By Mary Vlooswyk
The Oneironaut 1
by Sheri-D Wilson
Write Bloody North (2024)
The first thing I had to do with this book was research what Oneironaut meant, despite ONERIO = Dream / NAUT = Traveller, on the book’s back cover. According to Wikipedia, Oneironaut is the term given to a person who explores dream worlds, usually with lucid dreaming. Okay, what is lucid dreaming? Sites I looked at online describe lucid dreaming as a form of dreaming in which the conscious mind takes control over the content of dreams. I was surprised by Healthline.com’s research that indicated about 20 percent of people experience lucid dreaming monthly. I don’t believe I fall into that category. Timothy J. Legg, PhD, PsyD, states, “We may not remember dreaming, but everyone is thought to dream between 3 and 6 times per night.” (National Library of Medicine, Biotech Information) Our dreams are like the Wild West of our minds where it seems rules and order don’t exist. Scientists who study dreams believe even really weird dreams probably don’t come out of the blue, but are a result of our brains processing information we’ve taken in throughout the day. In an interview discussing living in the presence of invisible things, actor Anthony Hopkins shares his belief that we have to refuse to drown in our own “stickiness.” He goes on to state “the truth in one’s heart is like a hidden treasure. Be weird. There’s no time for anything else.” This is a perfect premise for Sheri-D Wilson’s latest offering, The Oneironaut 1, a poetic novel. I had an inkling it was written to drop the reader into one of those weird dream states that initially feels like it doesn’t make sense, yet it does!
Through the magic of dreamworld words and action, Sheri-D Wilson has cast a spell. Her book conjures the importance of dreaming to how one sees the world, and to how one uses their voice to create their life stories. The Oneironaut 1 is a story of insight and revelation, full of transformation and struggle, flying geckos and giant black pearls. It is a story that compresses into unity seven women known as The Willows, a brilliant scientist (Rain), and a heartless, robotic government. I was impressed with the pace things come and go, the speed with which Wilson draws her readers into dark confusion. There is a remote island, Willows who speak Crow, an obsidian ovoid that transports one through time. There is travel to the ocean floor, and travel to ancient Greece. There is poetry.
In The Oneironaut 01 the reader becomes a lucid dreamer/explorer along with main character, Rain. The language and gestures Wilson uses are inspired by a dystopian dream world. In her sequence, character driven, long poem, Sheri-D Wilson experiments with oneiric processes set with and against a more familiar lyric narrative form and mode.
The dream cycle and sequence Wilson creates can be read modularly. She has written The Oneironaut 1 in such a way that the separate parts, when combined, form a complete, enticing whole. Wilson’s creation of a world and language that is both familiar and unfamiliar, allows the reader to plunge and tumble with her characters in a way that remains fundamental to our experience of dreaming.
As I give myself to Rain’s journey, her questions provoke questions of my own. What part of myself do I recognize in Rain? What destiny awaits me? Like Rain, I have to have dream world faith in the shadow of uncertainty. As Rain stares into the past reading and re-reading a forbidden article she has stumbled upon, she questions why dreams have been outlawed. She reads (p. 23) “there is a direct correlation be-/tween an Oneironaut lucid dreaming and enhanced/oneiro-healing.” What hidden controlling dynamics are there in my daily norm? What rogue acts of self-preservation have I committed? I could probably describe events from my past but what about describing the bits dealing with my behaviour? How do I see behind a memory gauze I can’t penetrate?
Rain continues to question what is or isn’t a dream until she comes to the conclusion that (p. 37) “dreams have been eradicated.” She acknowledges how searching memories can be difficult (p. 38) “Going back in time, back to my three-year-old self, /it’s sketchy, but I remember snippets of the day /the regime publicly declared its maleficent edict /against dreamers.” On page 70 Wilson gives a direct look at what is going on in Rain’s mind, “Imaginary vs mythical vs real vs unreal vs fantastical /vs magical vs hallucination vs surreal aberration vs /a figment of the imagination…vs…vs…” Dreaming is where the brain solves problems it wasn’t able to complete in waking hours.
We travel with Rain into and through the shiny black ovoid, meet Pythia, then (p. 102) “The paranormal Oneironaut cum Mermaid cum Witch” in her clove house. As Rain rides a rollercoaster of shapes that shift and renew, then regenerate again, the reader also rides along with her emotions, (p. 158) “Change ingrained patterns. Modify imposed morphology.” When we’re asleep the brain is trying to construct a reasonable model of the world with input from within, and those really weird dreams are like throwing spaghettis against the wall to see what sticks!
Through LM and Che, Rain and her mother, Wilson’s readers face universal joy, universal sorrow, universal life. With Rain, we are reawakened to the world of dreams and the labour of birthing an idea. What do you ache for? What do you dare dream? It doesn’t matter what planets are squaring to your moon, would you risk your life for your dream? Can you sit with the wildness of your dream without giving in to cautions to be careful or realistic? Can you bear the accusation of betrayal and not betray your own soul? Can you stand on the edge of an Island and shout to the Oneironaut “Yes!” Can you get up, like Rain, weary and bruised to the bone and do what needs to be done to follow your dream?
With every Data Log entry Rain writes, there is an unspoken declaration of an unfulfilled desire, a torment of something we can’t have or can’t find. Like a code in a Matrix, the progression of Rain, The Willows, and the surveillance of the DOD appear in a perforated sequence. There are algebraic formulas and hand drawn sketches. The narrative takes place on several astral planes. There is a fluid time line of reality.
In The Oneironaut 1 Wilson gathers us into a fantastical dystopian world where we can gather in our hands a mixture of wonder, dreams and imagination. We are drawn into a world with an unnavigable distance between where we are and where we want to be. Yet, with Wilson’s skillful guidance, the narrative wormhole proves easy to chart.
Mary Vlooswyk is poet whose writing has been published locally and internationally. She has been a contributing editor for Arc Poetry Magazine since 2019. Her first book of poetry, On the Prairie Fringe, was self-published in 2022. Her charcoal drawing, Surrender to the Wind was published in Shanti Arts. She is an adult student of cello. An avid lover of nature, she lives with her husband on the edge of beautiful Fish Creek Provincial Park.