VQ: Hello Komninos

     I happened upon your site after doing a net search for
     animated gifs.

     It is a longshot I guess, but have you any interest in dreams?

     The reason I ask is that I am a voluntary contributor to an e-zine
     called Electric Dreams and believe that an interview with you would be
     very interesting.

     To find out a little about me, you could check out my homepage at:


     About 10 years ago, I worked at Melbourne University Press and have a
     feeling that you were a contributor to a poetry collection, especially
     after reading your "childhood" poem online.

     The book, if I recall correctly, had a very bright lime-green cover.
     I used to write occasional poems as a hobby.



     KZ: the book may have been la mama poetica edited by mal morgan.
     the cover was yellow.

     as for my interest in dreams, well, i sort of think they are brain junk
     being put into the cranial trash can, wrong bits of info collected that
     day, wrong bits of logic we don't need anymore, etc..
     this process probably happens whilst we are asleep but if the conscious
     becomes awoken during this process i think it tries to make sense of the
     chunks of information it catches the brain deleting and sequences them
into
     a dream shortly before we physically awaken.

     call me a logical male but this is how i explain dreams.
     i rarely remember any dreams since i have thought of them in this way,
and
     if i do can always relate the individual bits to things i have been
     thinking or talking about in the last few days.

     i think the fantasy and unexplainable bits of dreams are what our
     subconscious adds between the bits of junk to make a sequence that makes
     sense.
     our brains are being conditioned from birth to make sense of bits of
     information it is receiving all the time.
     if it is half asleep and receiving a stream of brain junk i believe it
will
     try to make sense of it and construct a sensible explanation for what it
     receives.

     not very romantic i suppose for a poet, but i'm not that kind of poet.

     regards
     komninos
       At 06:38 PM 1/14/01 -0500, you wrote:
>Not to take the romance or drama out of the out-of-body experience,
>but it's very common among narcoleptics (like me)--part of the whole
>bag of tricks that goes with out-of-sync REM sleep intrusions and
>leads us sometimes to experience waking life as a dream and sleep
>as the death of the dream. Narcoleptics are often neither asleep
>nor awake in the usual sense because our boundary between the two
>states is so much thinner than normal. For me, the experience of
>hovering between sleep and wakefulness in this un/conscious
>border zone is usually one of awakening to myself as a dreamer,
>so David Bircumshaw's lovely "Psyche, waking into awareness last"
>really resonated with me.
>
>Here's a Jean Garrigue poem I love and one that seems to be woven
>from some of the same strands being cast by these threads on
>unfashionable thoughts and cheerful reflections.
>
>
>Song
>
>by Jean Garrigue (1912-1972. All rights reserved, all spirit now
>on reserve)
>
>O beautiful, my relic bone,
>Whitening like the foreign moon,
>Whose luster consummates my tomb.
>O beautiful, my fresh rose-grown,
>Rose-rose white from that small bone
>Whose vapor is the breath I own
>And tendrils of my blood curl in.
>Rose-rose white, the flesh I am
>But murderer eye and murdered!
>For all the flesh becomes an eye:
>I am no flesh while yet eye's eaten
>The rose-rose flesh bare to the bone,
>Bare to the bone! But that flesh still
>By heat of dews renews again
>O bless, occurrence of the moon
>When actual flesh of the both is gone,
>My flesh the air the eye takes in,
>That flesh on bone the air the eye takes in,
>Death-wedding the moon shines in.
>
>
>No need to ask if _poems_ have souls, it seems to me, although
>I've been wondering lately if that means, conversely, that some
>poems are zombies.
>
>Candice
>
>
>
>At 07:02 PM 1/14/01 +0000, you wrote:
>>Doesn't quite sound crazy BJ,  in the cancer hospital I worked in lots of
>>people had near death experiences like this. I tried Crowleyan Magick for
>>about 3 years where this is a common practice. I never managed it myself.
>>Quite a few cultures cite this experience some often drug induced. But
>>interestingly very few cultures outside of the Christian see this as a soul.
>>They do see it as a another form of self. A number of alien abduction
>>stories share similar features. I wish I'd had the experience to see what
>>I'd make of it. I did once have a really bad trip where I saw myself as a
>>period (full stop). Which really says it all doesn't it.
>>
>>Best
>>C
>>
>>
>>> Though most have admitted this discussion of "soul" is
>>> a bit out of place on this list, I just thought I
>>> would share my experience of "soul" with you all.
>>> Crazy as it may sound, I once experienced astral
>>> projection and *saw* my body lying on the sofa beneath
>>> "me."  So....I'm convinced I have a soul.  Not very
>>> scientific, barely poetic, but there you have it.
>>> Proof enough for me at least.
>>>
>>> BJ Horgeshimer
>>
>>
>
komninos's cyberpoetry site http://student.uq.edu.au/~s271502
cyberpoet@slv site http://www.experimedia.vic.gov.au/cyberpoet/
komninos zervos, tel. +61 7 5552 8872
lecturer in cyberStudies,
school of arts,
gold coast campus,
griffith university,
pmb 50, gold coast mail centre
queensland, 9726
australia.