Daydreaming – Standing in line. Waiting for that download. Sitting in traffic. Ignoring the commercials. At such cerebrally relaxed moments, fertile imaginations may wander into worlds separated from this by a gentle nudge or a violent shove. Daydreaming is a human predaliction, as natural as speech. Our daydreams are formed from threads spun in our hearts and patches of life knitted by our life experiences.

When your imagination begins to knit, what quilt unfolds? Of what do you typically daydream?

I have always been very imaginative, somewhat inward and private about some things. Daydreaming is part of the way I process my inner life, my poetry, my spirituality – a form of exploration for hopes and fears – a playground for free thoughts and visualizations – a way of finding connections and comparisions between unlike trains of thought.

I don’t really have one major theme in my daydreams. They are all over the place most of the time. The one exception is when I am emotionally upset or disturbed about a particular situation or event. In that case, I often replay a scene or imagine a new scene in which I stage events and conversations and act out possible interpretations and scenarios. I do this too when I am trying to make ethical judgments. It’s a way of hearing different voices and perspectives play out their roles. It is very liberating to me because in those imagined scenarios I can allow conversations to take place that would probably never happen otherwise.

Like many others (I’m sure) I have romantic and erotic daydreams. I daydream images before I get that bit of inspiration or cluster of ideas that is the spine of a poem. I daydream conversations with God and the gods, with the dead, with those I no longer see, with those I have never seen. I used to daydream about conversing with philosophers – Kierkegaard in particular. I daydream about the fae in the back woods, about the life under my feet, about the words of trees to one another.

I daydream about political change. I daydream my son’s future. Occasionally I daydream horrible situations and imagine my responses – or what would be the best thing to do if such and such happened.

Sometimes I catch myself daydreaming about strange things: a snake has bitten my leg and I am all alone, a community of friends has suddenly rejected me, I am utterly and inexplicably cold and cruel, waves on the ocean have configured themselves into intricate shapes and impossibly tall sculptures.

I daydream that I can interpret the winds, that I am invisible.

Daydreaming is central to my sense of self and to my work, to my emotional balance and to my understanding. It grounds me in the world and lifts me above it. Whether I discover myself daydreaming already and explore it further, or whether I enter into a dreamlike state more or less intentionally and consciously – daydreaming is a private realm that no-one else can ever take away and I value it. I have always thought that those who denigrate daydreaming must have very limited inner lives.