams and tell them to bewildered spouses, friends, and relatives who can't possibly follow the story line. (Some of us then get frustrated that they can't understand).

Occasionally, we try to write them down. 

I have had two such dreams in the last eight months that surely could have been terrific story-lines. One was a science fiction thriller about criminality and morality (with apologies to Fyodor Dostevsky, who wrote it better than I dreamed it). It had a twist, though, and it would have set us on a new path (maybe with aliens). It started to ebb by midday, and then I forgot.

The other was, well, let me think. Ummm, I don't quite remember, but it was great.

Does this sound familiar? 

I put off writing down details just long enough that they are now fragmented—not gone...just not quite what they could have been. Damn. Now I understand why Samuel Taylor Coleridge should never have answered the door after smoking dope and taking a nap.

ALERT
Sleep, keep a pad and paper nearby...and don't answer the $%&($ door (or the phone). Literary history depends on it.
END ALERT

All clear. So...these are the Five Dream Interpreters.

Together, they form the category "Dream Interpreters."

Remember, if you think that this is a "top-five" list, such as you read on Yahoo, you are very badly mistaken. No, these are totality. 

[c] 蝴蝶 RF

If that doesn't make sense...go back and read the introduction and the links!

The Five Dream Interpreters
(feel free to click the links)

Zhuangzi (莊子)
Franz Kafka
Sigmund Freud
Carl Jung
L. Frank Baum

Honorable Mention**
Gilgamesh
Joseph 1; Joseph 2
** The RSQ board will occasionally make use of the "honorable mention" opportunity to throw in a few more things to think about. That is "history and culture," though...not cosmology. The Five..that's cosmology.

Discuss. 

Here is a little explanatory micro-essay. Zhuangzi dreamed he was a butterfly, and didn't know whether he was Zhuangzi or the butterfly. That's great stuff. Kafka invoked a really big bug—hard to beat that. Freud theorized that we all dream about long slithering things, in one way or another.* Carl Jung lived dreams (and united Round and Square). L. Frank Baum is an American-based international icon. In color. Judy Garland, too.
*Yes, I realize that I have engaged in a gratuitous cheap-shot. The subtlety of Freud's arguments really are fascinating. My teacher Paul Riesman used to say that he wanted nothing more than to be fluent in German (he wrote his doctoral thesis in French and spoke fluent Fulani), just so he could probe more deeply into Freud's thinking.

'nuf said.

Tomorrow—We Shouldn't Have Done That—Introduction

[d] Dreamy RF