Dream Galaxy

Diary & poem of record · Water

My old friend entered my dream

Qinzhou (Gansu), China · 759

故人入我夢，明我長相憶。恐非平生魂，路遠不可測。魂來楓葉青，魂返關塞黑。……落月滿屋梁，猶疑照顏色。水深波浪闊，無使蛟龍得。

Original text — Dreaming of Li Bai, I, Du Fu

My old friend entered my dream, showing how long I have been thinking of him. I fear it was not his living soul — the road is too far to know. His soul came through green maple leaves and returned through the darkened frontier passes… The setting moon fills the roof beams; I still half see it lighting his face. The water is deep, the waves are wide — do not let the dragons take you.

Translation · Editorial translation (draft)

Open this dream in the galaxy →

Source
Dreaming of Li Bai, I — Du Fu, 759
Rights
Public domain (ancient text)
Record type
Diary & poem of record
Place
Qinzhou (Gansu), China · Chinese
Date
759
Uncertainty
Moderate — Du Fu, unsure whether the exiled Li Bai is still alive, dreams of him. Variant characters exist across editions.
Imagery
Friend · Moon · Forest · River · Water
Feelings
Longing · Grief · Tenderness

How traditions have read this kind of dream

Psychological

Early dream researchers often linked water imagery to bodily sensation and mood; later psychoanalytic writers read deep water as a figure for what lies below awareness. Modern researchers treat such readings as interpretive traditions rather than findings.

cf. Havelock Ellis, The World of Dreams (1911)

Mythological

Many cosmologies begin with primordial waters — the deep of Genesis, the Babylonian Apsu, the cosmic ocean of Hindu myth — so water often stands for origins, boundaries and crossings between worlds.

Comparative mythology

Chinese traditions

In Chinese poetry water carries time and loss — “all things flow east like water” (Li Bai) — while Daoist texts praise water as soft yet enduring.

Li Bai; Daodejing ch. 8

These are cultural lenses, not a diagnosis.

Dreams that share its images