Literature remains alive only if we set ourselves immeasurable goals, far beyond all hope of achievement. Only if poets and writers set themselves tasks that no one else dares to imagine will literature continue to have a function. –Italo Calvino

One of my favorite books is Italo Calvino’s Six Memos for the Next Millennium.[1] Calvino was to present this work as the 1985-86 Charles Eliot Norton Lectures at Harvard University. Calvino died just before he left Italy to deliver the lectures. He had completed the first five of the lectures (Lightness, Quickness, Exactitude, Visibility and Multiplicity), intending to write the sixth lecture during his stay in Cambridge. In a note found on his desk, the sixth lecture was to be entitled, Consistency.

In many ways, Six Memos does for writing, what Roland Barthes did for photography in his Camera Lucida.[2] Both books are written from the heart, from the primacy of personal values, from the ecstasy that comes from complete commitment. Like Calvino’s book, Barthes’ was published only after his death.[3]

Not long ago, I had a dream that I was to write more on “the five C’s.” The only C’s I could think of were the words I had used in Dialogue Two in Dreams, Bones & the Future:[4] Centrality, Continuity, Circulation and Coming. Only four.[5] So, what was the fifth to be? A cascade of C- words filled my consciousness. All struck me as relevant. How to choose?

The scene of C-words was replaced by an image of my “dream-gourd.” Since the dream-gourd method of consulting the I Ching had played such a part in initiating the dialogue between Paco and me that led to Dreams, Bones & the Future, I decided to consult the I Ching using the dream-gourd method.[6]

What C-word will complete the list of five?

Notice that I am putting aside any conscious intention as to what the word will be, and am handing over intentionality to the I Ching. I refer to this deferral of intention as “mantic.” This is similar to what one does in following the lead of a dream, or a slip of speech, or an “accidental other” one might see in a random coffee spill or a cloud. These mantic gestures often have the quality of prophecies and therefore form a “vatic” assemblage of prophetic elements “for” the future.

Before detailing the response of the I Ching, a review of the four Cs will set the context. In Dialogue One of Dreams, Bones & the Future, I had indicated that “the eventual discovery of dreams (which has only just begun) would be as monumental for our fate as the discovery of fire was in the early days of our becoming human.” In Dialogue Two, Paco asked me to say more about this. I noted that my statement was “audacious” to an alarming degree, but indicated that this was in fact the nature of intuitions.[7] The first idea I had in mind was centrality. “Dreams will become once again ever more central and crucial in individual and collective life—in spite of all that animates against this process at the present time.” The second idea was continuity. We experience dreams as separate from our daily reality, separate from our intentions, separate from others. In the future, we will experience the rhizomic underpinnings of our own psyche as well as the psyche of others, and the “painful fragmentariness” to which Jung referred will begin to disappear. The third idea was circulation. Here I imagine each of us bringing forth what we experience and encounter in the deeper rhizome, and circulating it not only to our own consciousness, but to others as well. The fourth idea was coming. I meant this in all its various meanings, and pointed to the great climax that is coming—perhaps as the “singularity” that Ray Kurzweil has elaborated as the point when machine learning enters exponential development and far surpasses human capacities. Of course, I also think of Jung’s Coming Guest, which I describe as the advent of genuine eros,[8] perhaps the one quality that machines may be incapable of developing. This, more than machine development, may be what is forthcoming from the orgasmic singularity that all humanity will experience.

My dream says I must write more, and must add a fifth C. When I brooded on this and finally went through the process of using the dream-gourd to consult the I Ching, I received Hexagram 3. The sequence of hexagrams from 1 through 64 is a calendar, a clock, and a generative dyadic system. The third hexagram is the first hexagram of “manifestation,” being “born” from the creative (Hexagram 1) and the receptive (Hexagram 2). The name of this hexagram is Zhun, which translates as “beginning.” The etymology of Zhun is shown in the Chinese pictograph.

The horizontal line is the ground. The vertical line above ground is a sprout. The wavy lines below ground constitute the root. Thus, “beginning” is pictured as a sprout that has pushed its way through the earth, supported by its roots. The C-word that springs to mind is cultivate.

How, then, do we cultivate dreams? My attention is drawn to the pictograph. The spout (the manifest dream) is born from a seed, is nourished by soil and propagates unseen roots. The roots intertwine in the rhizome connecting plant to plant. The I Ching pictures this as the first manifestation from the interaction of the creative and the receptive. It is fundamental. It is the “beginning of all things.” The I Ching wants me to look at dreams in this way.

What do we do in our own lives and in relation to the lives of others to cultivate dreams? This is in itself a deep question and deserves considerable focus. I will tend to this in the next post.

[1] Italo Calvino. Six Memos for the Next Millennium. Boston: Harvard University Press, 1988.

[2] Roland Barthes. Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography. New York: Hill and Wang, 1981.

[3] As I write this, something is niggling at me, just out of reach of consciousness.

[4] Russell Lockhart and Paco Mitchell. Dreams, Bones & the Future. Everett & Santa Fe: Owl & Heron Press, 2015.

[5] The “missing” C-word struck me in relation to Calvino’s missing lecture: “Consistency.”

[6] The dream-gourd dream and the use of the dream-gourd in casting the I Ching is available at http://dreamgourd.blogspot.com. It was not lost on me that the “I” of “I Ching” is translated as the word changes.

[7] “Audacious” derives from the Latin audere, meaning “to dare.” The deeper etymology refers back to avere, meaning “to desire.” I can aver desiring these things in relation to dreams.

[8] Russell Arthur Lockhart. Psyche Speaks: A Jungian Approach to Self and World. Everett: The Lockhart Press, 2014. (Reprinting of original published in 1987 by Chiron Press.)