May you always be a dreamer,
May your wildest dreams come true....

Art by Thomas Dodd; photographer and digital artist

What exactly is a dreamer?

Trying to describe a dreamer is like trying to catch a hummingbird with your bare hand as it zooms by. It's like trying to make a bracelet of snowflakes that lasts forever. Can't be done. But one can make a feeble attempt at it. 

The most common description of a dreamer is -  one who doesn't think by physical boundaries. One who has 'his or her head in the clouds'.

There are many "dreamers" who have accomplished great things in their lives. Leonardo da Vinci, Beethoven, Einstein, Van Gogh and thousands more over the centuries. Some, like Edison, claimed they actually dreamed their greatest ideas while sleeping. But I don't think he could have dreamed that without already knowing it was there - because he was already a wide awake dreamer.

I won't get into the differences between a visionary and a dreamer. Not all dreamers are visionaries, but I think all visionaries are dreamers. 

So, are there signs - small red flags - that can allow us to determine if someone is a dreamer? 

-I suspect a lot of dreamers are introverts who spend a lot of time inside their heads.

-I think they are probably daydreamers first and foremost.

-I think they are probably great readers, too.

-I think they see with great intensity the world around them, and they use this ability to see what others miss, to develop their dreams.

-I think most creative "working" dreamers have one foot on the ground and the other one ready to push them off  to fly into the unknown. 

-I think dreamers are risk takers.

-I think some dreamers are visionaries who want to change the world in practical terms. Politically. At the grass roots levels.World wide. There are many dreamers whose dreams lie in their great curiosity about the sciences and technology. Some take that curiosity, that passion for dreaming, and succeed beyond our wildest dreams.

-There are other dreamers who want to achieve artistic goals in the fine arts: writing, art, music, dance, theatre  - just for the sake of the art. Inadvertently, they can also change the world, but in a different way. These are the dreamers that I belong to.

-I believe that dreamers who practice their passions, their loves, their crafts, know that the pursuing of their dreams is just as satisfying as reaching their goals. As a writer, if I didn't love the process of dreaming the story and writing it, dreaming some more, writing more, and on and on, I would never have finished one, never mind ten published novels. 

-I also believe that there are people who are not actually dreamers, but are driven by competitiveness, a need to succeed in science and the arts above all else, because their focus is on financial and personal success. I will not be talking about them in this blog. No, I am talking to the ones who are the "real" dreamers. Like me. Like you.

If you are a dreamer a wisher a liar

A hoper a pray-er a magic-bean-buyer

If you’re a pretender come sit by my fire

For we have some flax golden tales to spin

Come in!

Come in!

- Shel Silverstein

Drawing by Shel Silverstein

You may say I’m a dreamer, but I’m not the only one.

- John Lennon

John Lennon, Oleg Shuplyak, Illusion Painting

Don Quixote,  Painter, Honore Daumier

A dreamer, I walked enchanted, and nothing held me back.

- Daphne du Maurier, Rebecca

Dahpne Du Maurier

Walk on the Beach by Joaquin Sorolla 

Every great dream begins with a dreamer. Always remember, you have within you the strength, the patience, and the passion to reach for the stars to change the world.

- Harriet Tubman

Sculpture Of Harriet Tubman by Lori Kiplinger Pandy



The Great escape, Christian Shloe, Digital Artist

Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there, wondering, fearing, doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before. 

- Edgar Allan Poe

Portrait by Gabriel Harrison:

hand-colored photographic print

Casper David Friedrich: The Wanderer Above the Fog

A dreamer is one who can only find his way by moonlight, and his punishment is that he sees the dawn before the rest of the world.

- Oscar Wilde

Portrait of Oscar Wilde, Artist unknown

William Turner, The Calf

I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.

- William Butler Yeats

Portrait of William Butler Yeats, by John Butler Yeats

Dickens' Dream by Victorian artist and illustrator, Robert William Buss 

In order to fly, all one must do is simply miss the ground.

- Douglas Adams

Bromide Print of Douglas Thomas, by Brian Griffin

Digital Photographer, Tereza Vlckova - A Perfect Day

Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed 

by the things you didn’t do than by the ones you did. 

So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. 

Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.

- Mark Twain

Departure of the Winged Ship, Vladimir Kush

IMAGINATION IS FUNNY.....

Imagination is crazy, your whole perspective gets hazy....

The Human Condition, Rene Magritte, surrealist painter 1933

Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited to all we now know and understand, while imagination embraces the entire world, and all there ever will be to know and understand. 
-Albert Einstein

im·ag·i·na·tion

iˌmajəˈnāSH(ə)n/

noun

  - the faculty or action of forming new ideas, or images or concepts of external objects not present to the senses.

 - the part of the mind that imagines things.

 - the ability of the mind to be creative or resourceful.

     - an act or process of forming a conscious idea or mental image of something never before wholly perceived in reality by the one forming the images (as through a synthesis of remembered elements of previous sensory experiences or ideas as modified by unconscious defense mechanisms)

      - the ability or gift of forming such conscious ideas or mental images especially for the purposes of artistic or intellectual creation

Writings and art that can enlighten us about Imagination:

You can't depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus.

Mark Twain

Rene Magritte, The False Mirror 1928

Note from me: Creative people often use their knowledge to recreate, reinvent, and envision new things using that knowledge and then imagination takes it to visions unknown. .... or as one person said, (and probably better!) .... 

He who has imagination without learning has wings but no feet. 

-Joseph Joubert

Here is an example of one artist using knowledge to create an amazing imaginative image. Notice there is no concrete support for this dam. If you take one book out what happens? Does it represent the flood of knowledge and the teaching of wondrous imaginings that books give us? Is it a religious statement? It doesn't matter. What you see in it is all that matters. No rules here!

The "Book dam" or "Bible dam", 

Jarek Yerka Surrealist Polish painter

There are no rules of architecture for a castle in the clouds. 
- G. K. Chesterton

"Castle in the Pyrenees", Rene Magritte, 1959

Without imagination a man is but a poor creature. His life is like a night without a moon to gild it. Christian Nestell Bovee 

"Golconda", by Rene Magritte, 1953 

The bird Imagination,

That flies so far, that dies so soon;

Her wings are colored like the sun,

Her breast is colored like the moon.

Elinor Wylie

"Hummingbird Girl", Rick Beerhorst (1960)

The imagination, give it the least license, dives deeper and soars higher than Nature goes. 

- Henry David Thoreau 

Untitled,  Photography by Robert and Shana ParkeHarrison

Imagination, imagination, imagination. It converts to actual. It sustains, it alters, it redeems! Saul Bellow

What the Fish Was Silent About, Vladimir Kush

Those who dream by day are cognizant of many things that escape those who dream only at night.
- Edgar Allan Poe

The Dreamer, Christian Schloe (Digital Artist)

Indulge your imagination in every possible flight. Jane Austen

Sketches of birds in flight, Leonardo Da Vinci
(In order to imagine a flying machine)

Imagination will often carry us to worlds that never were. But without it we go nowhere.

-Carl Sagan

Ladder to the Moon, Georgia O'Keefe

All that we are is the result of what we have thought. The mind is everything. What we think we become. Buddha

The birth of Shakyamuni Artist Unknown

 Those of my pictures that show very familiar objects, an apple, for example, pose questions. We no longer understand when we look at an apple; its mysterious quality has thus been evoked.

-Rene Magritte:

The Listening Room, Rene Magritte 1928

And finally two of my favourite writers and one of my all time favourite illustrators!

Sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.

- Lewis Carroll

"But who has won?" Arthur Rackman
Alice in Wonderland  1907

I like nonsense, it wakes up the brain cells. Fantasy is a necessary ingredient in living, it's a way of looking at life through the wrong end of a telescope. Which is what I do, and that enables you to laugh at life's realities. 

- Theodore Geisel (Doctor Seuss)

               

To all my email subscribers!

OOOPS!

I always send myself a copy of each new post just to make sure that it has gone out correctly, so imagine my surprise when a post from Nov 2014 popped up in my own email today, even though it does not show up on the blog itself! 

It seems a little gremlin got into my blog - or it may have been me clicking on something I shouldn't have, when I was deleting my New Year's Greetings post yesterday!

So....  if a new post showed up in your email that looks strangely familiar titled "The black and white certainties about writing...." it was, in fact, sent in error. 

My apologies!! 

Posting comments is less of a hassle now!

2017
This is to let you know that I have once again reworked how comments can be put on this site and now it very easy to do!

You will notice "No Comments" or "1 comment" or "5 comments" in the blue box after each of my posts. The words "No Comments"  is confusing people making them think I don't want comments!

Please click on "No Comments" to make a comment - also click if it has a number before Comments. It will pop up and you are ready to go. You can write in it immediately. If other comments are there, just scroll through them  and you will see "add a comment" after the last one. 

After you write your comment, click the box below that says "I am not a robot". This stops those evil little computer robots trying to sell something on my blog!

All you do next is choose an identity. 

1) Name/URL - which is the most common way and easy to use. You don't need to put in a URL if you don't have one (or even if you do!). Just put in your first name and click "Publish your comment". Done!!

2)Anonymous is easy to use as well. Exactly the same as number 3, but you don't need to give a name. Although you can add one in the text if you wish.

I will definitely give a reply as it shows up in my email as well.

The black and white certainties about writing....

"The black and white certainties about writing - is that there are no black and white certainties about writing - except the print on paper." Margaret Buffie

 ....................................................

They're fancy talkers about themselves, writers. If I had to give young writers advice, I would say, don't listen to writers talk about writers or themselves. Lillian Hellman

Beware of advice - even this. Carl Sandburg

The road to hell is paved with works-in-progress. Philip Roth

Literature is strewn with the wreckage of men who have minded beyond reasons the opinions of others. Virginia Woolf

I am irritated by my own writing. I am like a violinist whose ear is true, but whose fingers refuse to reproduce the sound he hears within. Gustave Flaubert

Everywhere I go I'm asked if I think university stifles writers. My opinion is that they don't stifle enough. Flannery O'connor

I owe my success to having listened respectfully to the very best advice, and then going away and doing the exact opposite. 

G. K. Chesterton

Easy reading is damn hard writing. Nathaniel Hawthorne

And one of my all time favs: 

I just sit at my typewriter and curse a bit. PG Wodehouse

"When witches go riding....

"When witches go riding, and black cats are seen, the moon laughs and whispers, ‘tis near Halloween." Anonymous       

Happy Hallowe'en!

Pixie, kobold, elf, and sprite,

All are on their rounds tonight;

In the wan moon's silver ray,

Thrives their helter-skelter play.

Joel Benton

Yoshitaka Amano, The Endless Dream

Men say that in this midnight hour,
The disembodied have power
To wander as it liketh them,
By wizard oak and fairy stream.
William Motherwell

Illustration by Samuel Arava

“Suddenly the day was gone, 
night came out from under each tree and spread.” 
Ray Bradbury, The Halloween Tree

Cover Illustration for Ray Bradbury's "The Hallowe'en Tree"