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Dreams

Sy Safransky's Notebook

October 2007

If I sit here waiting for the perfect sentence to show up, I’ve got a long wait ahead of me. Maybe the perfect sentence doesn’t want me to wait. Maybe the perfect sentence is tired of one-night stands with writers who fall in love too easily, who can’t be trusted to stick around when the perfect sentence turns out to be not so perfect after all.

By Sy Safransky October 2007
Sy Safransky's Notebook

June 2007

And the perfect sentence wandered through a foreign city where no one understood a word she said.

By Sy Safransky June 2007
Sy Safransky's Notebook

May 2007

I inadvertently stepped on my cat Nimbus in the dark this morning. I’ve already apologized, and she doesn’t appear hurt, but I feel as if I’ve started the day by invading another country. Would a jury of my peers convict me for such a careless act?

By Sy Safransky May 2007
Essays, Memoirs, & True Stories

A Good Day

On the bedside table is a card with a picture of a sunflower on it. Inside, my mother has written in her elegant cursive: “Decide to wake up each day with a smile.” Each word is underlined individually. It takes courage, I think, for a mother to write that after her son — my brother — has committed suicide.

By Michelle Dussim May 2007
The Sun Interview

The Unseen Life That Dreams Us

John O’Donohue On The Secret Landscapes Of Imagination And Spirit

The U.S. is a great country. You can live the way you want there; you can be a self-made person. But sometimes, when all our energy goes into progress, acquisition, and productivity, it leaves a huge emptiness in the heart. I think the teachings of Meister Eckhart can address that emptiness, can show us how to be patient with it, and in fact bring us deeper into it. At the heart of our emptiness, we can actually discover nourishment in the secret landscapes of imagination and spirit.

By Diane Covington April 2007
Poetry

An Anthology Of Chinese Poetry

“All has come to nothing,” he writes. / In old age his clothes are tattered and thin, / His hut without a door; sick, / He suffers bad dreams.

By Robert P. Cooke April 2007
Sy Safransky's Notebook

May 2006

What a big appetite fear has. What a succulent morsel I was last night.

By Sy Safransky May 2006
Essays, Memoirs, & True Stories

My Father, Who Art In Heaven

Dad never believed in heaven. In fact, he was an agnostic until the age of seventy, when he called me to announce that, unlike all the other old people in his Florida retirement condo who were frightened to die and turning to religion, he was now an atheist. It was one of the few times in fifty years that he’d told me anything personal about himself. Amused and grateful, I said, “Good for you, Dad. Good for you.”

By Genie Zeiger March 2006
The Sun Interview

Last Night I Had The Strangest Dream

Jeremy Taylor On Dreams As A Tool For Social Change

At that point I had a fair amount of experience to support my belief that the language of dreams is universal, but my clients had been mostly well-educated, polite, law-abiding people. So I went to San Quentin to see if this work had the same impact with people who were for the most part poorly educated and had little impulse control. And indeed I found that even major barriers like incarceration make no difference in dream work. We are all having the same kinds of dreams. We may respond to the dreams differently, but the symbolic information the dreams offer is essentially the same. The differences between the prisoners and others in society lie in behaviors, and the nice thing about behaviors is that they can be changed.

By Karen Karvonen March 2006