A Dreamer Writes - Who & Why

The first time I wrote a dream as writing for readers, not as hasty record on scavenged paper or in a journal, was for my book LIVING BY THE DEAD. It's a memoir of two disparate, inseparable experiences: living beside a cemetery and my husband's sudden death at forty-nine. That dream, from the rock bottom of my grieving, begins these dream tales. Cheer up, if you're thinking 'no thank you' to gloom in memoirs or dreams. The book had laughs, and the dreams here aren't nightmares. Most of them.

I've recorded dreams for decades, usually particularly vivid or intriguing ones, though not all come up to those marks. And of course I've forgotten thousands within minutes or seconds. Only later in my life did I join a dream group. I'm not sure I'd ever heard of one, but when I did, without really knowing what went on other than some sort of interpretation, I wanted in. Also, I knew two of the women in the group, who were decidedly not hoo hoo types; I had no fear of new age mist.

Back to writing dreams for readers. I felt unfruitful, creatively, drifting, for quite some time. Dreams are extraordinary gifts of narrative and images. We tell them aloud (boring some people to their core); characters present them in fiction; writers create fiction or poems from them almost whole.

The Wisdom of Your Dreams with cat I didn't want to do that, and one day it hit me: I will simply write my dreams as well as I can, refine them, intensify them, put into words what the dream gave to me. Or I gave to myself in dream state. It was a writing project, not ready made, but ready to make.

Dreams aren't presented in chronological order, but dates of dreaming are given if recorded. A few lines of commentary are occasional. No overt interpretation. That's enough background for now. ("It's the dreams, readers!" if I have any.)

Ellen Ashdown

ILL WIND

September 1994. I am walking at night, down the side of a desolate highway. The unlighted road where I walk is the only landscape, dream as close shot. A terrific gale is blowing, terrific. The wind blasts straight at me—but not at my face. For I am walking, must walk, backward. Only this way can I make any progress, but every step is arduous. I am bent by this wind into a curve. I rest against its force, bracing myself, to lift and drag each foot. Slow motion, slow as moving through oily air.

I am in danger too. Only the roadside white line can save me. My whole focus, undivided, unwavering, must be on that line. If I wander over the line onto the road—and I do, for oh the physical strain to keep upright—I will be killed by the speeding cars whose headlights come at me like comets. Now! Another! Too close—almost gone! Concentrate. Concentrate. Watch the line. Lift, drag, lift.

I wake. The divination comes to me whole. The only way I can go forward now is not to look ahead and to walk a narrow line. If I do not, I am gone. 1994

DUI. DOA.

Once again I’m in a big house, this time at a lively drunken party with many people, family and not. I have made quite an entrance, or should have, because I’m in a convertible sports car spinning in the air in the living room. (Unfortunately, or thankfully, I observed dream-me without dream-vertiginous sensation.) The silver…

SUCH A LONG WAY

Mother came to me seventeen years after she died. I remain convinced it was not only a dream. The first time I had sleep paralysis, long before this dream, I was an undergraduate staying at a friend’s house. As I lay there immobile in the dark…

BARBECUE PIT TOILET or A PRINCESS PEES AMONG STRANGERS

My family and I are touring a castle-like museum: long vast halls, marble floors. I find a bathroom—with a line, because only one person at a time can use it. Impatient, I wander off, finding no line when I return. The bathroom is downstairs, reached by a rather narrow brick stairwell with a sharp turn…