Although google frustrates me with it's constant tinkering of gmail's layout, and seems to have become a branch of the NSA, I am appreciative that they provide stat's like this:
Pageviews by Countries
United States 826
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Russia 17
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Germany 5
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United Kingdom 5
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Canada 1
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Malaysia 1
Up until recently, I'd assumed my "readership" was a few close friends and family members. Lately, as I've started to post more, pageviews have spiked. Modestly, but significantly. And it is amazing to wonder about how people in Russia and Germany and the U.K. found their way here. And Malaysia!
As a person approaching middle age who hasn't yet traveled outside North America - but looks forward to doing so - this chart is enough to cause a little excitement.
Sometimes I allow myself some really lofty goals regarding this project. Delusions of grandeur, if you will. I haven't really been too direct about my aims, but they have to do with becoming an ambassador of dreams. Something like that, anyway.
Soon, I'll be putting up an enormous post consisting of about a month's worth of dreams. Eventually, I hope to start gathering dreams shared by willing collaborators. I'm interested in what kinds of themes are bouncing around in the collective consciousness, and in forming a community of people who are interested in approaching the collective unconscious in a spirit of intuitive playfulness.
You with me, Russia?
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See? I told you! I knew you more readers than you thought! I didn't know Google had that feature. So interesting.
ReplyDeleteAfter reading one of your most recent posts I wondered if you actually might want to start a blog about dreams, even after you complete your trek.
I look forward to reading your future post.
I'd definitely like to participate in your dream collecting.
I think telling dreams (through voice or written word) is a great form of storytelling. In fact, if my name wasn't "Lady J" I'd want it to be "Story". When I was little my mother often told me that I was "the girl who liked to tell the story." And friends have told me that when I speak (one on one conversations. not so much in a group. I know you understand that Mr. INFP) it is more like I am telling a story than simply talking.
Your dream telling is like the equivalent of intellectual storytelling.
One of the reasons I adore folk music is because I feel it is the type of music that most inhabits the art of telling stories.
One of the greatest storytellers (in my mind) was a folk singer named Utah Phillips. He and I were actually born on the same day. He was born in 1935 and died in 2008. He was a folk singer, a poet, and a story teller, an anarchist and a Wobbily.
It's odd that I thought of him as I was reading your posts today. REALLY strange. Might seem meaningless but I wanted to share anyhow...I'll be shutting my trap now.
Hey Lady J - to clarify, the feature I mentioned is a feature of Blogger, or Blogspot... which is operated by google. Not that I wish to promote google! But I'm not going to go there right now.
ReplyDeleteAnyway, to those of you who've had a blog for awhile or have used the Internet in ways that most people probably have but I haven't so much, my early 1990's sentiment of "Look at how the Internet is connecting me to the World!" probably sounds laughably dated, but...
"Look at how the Internet is connecting me to the World!" Today, this blog went from having viewers in 6 countries to 9! Whoever stopped by today from Austria, Lithuania, and Vietnam... Hi! Thanks for checking this out. I still find this kind of thing miraculous, even though it has been the way of the world for probably half of my life. And there is a strong metaphorical link, I feel, between the Internet and the subject that will likely become the major focus of this blog as it develops throughout the year: the subject of Dreams.
In dreams we are connected to our pre-language roots in that messages are conveyed to us in both language but also in the language of mythology, or symbols, or archetypes - whatever language you choose to label this pre-language language with.
Carl Jung believed that dreams were a link to The Collective Unconscious, and I think that there is at least some truth to that. I definitely feel that consciousness is, at the basest level, a singular thing that becomes more and more separate and individualized the closer you come to the tip of the iceberg that is Waking Consciousness... which is the tip of the iceberg that is Reality... a reality which many spiritual traditions view as the least-real of all realities, or at least maybe just one in a series of illusions.
But I digress. What I'm trying to say is that sometimes I think of the Internet as the training wheels of a Post-Industrial society trying to once again ride the psychic bicycle. Trying to reconnect with the collective. Take Instant Messages, for Instance. Whoever you are in Austria, in Lithuania, in Vietnam, we could just start chatting right now if we wanted to. In real time. Even though we are no where remotely near one another physically. It is almost like psychic communication, only these computers we are using are the training wheels that I'm thinking we may be nearing the point of realizing - "You know, we can just take these off and ride... we are already riding."
So, the internet, perhaps, is one way we build our r(E)volution. I believe that a reconnection with deeper levels of our consciousness through attention to our dreams is another. I want to use this blog to promote and encourage this kind of attention to one's dreams.
It's been about four years since I started dream-journaling, and I think I can honestly say that I've reached a point in which my dreams are as significant and important to me as waking life. I know that dreams have shaped my growth and understanding of my self, and I believe that an attention to dreams can do this for anyone. I also believe that a society that focuses on dreams, and makes dreaming a value rather than something looked upon with distrust and disregard, would be a society that might, to paraphrase Bob Marley, emancipate itself from mental slavery.
Delusions of grandeur? Hey, all I'm saying is that if we Dream a better world, we will evolve into greater individuals who live in a greater society in a more loving and peaceful world.
Who wants to join me in this Grand Delusion?