prologue/epilogue

From March 4, 2004, through March 9, 2010, I kept paper journals of my dreams. There were, in total, 23 notebooks. 21 of the notebooks were 6 x 9 inch, 80-sheet steno books. The first two notebooks were 6 x 9 side-bound wirebound notebooks. One of my dream journal notebooks was lost when, one bad night, I passed out, drunk, on the 7-train and had my book bag stolen. So, in all, I am currently in possession of 22 dream journal notebooks.

After March, 9, 2010, I had a period of about seven months where I wrote down none of my dreams. In October of 2010, I went back to writing my dreams. But instead of writing my dreams on paper, I began writing them online. I have been writing my dreams down online ever since.

I have wanted to put my dream journals into some more widely available format for the last couple years. I kept thinking I would put the dream journals into a book. But the more I've used the blog format for my dreams, the more I've come to like it. First of all, it's immediate and accessible to anybody who can access the internet. Second, it's searchable. Third, it can be looked at in terms of one continuous timeline.

My current dream journal, maboroshi no yume, has been one continuous timeline, and has been devoted solely toward recording my dreams. I have made a focused effort not to include elements of my daily life in that journal. If I feel strongly enough that I should address issues from my waking life that have influenced my dream life, I put them in a separate blog made for that purpose.

This project will, I hope, largely have the feel of a continuous timeline. But, because I do have 22 separate extant journals, I do plan to break up some of that continuity by pointing out when a notebook has finished and when it has ended. I also hope to have a little entry in between the beginning of one notebook and the beginning of another, kind of describing the atmosphere and broad history of my waking life -- if necessary -- to help people, maybe even myself, get an understanding of what was making my dreams what they were.

My plan is to work backwards, day by day, starting with the final entry in the twenty-second notebook, my last notebook, and moving backward through the first entry of the first notebook. This should hopefully, for people who read blogs forward, while blogs generally move backward in time by entry, the sense of moving forward in my journals.

Before March of 2004, I still kept a pretty rigorous journal of my dreams. But my dreams were recorded as a part of my regular journal. Granted, my regular journal (while I kept it up, from about 1998 through about 2009) was almost always largely devoted to the analysis of my dreams. But my dream analysis led to memories about my day, what kind of stuff I was studying, my current thoughts on philosophy, stupid gossip about my kind-hearted friends, etc.

One of the reasons I began keeping a journal with just my dreams in it was so I could see my dreams as they were, without all the additional stuff from my day. The dreams in the twenty-two notebooks are, because I made them separate, special to me in a kind of sentimental way.

The choice to write my dreams in the 6 x 9 notebooks was also very meaningful. Before I began writing my dreams in the steno book journals, I wrote them in very small handwriting, in an excruciatingly meticulous style. Sometimes the only thing I'd do during the course of a day, outside of my work hours, was write and analyze my dreams. And most of the writing was just writing my dreams, not analyzing them. This was mainly because I felt the need to be so detailed. So some of the dreams in the notebooks before my dream journals are unbelievably long and detailed. It's way too much.

When I moved to the steno books, I made the choice to move into a much simpler style. In my first couple of 6 x 9 notebooks, which, interestingly, weren't steno books, I started out by using the notebooks as notes for the longer descriptions of my dreams that I would write in my regular journals. But as I continued using the 6 x 9 notebooks, I began to write dreams in a less note-like and a more solid fashion. I made my style simpler and left my regular journal entries for dream analysis and thoughts about the other aspects of my daily life.

I intend to work through these steno books as quickly as possible, so that this whole collection of dreams is online. These notebooks are easily the most consistent effort, and so, I would say, the most meaningful effort, I made between 2004 and 2010. I hope that anybody who reads them enjoys them.