In such cases our spirit senses overload. Often enough this frightening sensation wakes us up, because our internal system cannot endure the pressure. In themselves, however, in the structures that are proper to their activity, dreams are essays in hope. They represent the deepest level of our spontaneous impulse toward narrative. They endeavor to render an account of things.
Dreams are our most elementary form of storytelling.
This impulse to dream cannot radically be questioned. It is so native to the human spirit, so inseparable from the human substance, that all challenges to it must remain forever shallow. If the greatest of the archbishops of Canterbury will pardon my clumsy plunder of his coin, I believe dreams to be a kind of spes quaerens intellectum . We dream, that is, because we hope. The June issue contained seven of these notebooks.