Introduction

Rosen was struggling to find a title for a collection of her poetry; she asked her dreams if "Living Fossils" met with their approval. This dream was the answer.

6/29 Dream

Early morning. My colleague and I are examining a primitive woman. She is ugly, shrunken, ancient. She is asking questions about art. My colleague shows me what this woman has done to her body trying to improve herself. She has been making designs of various kinds carved out of her flesh & burning colors on. They are not tattoos. Upper right arm raised shows flowers, perhaps a butterfly on her hip. There were others I don't recall. (One is identical to a sketch I made for my mother.)

We are appalled at the lengths she has gone to, we are disgusted with her and the ancient mustiness about her as if she had the dust of the ages on her. (She reminds me of Cheri's fossils.)

Then (I am shown) an opening in her center shaped like an eye(lid). (It is vaginal.) A white fluid starts to ooze out of it. We think it may be pus. As it starts to flow my friend and I get upset. The woman does not seem to notice anything. We begin to argue as to which one of us will tell her there are alternatives. We both start throwing up... (She keeps asking questions about art. My friend declares the fluid is seminal.)

Next Few Days

The dream frightened and disgusted me. I related it to my dream teacher and she... felt that my "I" had slipped out of my center and suggested that I redream it, dialogue with the dream figure and then transform this sick part of myself into a dream helper.

The problem of writing it as a poem fell into place at the moment I realized this dream figure was a living fossil that my dream mind had produced in response to my request for a title to be given in a dream.

The first section of the poem is the actual dream. The middle section was seen in directed daydream, a method used to practice the techniques of creative dreaming. The last section was a dream I had when I fell asleep on my couch on a very hot day with my notebooks on my lap. I dreamed a very long discussion with this new beautiful dream helper and wish I could have brought back more of it when I woke up.

Editor's Note

Rosen was struggling to find a title for a collection of her poetry; hence her interpretation of "living fossil" dream as a suggestion for the title. But surely there's more to it than that! The old woman is trying hard to transform--maybe too hard! What strikes me is the contrast between the old woman's self-mutilation in the name of art and the second dream's easy image of the swing, of a natural rhythm rather than willed change.

There's a reason Rosen might overlook that; her teacher was of the now-debunked "Senoi" school, claiming to be the dream-techniques of the Senoi or Temiar people of Southeast Asia (false; it was mostly made up). This pseudo-Senoi teaching emphasized willpower and the domination of dream figures by the ego. I tried it before it was exposed. I found it harsh and dismissive of my dreams' own concerns. So that old woman trying too hard and hurting herself sounds to me like a warning dream--Rosen's going too far in her hunger to change. Still, I can't call the technique all bad; the second dream certainly sounds healthier. Sometimes drastic works.

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