My research for my project on sleep continues and my focus for my work has a clear direction. I proposed earlier this week to create a dream journal in the form of a scroll-based on two Japanese works posted below. I have decided to work with mixed media to tell the tale of my own dreams through illustration, collage, and hand-written poems and verse. I would like to weave each dream tale together so you are where one ends and the other begins is blurred. Similar to the style of Ovid’s Metamorphoses, a poetry narrative on Roman Mythology that is basically one long poem filled with interwoven stories that are 416 pages long. For now, I will start with four of my dream tales but I have a really long scroll so I want to add stories and tales to this work for as long as I can well after this class is over.

When I revisited the book “Big Dreams” again, I wanted to focus on one of the main aspects of the book, where dreams may be the base for religion, collective sleep, and other ideas surrounding culture and dreams. Here are some quotes that I think are worth sharing:

“Classicist E. R. Dodds said, ‘[T]‌he Greeks never spoke as we do of having a dream, but always of seeing a dream.’⁵ ” (5 Recall)

 

“In a previous book, Dreaming in the World’s Religions: A Comparative History, I discussed the various roles of dreaming in Hinduism, Chinese religions, Buddhism, religions of the Fertile Crescent (Egypt, Mesopotamia, etc.), ancient Greek and Roman religions, Christianity, Islam, and the indigenous religions of Africa, Oceania, and the Americas. (p.83) The conclusion of that book serves as a prologue to this one: ‘Dreams and dreaming have been a widely recognized and highly valued part of human life—particularly in relation to people’s religious beliefs and practices—in virtually every cultural community known to have populated the planet.’¹³ ” (5 Recall)

 

“During the normal course of human sleep the immune system becomes highly active, performing a variety of essential tasks for bodily health. Religiously inspired dream rituals can have the medically useful function of enhancing those endogenous healing processes. What Western researchers call the “placebo effect” can be activated in certain kinds of dreams, particularly in big dreams with highly memorable images, characters, and emotions. These dreams can boost the physiological impact of the placebo effect and mobilize the body’s own illness-fighting defenses.” (15 Ritual Healing)

 

“The historical background to this aspect of human religiosity has deep roots in the ancient teachings of many traditions. One of the best illustrations of dream-based religious healing practices comes from the same cultural world as Perpetua’s, just a few years before her birth, in much more favorable conditions. The Roman orator Aelius Aristides was born in (p.244) 117 C.E (…)  One of the primary tools used by the priests at all Asclepian temples was dream incubation. We know a great deal about this practice at Pergamon from Aristides’s dream diary, which he titled The Sacred Tales.³ (p.245)” (15 Ritual Healing)

 

“A medieval Jewish text described a “dream question” ritual (she-elat chalom) that has many of the same features as the Asclepian and Muslim (p.247) incubation practices.⁷ Like them, it starts with changes in diet, purifications, immersions in water, and extensive prayers and scriptural recitations.” (15 Ritual Healing)”

 

“Heraclitus was right about many things. But on the solipsism of sleep, the philosopher had it wrong. In sleep each person goes into a world that remains profoundly social, with ongoing connections to interpersonal relationships, collective realities, and cultural systems of meaning and value. Sleep involves a lowering of sensory awareness, but not a total withdrawal, and sleep almost always occurs within the familiar context of a broader community. A social dimension of sleep has deep roots in the evolution of our species. From the earliest times through the modern era, humans have naturally preferred sleeping together.” (4 Culture)

A Wakeful Sleep by Tosa Mitsunobi (c. 15th/16th Century)

 

“Working in collaboration with the courtier-scholar Sanjonishi Sanetaka (1455–1537), imperial court painter Tosa Mitsunobu created some of the most impressive examples of the small narrative scrolls known as ko-e in fifteenth-century Japan.”

“A Wakeful Sleep is a notable example of a Japanese dream tale. This particular scroll tells the story of a young female courtier who falls asleep while gazing at the cherry tree in her garden. She dreams first of receiving a beautiful love letter, then later, of being visited by her lover—a man she has never met in real life. The images in A Wakeful Sleep occupy an ambiguous space between dreams and reality. In this particular image we see the woman sleeping, but are left to wonder whether we are looking at the world as it exists or the world conjured through her dreaming.”

Source: https://test-learnermedia.pantheonsite.io/series/art-through-time-a-global-view/dreams-and-visions/utatane-soshi-emaki-a-wakeful-sleep/

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Section of a Dream Diary with Sketch of the Mountains, by Myōe Kōben (c. 1203-10)

“Title: Section of the Dream Diary with a Sketch of Mountains

Artist: Myōe Kōben (Japanese, 1173–1232)

Period: Kamakura period (1185–1333)

Date: ca. 1203–10

Culture: Japan

Medium: Hanging scroll; ink on paper

Dimensions:Image: 12 x 19 in. (30.5 x 48.3 cm)

Overall with mounting: 44 5/8 x 19 5/8 in. (113.3 x 49.8 cm)

Overall with knobs: 44 5/8 x 21 1/2 in. (113.3 x 54.6 cm)”

Translation:

Source: https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/60437

 

 

I was introduced to stereoblindness in Oliver Sack’s book The Mind’s Eye where he gives a detailed account of “Stereo Sue” in her self-titled chapter that shares her story, that of his own, and others. This disorder according to “medical-dictionary” can be summarized as:

“Complete lack of perception of stereopsis. It may result from blindness in one eye or strabismus, but also from some unknown cause in people with otherwise normal vision in both eyes. Stereo-blindness in some parts of the visual field also occurs in people who have had their corpus callosum or optic chiasma cut or destroyed. However, some depth perception may still exist thanks to monocular cues (e.g. aerial perspective, light and shadow, overlap, relative size).”

After reading Sack’s book I am confident that I do not have this disorder but I was perplexed by Sue’s experience when I learned she had no idea that she suffered from this disorder until she reached her college years. Like Sacks, Sue pursued a career in Neuroscience, and without her education would never have known her perception of the world differed from that of the majority. Fortunately, with eye therapy, Sue was able to gain stereopsis, essentially the ability to perceive depth perception, eventually. Today, there seems to be more research being conducted on the topic, you can even take a free test online, yet I fear the awareness of this disorder is not as well-known as it should be. Maybe this is because people seem to function fully in our world with this ailment, ignorantly unaware of its existence like Sue was? I wonder what they are missing, but I also wonder what it is like to see the world through the eyes of someone who is Stereoblind?