I woke up and I was chasing three of my friends threw a suburban water park.  They had "borrowed" (stolen) my laptop.  One of them was holding my laptop above his head.  They jumped into the water.  I jumped in too.  I had asked them what they were doing with my laptop and they didn't answer me.  I was afraid to demand that they return it to me.  I was chain smoking as I waded after them through the pool.  There was an artificial cascading slope with the water flowing upwards and this made sense.  I followed them up it and the water carried me up the slope.  Water was splashing on the laptop.  The bottom of the laptop was coming apart from the rest of the laptop.  They entered the deep end of the pool.  My friend couldn't hold onto the computer anymore because he had to use his arms to tread water.  It dropped into the water and began to float away.  I swam to it and picked it up.  I reached the side of the pool and put it on the light gray concrete.  I woke up and my laptop was laying on the ground next to my bed.  There was tape on the sides of it because it was getting old and rotting.  I lit a cigarette and looked out the window at people walking past on the sidewalk.

There's    nothing     baby     safe

earth    cakes    all     ...................

Dream 14 March 2011

I went to see a couple who worked together as joint therapists.  They had an odd technique.  Each worked separately or as a pair to somehow unseat their patient’s defences.  They had a way of making you feel as if you really mattered for the duration of your session time.  They prodded and probed.  They encouraged you to take up all sorts of unusual positions, for me one that involved climbing to the top of a tower, something I would never normally dare to do, but by the end of the session as the next clients were lining up to enter the space, your time was over and you would be sent off unceremoniously as if what had just gone on for the hour before was all a charade.

After this session I needed to get home.  I travelled alone but I knew that my sister and a friend who then morphed into one of my daughters travelled in parallel , but across different routes as they too made their ways home.

At one stage halfway up the side of a mountain I heard the screams of my friend/daughter and rushed to the other side to find that she had fallen into a river.  There was a chance she might drown and I had to work fast to free her from underneath the branch in the river that now pinned her down.  The dream went on but my memories of it stop here.



*


Dream, 27 March 2011.

I slept late and in the morning I dreamed I was staying at a friend’s house in the country, a large sprawling country estate that had been built several years earlier and was now in a state of polite decay.  Things that were broken had been left that way.

There was a party in progress for the oldest daughter of the farmer who owned this property, but she was not there.  She had already been shipped off overseas to enjoy a post school sabbatical, though I wondered why.  She did not deserve it.  She had scarcely done any work in her final school years and had only just managed to scrape through her year twelve.  But her parents were indulgent and they could not see what else to do with this wayward daughter.  The other daughters were more amiable and hard working.  One of them was a friend with one of my daughters, which is how I found myself at this party.

At one stage one of my daughters came up to me.  She was cross because I had forgotten to do as he had asked earlier that day.  She had been away at work all day and had asked me to telephone another of her friends and invite her to the party.
 ‘I forgot,’ I said and my daughter huffed off.

It was too late to invite the girl but I rang her anyhow in the faint hope she might still come as a companion to my daughter.  No such luck.  The girl could not come but at least I had tried.

I wandered around the property, mock Roman statues everywhere, in some places missing a nose or an arm or the fingers on one hand.  They were rendered in white painted concrete and had an eerie feel rather like a plaster of Paris figure I had seen in a photo the day before of a person sitting astride a bed, all white bandages to shape the man’s body.

I sat at a table then with two women and a young priest in black clothes.  The women were having a loud conversation about the priest wondering together whether or not he was gay. I could see he was embarrassed.  They talked about him as though he was gay.
‘What does it matter?’ I said and tried to draw the priest into the conversation where at least he would not be so objectified.
‘I think everyone is gay to some extent,’ I said.

The priest smiled but did not divulge his orientation.  Secretly, I hoped he was not out rightly gay because I found myself attracted to him.  I would have no hope with him.  He was a priest and if he were gay as well, I would have no hope at all.

I apologize to those who have sent dreams in the last few days for the delay in posting them. They will be posted tomorrow.


                     --Lynn Behrendt

I am travelling with my family through the English countryside at night.  We travel by car, crowded inside, each one squashed against the other.  My younger sister joins us.  She looks more weather beaten than I remember.  She is an adult now in my dream and has entered into a new relationship, she tells us.

We stop to buy supplies but most of the shops are closed.  The only places we can visit are small scungy cafes.  They smell of cigarette smoke and the fat from deep fried fish and chips.

At one stage my sister and I leave the others to make a trip by train.  I had intended to read a book on this trip but the countryside is too interesting, as are the people who occupy the stations we pass through.  Everywhere it seems there are large groups of uniformed police men and women, not so much on patrol as on training courses.  There is a holiday atmosphere everywhere and my sister and I relax into our journey.

I am asleep and awake at the same time in my dream, the sort of drowsy awakeness that leaves my body flaccid but my mind alert.  Somehow the music from the radio station Triple JJJ rattles through my head like an earworm and the DJ drones on about the hottest one hundred.  The names of the bands intrigue me.  One is called ‘Nebbermine’, the others contain plays on words that I find delightful and clever.

Not only do the musicians play thumping and excellent music to my mind, they are clever and witty as well.  I feel my stomach sag onto the cushion and I think to hold it in.  As I do so my insides ache.  I wonder whether the reason our stomachs hang out after we have eaten big meals is so that the extra size does not interfere with our digestive system, does not impact on other organs.

I slip off into another round of fitful sleep and notice the signs of the station that is our destination.

‘We’ve missed our stop, ‘ I tell my sister, who jerks up in her seat.
‘We’ll have to get off at the next station and go back.’
‘No,’ I say to her.  ‘Let’s do the round again.  Let’s stay asleep now.’

My sister is hesitant but she agrees.  We have a ticket that allows unlimited travel for the week.  We will be covered whether inspectors come on board or not.  But now I cannot settle down. My sleep has been too interrupted with the talking and I wake up.

I was vacationing with someone in my life whom I don't know very well; it was late at night, and we were asleep on different beds, on different sides of the room.  In my dream, I awoke and attempted to look out the foggy, 30-something-th floor window of our vacation condo.   We had been traveling together for days, though I do not remember where we were. Because it was humid outside, condensation had gathered, and I couldn't see out of the room.  Against the opposite wall there was a television on mute.  I heard this incredibly loud sound, earthquake-like.  Suddenly the television caught up with what I was hearing, and I saw on the live newscast that a tall skyscraper was crumbling in slow motion -- and it was the building next to ours.  I wiped the window with my forearm, but the fog wouldn't disappear.  I turned back to the television, and suddenly I began to fall backwards in the room, almost foot-over-head, except that I caught the edge of a table and held on.  My friend's bed began to slide, and the widows burst.  I closed my eyes and felt the floor fall from underneath me.  I fell for a very long time, until I fell no  more.

I had no desire to open my eyes.  Somewhere in the falling I realized that I was still asleep, that the memory of having woken up in the middle of the night was a continuation of the dream-state.  I consciously thought how visually-interesting it would be to see the walls crumbling, my friend's face in the room with me, whatever was outside the window (having tried twice -- in vain -- to see out of it already), but I could not force any desire to actually see it.  It was perhaps the most tranquil moment in a dream I've had lately (rivaling one I had about my niece four years ago), and when I awoke the second time, the time in which I'm existing now, I couldn't shake it, couldn't get back to sleep.  My bedroom window is now fogged; the bedroom door is shut.   And there's this simultaneous feeling of both seclusion and inclusion still in the room right now.

We have arranged for Dad to stay at our favorite beachside resort in Mexico. He and I arrive by taxi; the driver says behind to get the luggage together and bring it along behind us. There is an expanse of sand dunes and scattered palm trees. I lead the way, telling Dad encouraging things—but the sand is heaped and humped, the palms frayed by wind. There has been a storm, but now it's just gusty wind. The hotel looks like a hulk, battered; staff hurry here and there making repairs. A woman meets us at the bottom of the front stairs. "Hay mucho viento," I say. "Sí," she says, leading the way. "Todo el día?" I ask. "Sí." I second-guess myself: "Yo quería decir todavía." She smiles at me kindly. Dad has not said a word; he follows along looking serene and incurious.I suddenly realize this isn't his kind of place, and with all the work going on he won't be able to get the rest he needs. The woman leave suss at the lobby desk, but ho one is there. We wander around the vast room, its walls flaking, the furniture covered in drop cloths, scaffolding for the painters everywhere but no painters. I nod toward a soaring, dirty window. "Look at that stained glass." Dad smiles and nodes. The desk clerk appears and we follow him. Dad stops by a wall that has wires curling out high up where apparel has been removed. "Maybe they could use an electrician, he says. He's serious: he would rather work on the place than just stay in it. Not his kind of thing—a vacation—even in the afterlife. He heads for the front desk to check in. I'm about to follow, but a guy about my age grabs my arm. "We're over here," he says. He is sly and jovial. I think he's a salesman. I know I've met him but can't think where. He leads me to some banquet tables set up in an L shape and covered with white table cloths. I've missed the meal, but there are still bottles with wine in them. I take a chair inside the elbow of the L. I feel trapped. Dad won't know how to find me. The guy who brought me here pours me a glass of wine. There are three or four conversations going on, none that I want to join. I drink some wine. It is a deep red, very dark and very sour.

In this dream a young man of Asian descent takes careful notes as I detail symptoms of a health concern, a medical mystery of some kind, a puzzle. I’ve come to him for help in solving it. He is solemn, but deeply kind, attentive. He reminds me of many of the young men I worked with as a student advisor at the college.  There seems to be some kind of understanding between us that I once helped him. Now he will help me.

As we conclude our discussion he turns to leave, but then turns back to me with one last question:

“Tell me, do you daydream often?”

Do I daydream often? A smile spreads across my face. He may as well have asked if I breathe often.

“Yes,” I say quietly, “I daydream all the time.”

“Ah!” He brightens. He likes this answer, writes it down on his clipboard of notes. He disappears down the hallway, leaving me to wonder—

Have I given him the most important symptom of my malady, the key that will unlock the mystery?

Or have I simply spoken the cure?

Last night I dreamed the home invasion finally happened. Five men wearing dress suits and animal masks. Carrying rifles. They beat me with the butt ends of their rifles while I lay between the flat and fitted sheet. They took everything I owned, leaving me with an empty house. I could have called out to my husband in the next room, but I remained silent. Finally, I thought. Finally they’ve done what I’ve waited years for them to do. With this false sense of security, these possessions, I will never learn who I am.

I climbed on board a bus that could have been a tram given its location along Kooyong Road.  A beautiful young woman stepped up behind me and as she passed the driver remarked on her eyes.  She winced as she sat down and I imagined she did not enjoy the way complete strangers threw compliments at her.
           ‘It could be envy,’ I said to her as she fumbled with her handbag.  She looked at me bemused.

‘The way he spoke of your blue eyes.  It comes across as a compliment but if it makes you miserable it might be rooted in some sort of envy, the sort your enemies direct towards you in disguise.’

‘Do you have enemies?’  I asked her.
 'One out of five of my teachers perhaps,’ she said.  ‘But not really.’

The tram/bus arrived at my stop unexpectedly and I had no time to finish our conversation, let alone to say goodbye.  I leapt up to pull the cord and stood in the front at the door waiting for the driver to stop.  But he drove on.  He seemed cheerful enough and I figured that as I was now standing directly beside him he would soon see to stop, but again he drove past the next stop.
‘I have to get off,’ I said and eventually at the third stop beyond mine the driver pulled up.

I was in West Richmond now well beyond my destination, my school, and I walked back in the direction from which I had come.

I needed to cross a wide road that stretched below train tracks.  It was dark and gloomy, an ideal nesting place for pigeons in its roof.  A place I would not want to visit by night but in my dream it was still early morning though I worried I might be late for school.  I looked down at my feet and noticed that on my black stockinged feet I wore an old pair of back patent shoes, shoes I had owned when I was in my early twenties, shoes though still serviceable that were now old fashioned.  I felt embarrassed at the thought that others might consider me conservative.  I would not wear these shoes the next day I resolved.

There was not much traffic as I stepped out into the middle of this road.  I could not be bothered walking all the way to the traffic lights, which I saw some way in the distance and out of my way.  I wove through this traffic easily but when I reached halfway, the cars that had sprinkled through slowly like Brown’s cows were now replaced by a convoy of fast paced motorbikes.  The roar of the engines echoed from the underside of the metal roof tracks on the rooftop.  I managed to dodge them and laughed to myself when I saw one old bike driver spit out his phlegm into the gutter.  The wind blew it back up at him and it landed on his coat lapel.  He almost veered off the road in an effort to wipe it off.

Serves him right, I thought.  Disgusting habit.  no sooner had I had this thought than a collection of bicycles streaked through followed by a number of mounted horses.  The road seemed an obstacle course and I wondered would I ever get through, or would I inevitably be knocked over.


*


My youngest daughter was organising a friend’s birthday party in my dream.  They had been in discussions all morning.  They could not decide on a venue.

I took my bicycle out for a short ride but as I looked into the distance and could see the rolling countryside with lakes and streams ahead I fancied I might take a longer trip.  The ground was wet and the roads slippery so after a time I decided to head back but not before I stopped off at a bicycle shop to check on the sturdiness of my bike.

           ‘You need new wheels’ the bike shop owner said to my amazement.  The bicycle was new.

           ‘Not today,’ I said.  ‘Maybe another.’

I rode off home and noticed that the parents of the girl whose party my daughter had been helping to organise had managed to lock themselves into a small building, which we called the Lodge at my old school in Richmond.  The lodge consists of two tiny rooms, one on either side of a tessellated corridor that run between two ornate cast iron gates.  The first leads onto the street, the other into the garden of the school.  In one of these small rooms, each the size of a large bathroom, I learned Latin in my final years of school.

The parents of the girl who was about to celebrate her birthday were wealthy.  They would spare no expense for their daughter’s party.  I worried about the venue and was alarmed to hear when they finally escaped from the lodge that their daughter wanted to have the party in the country.  We would need to drive for hours to get there and back.

My husband was unhappy about it too, but he could not object.  He had no say in the matter.

Then my husband and I were driving in our car in the country, in the town of Scarborough, on holidays.  We had a carload of children, our own and others, including another set of parents.  We had been driving for hours when my husband pulled into the carport of a house in Scarborough, which looked unoccupied.  At least it was clear at that moment that the owners were away.

           ‘You can’t park here,’ I said to my husband.  ‘It’s not our place.’  He shook off my concerns and went inside.  We proceeded to unpack.  I put on a full load of washing into the washing machine and another load of socks and smalls in a drawer in the bedroom that could also be used as a washing machine.  The group of us then walked through the back yard down some steps and onto the beach.  The house overlooked the sea.

I looked back towards the house before we reached the beach and realised that the owners of this house had returned.  They could not pull into their own carport.  Our car was in the way.  They would be incensed.  They were.

Not one of our group wanted to step forward but I told my husband we must and he and I went up to greet the owners and to apologise.

My husband was jovial and somewhat off hand.  ‘We thought the place was vacant.  We meant no harm’.

I was apologetic.  The male owner was a builder of sorts.  He carried on his shoulder a large bag of tools.  My husband tried to make small talk by admiring these tools, and the owner was half taken in, but only briefly.  He wanted us gone.  The owners, too, were preparing for a party, a large gathering of mainly older women for some sort of bingo night.

We went back inside and gathered our things together, including the load from the washing machine.  The man’s wife looked on unimpressed and their two children, both toddlers, played around us nonplussed.  We loaded up the car and told our lot to get inside when I remembered I had forgotten to take out the drawer full of the extra washing.

I had to go back inside.  I collected my clothes as the owners looked on disgusted.  I told them one of the cupboard drawers could serve as a washing machine.  Clearly it was not something they would do.

By now their guests had arrived and they were milling around and spilling outside beside a large outdoor table.  I used this table in order to gather together my still wet washing.  I was looking for a bag or some form of material in which I might collect together these small items, socks, bras and knickers.  I felt mortified as I bundled together my family’s wash at the table.

One of the guests, an older woman spoke to me kindly enough.  She did not realise I was an interloper.  I could see the owners scowling at me from the kitchen window.  And so my dream ended to the ringing of the alarm.

On a pedestal in the shade of the ash tree at my childhood home, a large wooden bowl has just been filled with pipe tobacco. An old uncle happens by. Delighted, he fills his pipe, lights it, and draws on it with great contentment. Then he departs, disappearing into the atmosphere, which seems to be made more of memory than it is of air. I find a pipe in my hands, the one I keep on my desk that belonged to my father’s brother before he was killed in the second world war. But when I go to fill it, the wooden bowl on the pedestal contains damp, mostly decayed ash leaves. And so I clear the bowl with my hands. Soon thereafter, it’s filled with tobacco again, how or by whom, I don’t know. I’m joined then by a friend I haven’t seen since my father’s funeral in 1995. He sees my pipe and says my uncle’s name. I fill it, light it in his presence, and inhale. “Ghost notes,” is my reply.

it's 5 pm & I'm sitting at a cocktail table at a train station. I walk to the counter.  the clerk has bleachd-blond hair but the stubble on his chin is dark.  I ask him if the 5:45 westbound is on time.  he says it's ahead of schedule. so ahead of schedule that there no longer is time for my complimentary mini-massage. as I walk back to my table I see my cousin Regina in front of a mirror.  she's removing makeup & crying.  when I return to the table I spread out newspaper clippings my mother sent me.  hidden in the clippings is a twenty dollar bill.

the sound of a real train wakes me.

Last night I dreamed it was snowing again thick blankets of it and a woman was floating around my house in a orange caftan an intruder and I dreamed I jumped out of bed to wash my hands and the soap turned into chocolate chip cookie dough and I felt dirty.

Last night oh god I dreamed I was Henry watching from the outside a very very exclusive and expensive boys' school. All the boys were dressed in white satin in the manner of the 18th century courts and they sat in a row of white chairs holding white violins with the strings outward (Henry never play violin as far as I know but there is a bass violin in one of his paintings) and the boys' left hands were draped casually over the top of the violins' scrolls and they slouched in their finery and laughed among themselves and teased one another in the manner of the wealthy and spoilt. When their teacher sounded a tuning fork several of the boys' heads came right off and went zooming around the room and the rest of the students got quiet. I was writing everything down as Henry. Alone and watching trying not to get caught.

I had a scary dream last night that I was walking across a kind of ice field while talking to my mom on the phone. Then I could feel and hear the ice begin to crack and shift, and I got sucked down into the swirling, freezing water underneath. I was still holding the phone, but I was stunned, or the wind knocked out of me, and I couldn't speak to tell her what was happening. I lost my grip on the phone, and the current pulled me farther and farther away from it. I was less upset about the possibility of drowning than about losing my phone--that is, having no way to reach her.

Last night I dreamed of blankets of snow falling thick and white and silent and other little weirdnesses trying to get in trying to make their way into my brain. Our room is high up and I refuse to shut the curtains because I love the sound of the city and so and so I freeze. Yesterday three of the four terminals at O'Hare lost power completely and no one knows why.

I dreamed of a series of industrial freezers, the size of shipping containers, in which there were racks of seafood, scallops, prawns, crayfish and salmon.  I was free to select from an assortment of these treats for the barbeque.

I had started to cook the scallops, fast over a high hot flame when I realised that others might prefer a whole fish – a whole fish, which I might bake on top of the hot plate one side at a time.

My mother had died not long before I had started cooking and someone came to me and offered a piece of her for the BBQ.  I was revolted by the thought, but no, this person insisted, it is not unconventional to prepare a part of the dead person for consumption.  She arrived soon after with what looked like a trussed fish but was actually my mother’s arm.

I wince even now as I remember the sensation and the thought of not only cooking but eating my mother.  I could not do it.

acrobat/green bra/lacerated tongue


Dream I am a little girl and I’m a gymnast/ acrobat. My father is my trainer or we have a father/daughter act. The father in the dream is not like my actual father, nor is the mother like my actual mother. I am being prepared for some kind of competition. Also I think my mother is a dentist. She is referring people to an oral surgeon. I think the oral surgeon is also my dream father. She brings him a beer, and he has a fit, because it’s the kind from a can and not from a bottle. So she refers a patient to another oral surgeon. For some reason I am talking to that surgeon. The patient has had a hard time eating food and enjoying it. I said, is it because he bit his tongue and he has lacerations? And the surgeon says, yes, exactly, how do you know? And I say, oh, because I have experienced that, and I show him my lacerated tongue. Showtime is approaching and I need a costume. I guess I am old enough to need a bra because I am trying on bras. One was emerald green satin with ribbons… but I need a whole ensemble… and there is a bit of an issue because I invert, so I need something that will not be too revealing when I do so… I suggest black lace shorts…. I must have figured out something because showtime comes… it’s in a playground…. I was so worried about the routine, we’d gone over it so many times… and I think I accomplish it but to be honest I had a very troubled sleep last night and I am not really sure, my jaw so clenched, and up between 3:30 and 4:30, drugs notwithstanding.

Flood

 

I visit some place deep in rural Japan and decide to live there… Alli Warren too is there… I move from my apartment here in Brookyn to  there because one day  I take a walk in that village and there is snow but there are also jonquils… and in a tree.. something I think is first a snake and then a tiger but ir turns out to be som kind of giant SKINK

but with markings like a tiger or spotted horse… it is all so unbelievably magical, the beauty of the nature around me, that I feel I have to live there

anyway… it seems that I and Alli have married farmers… we have married these simple and crude farmer guys of the countryside  I have sold my apartment and moved into this other apartment.  I have gone through my clothes and moved from Tokyo or New York or wherever I was.   many of the clothes I have to sell and get rid of because they no longer fit me, I’ve become so thin and anyway I don’t need them in the coutryside

and… I go back to my classrooms in Tokyo or New York or wherever I teach… I have these huge classes there… and I tell them I am moving to the countryside… I talk to Nancy about it she says yeah I almost moved there at one point….

I say it is so beautiful there… and I have come to the place in my life where I need a change

and I hitch a ride back to the country side with some people I don’t know… and it’s weird… I ask if we’re going north… but I can feel we are driving south… and they say yes… but it must have been another road, one I don’t recognize, because we go through a kind of neon Chinatown las vegas kind of place  and I say, oh this isn’t right… and somehow I get back to the village… where there is a little pub… something about a little pub… anyway I am in this new apartment… I guess with my farmer husband?  at parts of the ream I am single other times not… anyway… I notice that when I look out the window… which is oddly shaped… that I see these sort of snowy muddy dots… not the sky… and I hear a rushing sound… and it seems that there is a giant flood… pulling me along… rushing… and I notice… that I am not in my apartment any longer but in a boat…. and I am there with my husband… and I we have never had sex before but we have sex for the first time, I guess because I am so grateful to him for saving my life.... he must have carried me up from the apartment to the boat...

and also it seems we have two kids

and Alli in a parallel situation has two kids, or maybe three… and it turns out we are in this flood, this flood, see, and  when we are saved we are in someplace urban.  It is a combination of NY and SF… but the thing is that now we have these bumpkin husbands and all these children to support… there are these giant documents on brown cardboard paper bound with huge magenta staples… listing all of our duties as rural wives… and there are scenes of me with I guess my mother or grandmother in laws going over the rules… there are piles of vegetables in plastic colanders… traditional ways to prepare things… and they are teaching me

and there are manuals about how to behave… rules… like, even though in extreme poverty do not steal the soap from public restrooms (I remember thinking about the varieties of scented soaps available here in the urban US)… OK so but then I realize that I had fallen asleep in the apartment and not the boat, and my bumpkin husband had saved me… I weep and weep

For some reason I am also supposed to start graduate school  and I am preparing to do that…Maybe Alli too.  We are town.. now we are out of the countryside and about to go to school, what do we do with the husbands?  the children?  The feelings are riotously mixed.   I am so grateful at having been saved.  But I want to be free. There is a huge public hearing in a kind of basement space.  All the local citizens are brought in…I guess this is back in the countryside.. and the huge books with magenta staples are brought in…

and it was about at this time I became fully aware that this dilemma was not a real one but only one I was so overwhelmingly dreaming.

I was offered a choice between two bright-red plastic harmonicas. I said I’d start with the small one, which was about eight inches long. The other measured about two feet. I started to play, and soon my coat grew tails as I smacked my right foot on the sidewalk, noticing the flecks of star-like grit as I did so and almost slipping into the gutter. A crowd gathered. I had no idea what I was playing or where it would lead, but suddenly finding myself in need of a spectacular high note, I had to use the ringing in my right ear — the ringing in my left being an octave lower — and when the people heard it — I could feel its forceful exit as of a great wind rushing through my head — they broke into applause.

dream: "escape"

dream: "escape"

 

I was in "Paris" although it didn't look like Paris
I had to take a train
to get to the cineplex
which was one of the only things
to do there
so it really wasn't Paris
and it was actually a kind of
exploratorium
or museum of the moving image
and there was one "exhibit"
that would put you in the movie
in some marvelous computer-generated way
and I couldn't at first see what the results were
but I did it again and then I could
there were war films, and science fiction,
and fantasy
and art movies and porn, and walking
in golden gate park
or some park that looked like it
but the amazing thing about this
technology was that the resulting film moved
in several "strips" from right to left
and also vertically
SIMULTANEOUSLY
and sometimes it would replace all of
a person or object with me
and sometimes just a part
so sometimes I'd be
flying through the air
and sometimes it would be another woman's
breast in place of my breast

and at one point I was back here in NY and
Bradley showed the film
and now suddenly I remember Gary was there too
I guess we were still together? but in the film
I had had an "affair" that was not just computer-
generated but real? I don't know it was one of those
dreams that kept repeating elements
I think.

I think also there was another exhibit of a similarly
non linear and disorienting film
although I can't remember how it worked exactly
it was a little like those "choose your narrative" stories,
I guess video games are like that but I don't know
since I've never played a video game.

the exhibit/movie was in a circular room and there were white wires with buttons
and I would push buttons to make another scene happen in the movie
or was it in experience? I don't remember if I was in this movie or not
maybe I was? maybe this was the one with the "affair"? there maybe was talk
of this movie having been "directed by one of two famous directors: one
was Cassavettes but I can't remember the other one.

but it is interesting especially because I had just been talking
in real life yesterday to my Thai student Nham, who is a filmmaker,
and super-cool, about how movies maybe started out trying to represent
our perceptions and have ended up reorganizing them. I realize
this is not a very sophisticated observation

but a dream is kind of a movie, right? and that there was a movie inside
the dream, and then that the movie was later "shown" to an audience,
to me extremely intricate.

"Bill's Backyard, Bolinas"

by Tom Clark

Now light streams through the trees of the dream.

Dead friends idly amble through the arches

The green bower makes over our heads;

In Bill's backyard -- framed for this flashback

To the days before, or perhaps during, the Flood --

Things are, as in a kind of moonlit masque

Lit up at night like the carnival scene

In Strangers on a Train; yet strangers

There are none, only friends; summer fog coming in

On the marine layer clockwork shuttle

Over the populous village in the dream;

Sea, hill, wood, numberless goings on;

Off in the distance beyond Elm somewhere,

Off beyond Ocean Parkway in the mists,

A whistle buoy intermittent; blue reedy

Spiritual openness of Eric

Dolphy floating from inside the humble shack

Taking shape as words, a cool

Geometrical language; then cloudy faces

Tossed up on the cresting waves

Beyond the reef, in the dream: ghosts

Waving, not drowning. So let's make this stroll

Through the underworld last.

Last night I dreamed I was living in an apartment attached to a restaurant. I walked out on the terrace of the apartment and outside was a long reflection pool kind of like the one at the Washington Monument only shorter and in it up close were two baby orca whales and they were swimming back and forth rubbing their bodies against each other and I told the owner of the apartment and she said she had to get rid of them and I went out onto the terrace again and there were two huge boulders and on each boulder was a giant pulsing pink octopus and I told the owner again about them and the third time I went out to the terrace someone had thrown a black and white live cow into the pool and the whales were feeding on it eating chunks from its side. I ran in to find the apartment owner but she wasn't around so I ran back outside to find her putting two bird cages in the pool and in each cage was a cat and she was pushing them out into the middle of the pool so I jumped in and rescued them.

Before I went to bed my cell phone rang and the little screen read AT&T Billing and I thought maybe I owned them money so I answered and it was my mother. I don't know how she got my number. I gave it to the hospital when she was there so maybe they gave it to her. I don't relish the idea of her having it but at least I know not to answer when the weird AT&T thing is on the little screen. I am positive it was my mother in the dream.

I was with my father and late maternal grandfather at an antique gun show in the parking lot of Eastern Michigan University. A Goodyear blimp like a giant hermit-crab croissant hovered high overhead. My father and grandfather toted their acquisitions toward an embankment surrounding the lot; I followed empty handed. (I haven't fired a gun since my teens.) My father uncharacteristically aimed his new old rifle at the blimp and fired. Characteristically, he missed; even more characteristically, he accepted failure with good-natured equanimity and turned to proceed on his way. My grandfather then seized his opportunity to display superior marksmanship. He took aim, fired, and missed. Unlike my father, however, he was unwilling to concede that the target was beyond his range. He took more careful aim and fired again, this time hitting a glass panel of the blimp. I heard a faint tinkle and saw tiny shards falling. My grandfather chuckled his bad-boy chuckle, and we all turned and started up the embankment.

Suddenly I heard a horrific crash behind me. Like the opera-house chandelier in The Phantom of the Opera, the blimp had fallen on the rifle show, crushing countless people! The wrecked blimp gushed a pool of gas that spread with preternatural speed. I tried to run up the embankment after my father and grandfather, who'd disappeared; but I stumbled and fell, and the gas got me.

I'm packed into a murmuring crowd of people somewhere, perhaps a bar queue. Someone cops a lingering feel/grope of my ass. It is an arousing experience. I turn to find myself alone in a cavernous room, staring at my reflection in a mirror.

22 January 2011

In my dream I am lying in bed in a huge and sprawling house of many floors and many rooms, with wide gardens beyond.  From here I can see throughout the house as if I am walking through these rooms in a movie.  It is my family home and yet I am also a visitor.

My father is drunk.  I know this without seeing him or hearing a sound.  I know he is drunk and I am fearful that he might discover me alone in my bed.  In flash I decide to hide, under the bed under a blanket, squeezed up tight like a ball.  But the bed is narrow, a single bed, and it stands out in the middle of the room.

My father when he arrives, as I knew he must, is able to poke around underneath the bed and find me there without any effort at all.  It is impossible for me to hide.  My father crawls under the bed and sprawls out on top of me, a suffocating dead weight.

‘Where is my mother,’ I say?  ‘Where are the others, my sisters and brothers?’

He does not answer but breathes alcohol soaked fumes all over my face.  His smell revolts me and his weight crushes down on me, but I can do nothing.

I cannot get out from underneath him.



Dream 28 January 2011

To use the toilet you needed a key.  The lid was otherwise locked.  I knew the right person to ask and managed to get hold of one.  Into the toilet I delivered a lump of flesh like substance, rather like the after-birth but without a blood supply, pale pink and jellied with strips of white fat.  I wondered at its size, amazed that I could lose so much without even noticing its passing until I had looked down and saw it there in the toilet bowl.

I asked a friend about it as we walked along a Collins Street type boulevard.  She was nonplussed, so I decided I must be, too.  But still it troubled me.

Then I was in the dentist’s waiting room with my husband.  The dentist arrived but told us that given he was now 77 years old he must retire.  He offered the name of an alternative dentist in Blackburn.
           ‘Must we travel so far? I asked.
The dentist did not welcome objections.  He had noticed the list of names of friends, family and colleagues and proceeded to discuss our telephone list with my husband.  We kept the list on the bench near the telephone.
           ‘We know so many people in common,’ the dentist said.  He scrolled down the list with his index finger.

I worried he might discover his own sister E’s name towards the end of the list.  E was my old boss from so many years ago, now dead, but in my dream she was still alive.

E appeared to me then and I made a point of showing her my written description of her work on my referral list where I had talked about her as a good practitioner, but this was not how I actually saw her.
 

Evil as he was, I thanked him, knowing full well we would still have to contend with his vicious dogs before we reached the gate. I opened the front door and he watched us go, sitting on his throne. It was an antiseptic room. He had no hair. His skin was smooth. The dogs sniffed the ground. They began to growl. I addressed the most menacing one: “Nice puppy,” and he smiled as we eyed the gate. Another: “Hello, puppy,” with the same result. But the third made an awful sound deep in its throat. I whispered to my wife that we should continue to move ahead as slowly as we could — one sudden move, I said, and the dog would spring. All the while, I waited for him to bite my leg, wondering what it would feel like when his teeth penetrated the cloth and met the bone. But all he did was growl. The man — where had I seen him before? With my son, it was, after we’d escaped an empty factory with grain on the floor. I’d wrestled a rusted grate from its hinges and we crawled through a narrow chute until we came to a river. The water was low. We could have crossed it by stepping on the exposed rocks scattered everywhere. We came to a bend, then turned around. Where the chute had been was now a wild narrow canyon. “Flash flood,” I said. And we heard the sound.

Prologue and Dream
My sister and I are in the middle of an unbelievable fiasco/nightmare
– our recently deceased mother’s car was towed – the car that we’ve
been using to go back & forth from the city to where my mother lived,
to empty out the apt. (and her cremated remains are in a box in the
trunk). We were trying to leave the city for her place last nite, so
my sister went to the parking space: no car, so she called the city
towing place, closed til this a.m., & why was the car towed? The space
was good til today. But, outstanding unpaid tickets from the
summertime, when my mother was going into and coming out of the
hospital, that my sister (J) was fighting (w/no response from the
city). So J goes down to the marshall's office this morning, they ask
to see her license -- it's missing from where it always is in her
wallet, so she calls me at her apt. and I search around a little, but
my sister is a hoarder. This is a small 1 bdrm apt. with clothing,
papers, bags of papers, legal papers, stacks of this 'n' that -- I
have no idea where my underwear or socks are 'cuz there's no place to
put my stuff, it gets moved or covered by the day's debris, etc. etc.
so I wash each out every nite to put it on the next day. But back to
the license.
I don't find it -- I dump out her bag, but I don't see it. Then I go
back to "bed" (the floor) & fall into an amazing major motion picture
of a dream, about the lost license, I can see the photo of my sister
with short hair and dark lipstick, about my feelings towards my mother
& her death, about items & objects & all sorts of people and then
there's even a spider that's off-white & kind of reptilian that digs
its claws(!) into my hand & I run out to an alley screaming with pain
so some guy picks it off my hand w/great effort and there are sort of
venomous stalagmites (tites?) -- 5 of them, rising painfully from the
palm of my hand and J's in the dream & I'm rifling through her bag,
emptying it, looking for her license so we can take the car already &
get out of this place  ... & that's the half of it. There are rows of
people sitting on benches or clustered in small groups talking or
watching whatever personal dramas are suddenly played out. Two friends
from London are sitting in a corner and they suddenly see me after
nearly a year since they moved and they're so surprised that I’m
there. Where is “there”? It’s a waiting room. There are big plate
glass windows that barely separate inside from outside. The images
slide away. There’s more, but as I write, I forget.

The "fidelity" of the dream is unusual, beginning like a Byzantine painting, slightly animated. The Emperor of Italy is holding court. The Emperor of Italy is Mussolini and the court is being given a presentation by two Futurists, one of whom is the Emperor's cousin, "Mussolini." The two Futurists give a presentation of their manifesto, which begins as speech but "degenerates" into a mixture of sound poetry and popular music. The Emperor, who was initially excited about the performance becomes offended and declares it unsuitable. The children of the court at this point become enthralled with the Futurists and counter-protest, rushing past the Emperor to get closer to the Futurists. A "Sheriff-of-Nottingham"-type figure emerges (the fidelity of the dream now more "Saturday morning cartoon"), holding a sign that says "Respect Representation" and slowly begins spinning the sign around. The sign spinning becomes an enlarged phonographic record, and moments later, a compact disc, but ruby in color and three-or more- dimensions. The figure warns of what will come next if the sign continues spinning.

The tram was about to take off but it hesitated for a final customer, a young man who must have appeared in the driver’s rear vision mirror.  This gave me enough time to catch up.  I tapped on the glass door, which had already closed, to let me in.  The door opened and I proceeded to drag myself on board.  My bags were heavy; all three of them and my legs felt leaden after my sprint to the tram stop.  I could not make myself climb the three steps and I feared the doors would close again before I had the chance to get in.  I heaved myself upwards, with every effort of my will.
           ‘Get on,’ another young man said.  He had just arrived behind me and was keen that the tram should not go without him.
           ‘Push me in,’ I said.  ‘Just push’.  I did not care how it looked.  I needed to get onto the tram.  I needed to get to the airport.  I needed to get a flight home because later that afternoon I planned to travel yet again and this time overseas.

In my dream I had visited Varuna, the Writer’s House in the Blue Mountains.  I had stayed there for a few days, long enough to visit the physiotherapist in Katoomba for my knee, and long enough to make arrangements with a barrister to deal with a legal dispute hanging over my head.  Long enough to deal with the plumber.  They were all there in the Writer’s House in the Blue Mountains where I had been staying, even though the work they were embarking upon involved activities in Melbourne, my home.

At one stage I stood in the workshop of one of my husband’s acquaintances and although I had left my husband at home in Melbourne, here he was beside me in the workshop in the Blue Mountains admiring the man’s machinery and tools.  The man had collected years of bric-a-brac around his workshop.  The shelves were full of porcelain figurines and children’s mechanical toys that beeped and wheeled when you pressed their buttons.  Toys from Japan, figurines from other lands and high up on the walls hanging on a hook, an old potty or pissoir as it might once have been called.
           ‘Those are valuable,’ I said to man.
           ‘How valuable?’
           ‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘They might fetch about $70.00.’  Even as I said this I realise $70.00 is not a great deal of money, especially as we were concerned about many thousands of dollars debt.  And more bills to come with the plumber and the barrister.
         I went to visit Jim Murdoch a fellow blogger who in my dream took the place of Peter Bishop from Varuna.  We chatted amiably until loud voices interrupted us.  A large group of mature age students crammed into Jim’s back yard where he and I had been talking.
        They had come for their lesson.  I had hoped to talk longer and more meaningfully but we had no time now, so I patted Jim on the arm and took my leave.
       As I walked up the hill to the main street in Katoomba across the grassy slope of a hill I noticed in its centre what looked to be a sheet of glass, which was in fact a deep pool of water that had formed overnight in the rain.
           I was not the only one amazed at this collection of water, which had seemingly developed out of nowhere overnight.  I thought of the floods elsewhere and hurried on. At the main road I saw my tram and ran to catch it.

Last night I dreamed it was night and there was a knock at my front door and it was a skinny man dressed like Santa sort of with suspenders and a fedora and he handed me a tiny piece of paper like a fortune cookie fortune and asked if I was Rebecca and I said who are you and he said he was a bill collector so I slammed the door in his face. When I turned around I noticed my Christmas tree was full of burnt old frying pans and I knew my mother had shoved them in there. And damn now I can't remember the rest of the dream.

Winter
I am sitting next to a friend, showing her texts from my boyfriend, who is far away. He is making words with his cell phone, sending them, they don't make sense. We're laughing, there's a picture, it's great.

Spring
We're all together, some of us, at a show in Brooklyn. I am buzzed and feel small on a big leather sofa. I am not thinking, just listening to the happy busy sounds of friends deep in excited conversation. Music. Processors/samplers/projects/everything, everything. I don't remember which band it was, just being there.

Summer
I am in a cornfield in Indiana deep into night. Up from corn sprouts wind turbines, above them stars, below them fireflies. The night is full of insect song and I fall in love with everything.

Fall
In Marin the grapevines are pinned with these sparkling sheets of paper. The hills roll golden and shining. Modest Mouse is on the stereo, on us through fog into city unreal and bending.

Winter
We light fires on the porch, wait for something to happen. It does.

Dream 3 January 2011

In my dream I am back in analysis but not with my previous analyst.  My husband and I both see the same analyst one after the other in her rooms, a shop front dwelling a few kilometres up the hill from where we live.

This new analyst is friendly enough and I like her.  I am conscious as I lie down on her couch of a long history of past discussions with my previous analyst but I try not to let them over swamp the present.  In the current session I try to break up my thoughts on anger.  I tell my analyst about a recent incident when I cannot work out whether I is me ho is angry or whether it is the person I am with who is angry.  I pause and then remember how I saw my mother in the street that morning.  I tell her as much and she sighs exasperated.  I should have known it was time to finish and not launched into a new topic.  I fee hurt and affronted.  She should have warned me or at least tole me thsat we had to finish.  How was I to know.  I could have gone on for hours yet.

Now it is my husband’s turn.  He lies down on the couch and just as I did before him he begins to talk about his experience, which for him includes his thoughts about his previous analyst.  It does not seem odd in this dream that we are both present for each other’s analysis.  It is rather like the way I sat in on his session when we both visited the eye doctor, as if we have no secrets from one another.

I am intrigued to hear my husband talk about the difficulties his previous analyst had in expressing himself artistically.  Just as this man had been stuck in his painting so too my husband now feels stuck in his artistic pursuits.

I leave the session room and detour through the toilets to collect our daughter who has asked that I drive her home.  As I walk through my analysts room to collect my keys she speaks over my husband to me.

‘You go from your analysis into driving your children.’  I realise I am angry with her now.
‘That is my life,’ I say.  Even as I realise this is not entirely true.  I spend a great deal of my life these days writing.  I am not simply in analysis and ferrying my children places but I am angry with my analyst for dismissing me and therefore I feel sorry for myself.

In my dream there are tradesmen working on my house.  The front veranda has been uprooted and it is hard to get o the door.  One of the tradesmen becomes so tired he needs to go for a sleep and I help someone visiting to find him a spare bed.  I tell him he must pile up the pillows.  They are soft and soggy and although there are several of them, unless he piles one on the other he will not have a good sleep.

I find myself cleaning out the toilet.  The toilet brush had fallen in and I worry about soiling my hands.

Dream 7 January, 2011

In my dream a young man takes my hand.  He has the olive skin of someone born in the Mediterranean and seems awkward and uncertain as though he has never had a girlfriend before and does not know what to do.  We walk together to a building filled with small offices.  We climb rough wooden stairs.  We do not speak, but I feel safe enough, confident that he will not hurt me.  He is too gauche, too clumsy in his manner to want to hurt anyone.

We enter an office on the third floor and take our seats to watch the last session where an older man, whose arms are covered in tattoos massages another.  It might seem erotic if it were not so contrived.   Eventually my Mediterranean man steps forward for his turn.  He hands over money in twenty-dollar notes and takes off his clothes.  He starts to masturbate his penis.  Its orb swells to the size of a fist.  I had thought that under instructions from the man conducting the sessions I must gaze encouragingly into my young man’s eyes but there is no need for this.

My young man is intent on pleasuring himself and is oblivious to me.  Later after time is up, he tucks his deflated penis back into his trousers.  We go to a shop where I buy him a present, a set of eggcups hand painted with bunny rabbits.  It is a deceit, I fear.  I am trying to give an impression of approval, but already I despise this man and it will not be long before I drop him.

I was having a party, and lots of friends were there.  I remember specifically Edwin and Sharon being there.  I had told everyone that I would have lots to eat at the party and that there would be dancing.  Unfortunately there was no food in the cupboards and I tried to call out for some pizzas, but I realized I didn't know my own address and it wasn't in my cell phone.  Then I tried to put on some dance music, but Gary had taken most of the music and all I had left were a few assorted cassette tapes and a full set of Jerry Lewis DVDs. 

I didn't dream of poets.

I was at a beautiful house that was newly renovated. Dark painted walls with starbursts or swirls. A family that didn't appreciate what they had were living there, but the house was for sale and I wanted it. It was my dream home, but it seemed like it would cost way more than I could afford. The home was two buildings with a courtyard that I instantly loved. An old man who lived in the home was swimming in a wave pool. Then he was either washed or pulled away. He died. I tried to figure out how I could own this house. There were rooms that I could rent out to boarders although I wasn't sure if I wanted to do that. Maybe I could write more? Or write something that people would want to read and pay for.

I stood in front of a house surrounded by woods. I talked to a woman about my car. I told her it was running well, but it was time for an oil change and 10k check up. She gave me something that I thought was for my car, but she explained it would be for Gideon when he's old enough to have a car of his own. Then I saw my friend with his young daughter. He looked different, like he was in disguise. There were other people and families of differing backgrounds, some snapping pictures. I wondered what my new neighbors would think of all these different people living in the same house. My friend and I discussed all the amusement park rides around us. I said the old-fashioned style reminded me of Kennywood. I told my friend that there was a time when Kennywood was the biggest amusement park in the country and the Thunderbolt was the highest roller coaster. I looked up and saw that they changed the cars on the Thunderbolt. It now looked like an Amtrak train--completely enclosed. The ride didn't even look fun anymore. Too safe.

I woke up this morning having just dreamt that Eileen Myles had invented a board game (or written a book?) called Instant Evolution Is Going to Get You.  Then I dozed and in dozing composed lines as if I were writing the rest of the story, but I can't remember them now.

A Christmas Day dream.

I am driving colleagues to a conference.  I say colleagues because they are not friends, nor mere acquaintances.  I bear them no malice and yet I cannot say I am fond of them.  We are somewhere in London, or someplace like London.  The streets are gritty with the dust of centuries, dark Victorian buildings tower over narrow roads drowned in shadow.

A Dickensian London and I am driving out of it towards the green countryside where the conference is to be held.  At one point as I try to steer myself out of an awkward exchange with another car I cannot shift out of reverse.  I cannot bear to look in the rear view mirror for fear of what I might see.  It is only an instant I know before I will crash into something.

I can see my rear passengers through the mirror and in the process I accidentally switch on the eject button.  One of my passengers disappears for an instant until I manage to right the switch and he is back safe and sound.  He nearly ended up outside the car.

It is a bumpy journey.

Then I am on a bus travelling to the same conference but this time with my blog buddy, Jim Murdoch.  I know it is Jim from the photo he sets up on his profile, the same thick red beard, the same balding head, the same dour look, as if he is sizing me up for my worth, but it is I who is sizing him up, testing out his reactions.
           ‘I saw you on the television,’ I say.  'They put up an advertisement encouraging people to visit your blog.'
           ‘It’s because of my book,’ Jim says.  ‘To promote the book they promote the blog.’
           ‘You’ll have hundreds of hits after this,' I say.
Jim is unperturbed.  He does not blog for hits.  He blogs for conversation.

My grandfather, alive again and in need of a shave. I could smell him when we hugged — that sweaty, vineyard scent of his. But his hug lacked his usual affection. Somehow, without a word, he let me know that I should have been to see him sooner. Practical, as always. And I, feeling guilty and not wanting to break his heart, unable to explain the difficulty of his request. My father, now, to the left, a step or two behind him, half grief, half shadow, looking at his hands. Was he wondering how long he’d been away? Did he know it’s more than fifteen years? Time is nothing when there’s light in someone’s eyes. Even when he’s dead, and gone, and here.

In my dream a group of men invade our house, which is set up high on a hill.  The house itself has several floors with rooms sprawled in all directions.  I race upstairs to escape the men, one of whom follows me.  The rest accost my husband.  They have come for him.  Something to do with a court case in which my husband acts as legal representative.  They want to punish him.

I manage to get hold of my mobile phone and try several times to call the police.  The man who follows me knows this but he does not try to stop me.  By the time I get through to the police, the men are about to leave.  They have been in and out of our garden and back shed.  At the sound of the sirens they try to escape but the police manage to capture all four of them.

I rush to my husband who is now a battered wreck.  His bones are broken.  I carry him around with me before the ambulance arrives.  He is as light as a baby.  He is also broken in spirit and I know it will take a long time to heal, but at least the culprits have been caught.

Before this, we had planned a party.  It goes on regardless.  People arrive in droves, couples mostly with small children.  I am a young mother again and ever alert to the needs of my youngest baby.  Even as I have this young baby, my oldest daughter is still on the scene with her son, my grandson, who plays in the shallows on the edge of the sea.  I worry that he might drown.

My oldest daughter arrives on a motorbike with her husband.  Both have beards.  She is a bikie.  I find this strange but do not comment.  The house is in chaos and I begin to worry about how much I will need to clean up when the visitors leave.  Even as I will need to visit my husband in hospital.

I climb the stairs, one by one, aware of a figure leading me up out of darkness. At the top, I turn left into a room where a collection of psychoanalysts and healers treat patients with soft hands and pungent herbs. Someone I barely recognise, sitting behind a desk, tells me I don’t belong here and points across the landing to another section of the building. I enter through swing doors and am welcomed by a group of artists whose shirts and trousers are flecked with coloured paint. One of them directs me to a small room where two women are waiting for me. They smile coolly and invite me to sit down. They place their hands on my shoulders and press down hard as I begin to tremble. There is a rush of energy in my head and all sorts of lights flash and explode. I am sent hurtling through space to some distant galaxy, speeding through tunnels and twisting round dramatic bends. Finally I see a black circle, followed by a white circle, and am dropped into the middle of a crowd in the heat of an Asian night, watching and cheering as a robed Oriental gentleman is carried on the shoulders of his followers to a temple in the mountains.

I am Leo DiCap, running through the woods. As soon as I enter the trees, I am turned without my trying or knowing into a Black Jaguar. I am pursued by another invisible She-Cat spirit, who only manifests physically when I turn human, as I am exiting the trees into a clearing. She has the consciousness of a human woman, a betrayed lover. She pounces at me in my human form. I am chased to a circular platform, suspended high in the air, surrounded by fire and rocks on all sides. The circular platform has multiple levels, descending for hundreds of feet into  hot lava. Her friends, She-Wolves, are hiding, stationed on the descending levels, ready to attack me for what I've done to their kind. I am now a wolf, speaking in defense of myself against her controlling love, struggling to maintain my animal form. As soon as I lose it, she says "You know what that means." I yell "Circle Animal Fire!" and fight the wolves in human form. I wake up fighting the Mother-Wolf.

I dreamed I took care of two elderly women along with my usual charges, my children.  One of these women was my mother and she had recently undergone surgery on her legs.

We had been staying in a guesthouse in the country, sharing with other families. At one stage I was alone with my daughter and we were busy packing.  I had trouble filling and sealing off our suitcase.

My family had dined the night before with another guest family and I had found myself critical of this other family, particularly the father.  In my dream I could see that he too had trouble zipping up his suitcase.

There was something in this process, filling up and sealing off suitcases ready for transport that marked not only a departure, but also our transition back home where we lined up in turn for the bathroom.

I was in the middle of brushing my teeth and needed to close off the bathroom door, which had become one of those doors they build in horse stables – split in the middle on the horizontal.  I closed off the bottom half of the door but I could still be seen over the top.

My daughter stood guard for me, until I had finished brushing my teeth and then I made way for one of the two old women who had queued outside, toilet bags in their hands, still in their dressing gowns.

My mother used the bathroom first.  I pulled out a bath mat so that she would not slip when she left the shower.  She asked me to help her, not only with the shower but also with her leg exercises.  The physio had told her that she must start by stretching out her legs straight several times a day.  My mother feared she could not do this for the pain.  She sat on the floor tiles, naked, an old and wrinkled woman, her body sagged onto the cold tiles and I piled a towel underneath her bottom for comfort.

I watched as she straightened out both legs in front and I tried to imagine her pain.  She did not grimace and seemed surprised that she could straighten them out completely but she did not want to repeat the procedure.  She did, though.  I watched as she stretched her legs out three times and then I woke up.

there is a man
a murderer
(the Columbine murderer?)
no. why do you think that?
wrong wrong wrong.

the bodies lay flat
around the Colorado
suburban home.

he is tall, has dark hair.
he has been following me,
around the places i know.
me,
and two others.

we are on a porch.
he has been watching us,
in parking lots,
around my quiet thoughts,
he has been inside,
without permission.

he has already taken us horizontal.
chosen.
our biographies splattered,
our secrets ripped.
i am ruined.
“You? You’ve never gotten an A+ in your life.”
is he right? no, he is lying.
i want to impress the part of him that can still make me feel worthy of his affection.

i think about ways i can cut off his head because his skin has proved bulletproof.

we take arms and squeeze.
i think briefly that i have won,
but it is his game.
i want to end his.

the bodies of my friends are cut into pieces and burned,
like vegetables in a line,
but thicker.
i think about toothpaste.
things that can fit into the palm of my hand.
important.
this is important.
he cannot win.
those who do not value human breath should not breathe.

don’t forget,
there is no evidence.

In my dream have joined a writing group led by an eccentric man who spends most of his days when not teaching in bed.  I walk past his room.  The door ajar and I can see the man in his bed, under blankets up to his chin, his gaze fixed on the ceiling.  His eyes are like deep pools of sadness.

Two minutes later as people are gathering in the man’s lounge room, that from the perspective of my dream is also the Camberwell lounge room of my childhood, he is now in the centre of the room, loud and confident, however emotionally disabled.

I feel a shot of jealousy when the man hands back a woman’s manuscript full of praise for its content.  I wish it were me.

We settle down to a reading during the course of which I notice that someone has not turned off the tap attached to a hose in the centre of the room.  Water gushes down behind the couch and I want to interrupt to ask permission to turn it off but I dare not.

I mutter to the person beside me about what we should do and the teacher is furious at the interruption.  Who is responsible for this noise?  He decides it must be another man who sits in front of me and proceeds towards him.

       ‘Put out your hand,’ the teacher says as if he is about to cane a student.

       ‘If anyone’s responsible then it’s me,’ I say.

The teacher does not want to strap me, I can see, but he cannot back out of his threat to punish the person who made the noise, so he slaps me lightly on the upturned palm of my hand.

The class continues and I am now with a doctor about to operate on a fish that needs surgery.  It is a primitive form of surgery without the aid of anaesthetic and involves cutting out a section below the fish’s gills.  I wince as the knife cuts through the flesh and the fish falls unconscious.

Sometime later I open a case the doctor has sent to me, inside of which I find the fish now in two and still alive.  In one corner of the case and nearby I see something squishy wrapped in glad wrap.  I peel off the plastic and a frog leaps onto the flat of my hand.  It is the ugliest frog I have ever seen, a murky grey colour with folds of slimy flesh that hang over its jowls.  But it seems a happy frog and I realise the doctor has created this frog-like creature as an experiment: a new form of life however hideous.
 


*


In my dream my daughter’s boyfriend, a pilot, arranges to hire a plane to take us interstate so that we might attend a friend’s wedding. 

 

It seems a good idea at first but as time passes and it becomes more difficult for the young man to arrange a plane I start to have misgivings.  He is not an experienced pilot, as he flies only for pleasure.  He has not clocked up the hours of a professional.  I begin to imagine that we might crash.  Is the anxiety worth it? I wonder.  

I would be so anxious about the flight to and from our destination that I would almost prefer not to go at all.

 

Then I find myself in a restaurant with my youngest daughter.  I am dressed in night clothes, pyjamas that are made of some strange thick Hessian or herringbone fabric, like that of a tweed jacket wrapped around my legs.  We take a seat at a table and the restaurateur comes up to us and jokes about our clothes.  My daughter is also dressed for bed. 

 

We are killing time, I tell him, while waiting for the go ahead to fly.

 

Next I live in a tropical jungle.  I notice a young woman on board an animal of some sort careering into the jungle.  Ahead of her I can see that a dust storm has blown up.  I know it will be dangerous for the woman to go further but she will not stop. 

 

I send an envoy, a type of Tinkerbell fairy who lights up the dust particles in the air so that the woman can see where she is going.  The woman ignores my fairy who pleads with her to return.  The woman continues to ignore her until the fairy changes the colour of her clothes into a green shawl and the woman is so entranced by it that she snatches the shawl from the fairy’s shoulders and the fairy manages to turn the woman around and to bring her back to me. 

 

‘Sleep here with us, ‘I say to the woman, until the storm dies down.  I point her to the curved end of a long sickle shaped bed inside a white tent and zip up the entrance against the howling dust outside.  

*

It is summertime and in my dream I am on holidays in Japan. We stay in the hotel Nova in downtown Osaka.  I know it is Osaka although I have never been to Japan.

I have gone out this morning for a walk with my baby in my arms.  My baby is a boy.  He is dressed lightly in a blue jump suit and I carry him in my arms for convenience.

In this dream my baby drops in and out of my awareness, as he drops into and out of my arms.  One minute I carry him, the next he is not there.  At one point, when he is not there, I manage to take a tram into the centre of the town.  While I am in town I stop at a street vendor’s stall.  The vendor sells small Japanese sweet cakes covered in sesame seeds and nuts.
        ‘I’ll have a soy cake,’ I overhear one man say to the vendor in English.  The vendor is American.  I can tell by his accent.  He comments on how people do not tip in Japan, whereas in his hometown they always do.

The vendor works with his friend, a photographer.  He makes a joke to his customer about another customer and the photographer reacts by going back inside the small shop from where they produce their food.  He then pulls on leavers and presses buttons such that the floor tilts onto an angle.
          ' I’ll show you how to subvert reality,’ he says.

My baby once more in my arms is asleep.  His head lolls against my elbow.  He wakes up and posits a little of his milk – thick, white curd around his lips.  No sooner do I mop up the excess with a loose cloth nappy that hangs at my side, than more milk rises into and from my baby’s mouth.

Another man comments on the way the baby sleeps in my arms.
           ‘Does he ever get to sleep in a bed.
           ‘At night time,’ I say.  ‘We are on holidays, on the move.  We want to see the sights.’

I make plans to come back here to Osaka during the wintertime but I wonder whether I could ever bear the cold.  I do not have the thick coat necessary for life in the snow.

And what about the baby?

In a dream last night, I was ushered up a series of long and narrow staircases made of brown wood. They stopped and turned in switchbacks like those in a cheap apartment complex and by the time I reached the top there were holes in each floor I had to jump up and pull myself through. I was extremely high up and had a nauseous, sinking feeling. There was a red carpet and lines of women in furs and men in tuxedos, many of whom were my Composition I students from when I taught in New York. I walked into the theater where everyone was sitting and the lights dimmed. First, there was a teaser trailer for an unnamed movie that was just a loop of a moth flying out of a garbage can in a dark alley, and then a negative of that same image. Famed voice-over dramatist Don LeFontaine said: "Moths are a super cool dead animal thing...and thing." The movie started, and what was being shown was called "The Laurel and Hardy Movie." It was just a montage of explosions, people in Victorian garb falling down, and home video recordings of people on roller coasters screaming. It was only a few minutes long, and afterwards I left the theater laughing.

I woke up and realized I was laughing. My face hurt.

But I feel back asleep and dreamed I was in my neighbor's house where I used to hang out in the forest. I came in through the darkened woods and it was a different friend's house inside with a small staircase that led down to a big open TV room with a wraparound couch that covered 3 of the 4 walls. My grandfather, who passed away two summers ago, sat in his trademark cardigan smirking at me. I looked down and the professional wrestler Rey Mysterio, a luchadore in a colorful mask, was grabbing ahold of my leg and laying on the ground. I looked up at my grandfather and he smiled. I was hit with this overwhelming feeling of satisfaction, like he was happy that most of the possessions I had been given from him my grandmother were mine to do with what I pleased, and that only the memory of family matters, not the fact that I sold a lot of his clothes and coins to pay my rent. He told me, "you can't have everything you want, unless you want it."

I was punished with a nightmare from the culinary gods last night because I ate a cream cheese and cranberry sandwich very late. In my dream I was with some weird woman small with dark hair who very much wanted to be my friend. She begged me to go to dinner with her it seemed urgent. I told her I was a vegetarian I made it very clear. We were then in some old part of the city shadowy and dangerous and climbed up a bunch of stairs to a dark night club. We sat at a table and I felt something by my foot. It was a black corrective shoe the kind misshapen with cracked leather and I had to lift it to the table to get my dinner. Once I did that I was brought a drink in a shot glass bourbon I think and I drank it quick then I a oily man brought a platter of what looked like sushi but some of it had orange fringes like sea creatures and some looked vegetable in nature. I ate part of one and it seemed okay. The next course was a cat lying on a bed of rice. It was a black cat looked exactly like Paris the Genius Cat. The chef came out and insisted it was dead because I was stroking him. His one golden eye was open staring at me in pain but he couldn't make any noise. I got up and started a fight with the cashier telling them I was going to report them to the police.

I dreamed of my grandfather's boathouse last night like a little log cabin on Lake Pend Oreille with the boat slip attached the boat rocking in green lights and the giant carp underneath. I was in a feather bed in the house with a beautiful man with light shooting out of his blue blue eyes (a family trait) I was holding his face in both my hands (this is the second time I've done this in a dream in two weeks) telling him how beautiful he was and he was telling me we were some kind of cousins and the boathouse belonged to him now but it was okay for us to have sex. Creepy except I loved that boathouse with my whole goddamned heart and still do and I can recall every inch of it and the boat slip and the boat every inch is like a slide show in my head and that boathouse is a place I go when I am falling.

In my dreams this morning, fitful rolling dreams, one after the other, my house was in chaos, mess everywhere, the mess of years.  I woke from my dream, still dreaming and heard my sister and aunt arrive after a long trip.  They were in my kitchen.  I wanted to join them but it was hard to open my eyes.  They were stuck fast with sleep.

I had tried to tidy my consulting room in my dreams.  My children who were still young had been playing there.  The accumulation of years of toys and dolls and dress-ups spread across the room, behind cupboards and on chairs.

No sooner did I manage to clear one pile than I found another.  There was so much to sort, so much to pack away, so much to dispose of.  The piles were endless.  On my way down to the kitchen I noticed other rooms in the house in similar disarray, including the hallway itself and the kitchen.  It was as if all the toys and objects from my children’s childhood through a span of twenty years were still accumulating in my house and there was no more storage space.

I spoke to my aunt and sister, tidying around them as I offered cups of tea.  They had brought with them my uncle’s dog, a yappy dachshund with paralysed back legs that he dragged along behind him on two makeshift wheels.  The dog pulled at the edge of my skirt, harmless but irritating.  Besides I worried for my youngest daughter who in my dream was still only a toddler.

At one point I opened a door off the corridor and discovered a room I had forgotten over the years.  It had only half a floor laid down and I concluded this was the reason that we had kept the door closed, but then realised the non-floored section was in fact a water feature and deliberate, a pool in which fish swam and on whose surface, strangely, despite the absence of natural light, water lilies grew.

The walls were surrounded by fat books, books from my husband’s past, and my father before him, books we might never read now, the type of books you might see lining a Victorian library from floor to ceiling, grey with dust.

In the centre of one bookshelf there was a glass cabinet in which on the centre shelf my husband had laid out his toy soldiers, miniatures, meticulously painted, with rifles, swords and bayonets and fixed in the postures of war.

Strange I thought that I should have forgotten this.  It was like the discovery of a secret cave.

I rejoiced in the room's presence but knew immediately it would be a danger to my daughter who toddled in as I stood admiring the books.  She hovered at the edge of the pool and I scooped her up into my arms knowing I would need to close the door onto this room again until she was old enough to resist the temptation to drown.

Last night I dreamed for the entire night that I was sewing. Red satin dresses. Blue silk dresses. I was sewing them all by hand tiny perfect stitches. Right before I woke I dreamed I was sewing an intricate deep chocolate brown velvet Victorian hat. I was busy busy busy. I believe this dream means prosperity is coming my way that I can make it happen by believing.

Yesterday after visiting the hospital twice in a week to give blood I decided I would like an Advocate. I'm not sure what they are but lots of people in queue to give blood had them. I wrote about it extensively last night then deleted the post. Last night I dreamed my Advocate appeared and she was a chubby cross between Patty Duke from the Patty Duke Show including the headband and June Cleaver except she wasn't sweet as she appeared she was all business with had a soft speaking voice and a sweet demeanor. She was my Janus coming to visit. She had a huge book with plastic pages a scrap book that I never got to peek into but apparently it held the story of my life or a version of the story. Before I knew it I was on trial for being broke. My mother was there my father and his wife my step father and they were to be my jury. I asked my son to go hide in the closet and the Patty Duke/June Cleaver Advocate Janus began to question me. I answered her honestly but the screaming from the jury overtook my words every time I defended myself the jury screamed and shouted and fought. Finally  my Advocate asked me what about music? And I started to answer and realized my clock radio had gone off. I considered hitting the snooze button and sleeping another half hour but I was afraid to go back into that version of home sweet home. I woke in tears which sucks when you have a cold got up made some tea and crawled back into bed to watch Inspector Gadget on one of the invisible channels that come through at odd times when you don't have cable television. When I got out of bed to go to work I hugged my son who was not raised in a screamy house. I told him the dream. It made me cry again so  I'm putting it here to let it grow leathery awful wings and fly away.

Last night I had no dreams

and woke up with no worries

The night before last I dreamed about "her"
and that morning when I awoke I had many worries

There must be a lesson in this  that is as I re:call

November 8, 2010

Last night I dreamed of rolling in snow like a puppy.

November 3, 2010

Last night I had two dreams that felt important. In the first I was painting women in blue dresses on a large canvas and every time I'd finish a woman she'd float off the canvas and up to the sky. Pretty obvious I guess. In the second dream there were two men in tuxedos side by side. The man on the left was holding a gold plate full of bees. The man was on the right was playing a viola de gamba. The music coming from the viola de gamba was the sound the bees were making a deep earth abiding hum. This dream was joyful.

October 25, 2010

Last night as I slept I kept dreaming that I figured out the trick to staying asleep and I did stay asleep the entire night using the trick which I couldn’t remember when I woke.

October 13, 2010

Last night I dreamed there was a period like this . exactly that size floating around in my left eye. I wanted to rub my eyelid but I knew if I did so more punctuation would show up and eventually start spewing out tons of it like flies on a rotten potato.

September 26, 2010

Last night I dreamed I was at the Poet House (always the same house with poets a beautiful huge house in forest with giant windows looking out) again only this time I was there with Peter Pereira. I was attempting with his help to put toothpicks in an avocado seed so I could plant it in water something my son did in elementary school. The toothpicks kept breaking and finally I found some Pick-Up-Sticks the kind I had when I was a child and they seemed to be working but the seed slipped out of my hands and fell into the glass of water and suddenly exploded into bright colorful flowers (the colors of the Pick-Up-Sticks) strung together like a Hawaiian lei. Peter and I were stunned by its beauty.

The room in my dream served several functions: as a consulting room, a classroom and a conference centre.  It was raining outside, and seemingly within.  There must have been several gaps in the tiles on the roof that let in what looked like waterfalls in every corner of the room and even in places in the centre, yet somehow the various people who used this room managed to stay dry.

It was only a matter of time I thought before someone cops a gush of water.  I drank a cup of tea and worried that the water from the ceiling might collect inside my cup and dilute my warm drink into tepid slops.  I worried that the old therapist in the corner who was conducting a session, a man I recognised from my past who is now long dead, might get angry when he found a wet patch on his chair. I worried that the nun taking the small group of primary school children at their desks might turn on me instead of the children she rebuked.  I worried that the people at the conference might ignore me.

Instead, one man, a Canadian came by and passed me a handwritten letter.  I tried to read the words but they were indecipherable. I could only make out that he had been friendly at the last conference and wanted now to send me his good wishes.  His wife had not been able to come this time because of their children.  That much I could tease out.  Perhaps she was pregnant again.

Before I knew it I was in a car accident.  I was a back passenger in a white Volvo station wagon, driven by another of conference participant, this time an American woman and she was now in a state of shock.  Her husband leapt out from the front passenger seat to assess the damage.  The rear passengers joined him.  No one was seriously hurt though a woman who had sat beside me in the car kept asking me to massage her back.  I could not quite get to the right place on her back to give her relief but I kept trying.

Meanwhile the driver and her husband and some other helpers managed to un-crumple the roof of the car so that we could drive off again.  It looked almost as if no damage had been done, though the driver was still in a state of shock and I sensed she blamed the accident on the quality of roads in Australia.