Feb 5, 2004

Gate of Horn, Gate of Ivory



I had planned on launching this project today, and recent events in my life make it even more bizarrely apropos.

Last night I had a dream that I was sitting by a river and arguing with my father. It was one of those dreams that I can only barely recall, but I remember distinctly the river and my father.

My father called me on the phone today to tell me that my grandmother (his mother) died last night. Which means I'll be going back to CT next week (fear not, babies, I will be around this weekend) to go to the funeral. I'll be seeing many members of my family who I have not seen in upwards of fifteen years. This will also undoubtedly involve arguing.

And what the river is is obvious.

Anyway, I'm very interested in the subject of dreams, not in the "I want to live in a house by the sea and have lots of poodles and cars," but rather in the "I have duck feet and Benjamin Franklin is trying to floss my teeth," sense.

I do believe in the collective unconscious, and that when you dream of a person you are really visiting them in some way. There is a strange overarching homogenaity with dreams, many people seem to have the same ones or similar ones.

I guess it is the surrealist in me who is so interested in dreams and the subconscious. But they are very important to what we do, as poets. Much of my inspiration comes from dreams and the subconscious.

So I decided that it might be interesting to set up a sort of collective archive of dreams, so I've set up a blog, "Gate of Horn" (from the Greek tradition that dreams come through one of two gates, those that come from the Gate of Ivory are fatuous and those that come from the Gate of Horn are prophetic) with the purpose of it being a place for folks who are interested to recount remembered dreams. Hopefully over time it will become some sort of subconscious archive. Poems about dreams or dream poems are also welcome. I've posted a few from my journals, etc. to get the ball rolling.

If you want to participate email and I can add you to the roster of people who can access the blog. Or if you'd rather post annonymously, just send me the dream and I'll indicate that it is coming from someone else when I post it.

The blog itself is here.

Hopefully some of you will be interested in this. I think it will produce a really fascinating document.


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