Taking the High Branch.

Tree of Crows, Caspar David Friedrich, Oil on Canvas, 1822, Musee' de Louvre 

Pinch Me I'm Dreaming.

    I consider myself to be very fortunate when it comes to dreams. Most of the time my dreams are very vivid and considerably pleasant to experience. This being said I have never needed to keep a dream journal in order to improve my dream recollection. For one of our assignments in Mythology this week, we were asked to recall a dream or start jotting them down once you have one. Because I have no trouble recalling dreams, I have started the process in learning how to Lucid Dream.
    A Lucid Dream, roughly defined, is a dream in which the dreamer is aware that he/she is dreaming and can exert some amount of control over the ongoings. A lucid dream can begin in many different ways. There is dream initiated lucid dreams where the dream starts as a normal dream and slowly the participant becomes aware and starts exerting control. Then there is a wake-initiated lucid dream, this is when the dreamer can enter the self aware dream state immediately with little to no effort.
    A wake initiated dream is extremely hard but that is my ultimate goal. So far I have had one lucid dream. Hopefully with some practice that number can increase.

All that we see or seem, is but a dream within a dream. -Edgar Allen Poe 

The Nightmare, Henry Fuseli, 1781, Oil on Canvas, 101.6 cm x 127 cm, Detroit Institue of Arts.

Serendipity.

   Serendipity is defined as an aptitude for making desirable discoveries by accident. I prefer this phrase over coincidence because there is a type of poetry to the word. As a 19 year old college student, I feel that most of the discoveries that I happen across are serendipitous, or more so, lacking any true forethought. Never the less, I am always glad when new discoveries occur, intentional or not.
   My latest dance with destiny occurred last week while reading a biography on my favorite sculptor Gian Lorenzo Bernini. In the book, there were in depth analysis on some of his more popular and well known works including my absolute favorite: Apollo and Daphne. I have always been captivated by this amazing work of art and even traveled to Rome in order to see it in person! Despite my technical break downs of this piece of art, it never occurred to me that the story of Apollo and his futile love Daphne, came from Ovid's Metamorphoses.
    For those who have not read the story as of yet (you really should read it, it's beautiful), I will give the Sparks notes version of it:

Apollo was struck by Cupids arrow which caused him to fall madly in love with the nymph Daphne. Daphne, on the other hand, was not as captivated by Apollo or by any other man for that matter. She plead with her father to make her an eternal virgin, which he did by placing a spell on her. At the climax of the story, Apollo chases Daphne through the woods and, upon catching her, Daphne begins to turn into a laurel tree.

    There is obviously much more detail attached to this story written in much more poetic terms, but you catch my drift.

    Now, you may be wondering where the serendipity comes into play. Well this personal discovery of mine happened the morning before I attended Prof. Sexon's mythology class at 1:10. In that class he gave us an assignment to "Go have a coincidence". So all of these events occurring on the same day seems pretty serendipitous to me.

This is:
Apollo and Daphne, Gian Lorenzo Bernini, 1622-25, Marble, 243 cm, Galleria Borghese, Rome