Our dream memories are often like postcards or snapshots from a journey. We have an image or two from an adventure that goes far beyond what we remember. You look at a postcard from your trip to Paris and there is so much it does not contain, starting with the smell of the morning coffee and croissants, though dwelling with the image may start to bring back more out of memory.

Suppose we could consciously send ourselves postcards while we are still traveling in a dream country? Maybe that would help us to remember more of the dream excursion, and to home in on the most important elements in our waking mind.

This interesting idea comes from Haines Ely, the gifted and civilized host of the “Earth Mysteries” radio show on KMVR out of Nevada City, California. I enjoyed a very lively and agreeable hour’s conversation on the show yesterday. Haines mentioned that he is often lucid in his dreams, but found himself often frustrated because his dreams still tended to slip away when he got out of bed. He has developed the practice of taking photographs inside his dreams, which he then mails to himself as postcards while he is still in a dream country. He does all of this meticulously, as you would do it in an ordinary situation: aim the camera, focus, click the shutter, print, write the address, stamp, put in a mailbox.

Sometimes Haines finds that despite this recourse, his dreams still dissolve when he gets up in the morning. But then the postcard image will pop up on his inner screen later in the day, as if the mailman has just delivered it.

Listening to Haines, I realized I have often done something like this in a less meticulous way. I find myself, recurringly, wanting to take a snapshot of something inside a dream so I can keep that image and show it to other people. Just now, in a dream, I was being royally entertained by a talking head. It was the head of a New York publisher I used to know, long gone from this world, a lovely man with whom I used to have lunch in Murray Hill. The head was on the ground, nicely balanced on the gravel of a drive or courtyard, and my deceased friend was cracking us up with a series of wicked one-liners about politics and religion. I wanted to take his photograph to show to friends but before I could take the picture, I was whisked away onto a movie set. The film starred Clark Gable and Rita Hayworth, and I was right there with them when the soundtrack started playing “Some Enchanted Evening”. I didn’t send myself a postcard from inside this dream, but I may just possibly have managed to send myself a video clip.