Chapter 28: Dreamscape

This thinkertoy exercise has me doing something that I've been telling myself to do for a long time, and that is to start a dream journal. The thinkertoy wants us to use the dream to relate to a problem, so I'll use it to relate to my problem of creating a children's book for my nephew. So this morning when I woke up, I wrote down everything that I could remember about the last dream I had. Here is my first entry in my new dream journal:
In my dream, I saw a stereotypical laboratory. There were tables holding beakers, bunsen burners, chalk boards, etc. And there was a scientist with brown hair, glasses and a long white lab coat. I was not in my dream, I'm merely an observer. The scientist is holding a cattle prod and I could tell that he's using the electric shock as a motivator to train a chimpanzee. What was he training the chimpanzee to do? I couldn't tell right away. As the dream went on I could see him punishing the monkey's errors with a shock. After a while, I realized that this monkey was also holding a cattle prod and that he was using THAT cattle prod as a motivator to train a mouse to run through a maze. And this scientist is training the monkey to be a smaller scientist.
Here are my answers to certain questions about my dream:
How were the people, places, and events in the dream related to my problem?
This doesn't really have that much to do with my problem other than the fact that they both contain animals. The scientist in my dream also had a problem to solve and that is the basis for my story.
Who were the key players in the dream?
The scientist, the monkey, and the mouse.
Does the dream change the nature of the question?
No it doesn't. It helps me to think that maybe I don't always necessarily have to solve my own problems, maybe I can train others to solve them for me and this would work as a collaboration.

I enjoyed this thinkertoy because it forced me to do something that I wanted to do for a very long time. I've always wanted to record my dreams because I know that that is a great untapped source of imagination and creativity. I did the first part of my dream in my bed as I woke up this morning, writing down my dream on a piece of paper as fast as I could before I forgot it. I did the rest of my thinkertoy after work on my dining room table.