The Curse of Seeing: A Poetic Reflection on Cognitive Dream Theory

This poem arose while I dreamt about a generative-lucid dream (in CDT typology parlance). As would happen, I got up from the dream and recorded it in my journal. While the emotional salience of the dream lingered after waking, I started rationalizing that there is no symbolic interpretation and it is just a rehash of recorded observations by my brain. The poem was a means of capturing the emotional moment when comprehension dissolves mystery. Understanding, I realized, is both illumination and loss. While I was sad at the loss of innocence and magic, I knew that this was the cost to illuminate the mind. Sometimes, sadness is the price of enlightenment.