blog#11 – Time and the way She swims through Dreams —
As soon as I finished the book, I fell asleep. I read The Society of Reluctant Dreamers in a period where I was (and am) sleeping a lot. I clocked in about 14 or 15 hours straight the other night. I’m not quite sure why but it seemed a fitting coincidence that this phase was occurring while I’m reading José Eduardo Agualusa’s book.
Even though I am exhausted nearly all the time (scarily alike to Hélio de Castro’s situation… the Brazilian doctor), I found it liberating to be reading about the intimacy and insane (un)realities of dreams. Often, dreams are seen as a taboo second-reality, shrouded in unknown and because of that, people are often afraid of what dreams could possibly reveal. Personally, when in those rare days when I vividly remember a dream of mine, or when a recurring one comes to visit, I’m haunted for the next few days. The dream doesn’t leave my reality, in fact, it more often becomes reality.
“All dreams are frightening, because they’re intimate. They’re the most intimate thing we have. Intimacy is frightening.”
I enjoyed the levels of depth within Agualusa’s book. He had a way of masterfully playing to the parallels within his story. Daniel and Hossi’s lives, both with their respective lived experiences with dreams (or lack thereof), Daniel’s reality-like dream conquest with Moira (and Hélio), Hossi’s dream interrogation with the Cuban, his love affair with Ava, Hossi and Jamba, lion and elephant, swimming and dreaming… and the list goes on. All this taking place underneath the backdrop of war and revolution, with the spark that is Daniel’s daughter, Karinguiri.
Dreams in the beginning of the book was a mode of solitude, self-realization, and at times, confusion. It felt like Daniel’s initial swim; isolating, dark, and bare. Dreaming was by-far, an individual thing. But further throughout the book, Dreaming, becomes a kind of magnet, a title that people could recognize in other’s eyes, a kind-of “republic of dreamers”. Not just dreaming, but the act of it, the provocation, the meaning, the colours, and the people. In the end, dreaming is what weaved everything together, it’s how Hossi and Daniel discovered each other’s lives, how Moira and Daniel became close, and how everyone in the city that had slept that night had the same revolutionary dream.
Agualusa wrote a beautiful story about how Dreams weave and swim between the minds of people meant to become linked, and how Time and Reality subtly echo their omens through the tides.
One reply on “blog#11 – Time and the way She swims through Dreams —”
Thank you for your review, I think your understanding and feeling of dreams are also very real. In this article, the dreams that I often have at night seem to be confused with the dreams to be realized in reality, because they both use one word, which is what I think is very interesting about this article. The two phenomena make a connection in this book, and they’re even going to make a dream machine, which is interesting.