Some dreaming of friends

black tulips Alan Loney likes them
broken short stems I put them together again
for him try to hopefully
                           Roger Horrocks was there
I don’t know why now but
enthusiastic as ever

another to do with CMc
Intense & clear but vanished
quickly  

I’m cast in a play, but don’t know my lines for the second half of the script. It’s a community production and rather modest in set design and costuming. There isn’t a stage, and the performance shares the same floor with the audience,  a simple curtain delineating the backstage.

It’s opening night, and the play has already begun. I’m meant to go on stage in a few scenes. I am trying to get a hold of the script so I can cram my lines for the second half. I know this is futile, but I persist. I rummage through my bags and ask my castmates to look at their copies. However, I don’t want to raise any alarms, so am doing my best to seem nonchalant. Inside, though, my heart is pounding. My mouth tastes like metal. I have to speak in a whisper so that I don’t interrupt the play.

When I do get a copy of the script, my fears grow exponentially. I’m cast in a sci-fi/horror piece, and my character undergoes some fantastical transformation in the second act. I become a transsexual were-beast with a new name. In fact, all the characters transform and take on new identities. From skimming, I have no way of telling which character I am portraying and which lines to learn. To make matters worse, there are cartoon panels throughout the script. I’m not sure how we are meant to portray these moments on stage. I don’t know what to do.

As I’m trying to cope with all of this, another castmate that is backtage keeps speaking in a loud voice, disrupting the play. I keep trying to get her to quiet down, but she’s oblivious. It’s almost time for my cue.

I park my husband’s car outside my analyst’s house.  In my dream she lives alongside a wide curved road which is edged on either side with tea tree and rambling vines.  A thick wall of green separates the road from the beach.

I have come for my usual session but it seems different somehow.  My analyst is busy sorting through clothes and books and does not sit the whole time she talks to me, and she talks, talks and talks, more than I ever remember her talking.

She tells me a few ‘home truths’.  She is brutally honest, she says.  She needs to alert me to certain aspects of my personality, certain ways I behave that have to do with my tendency to present only half of the picture in my dealings with others.

I cover my face in my hands.  I take in every word she says and feel deeply ashamed, more so because I am aware that two of my colleagues are nearby in an adjoining room.  They can hear every word of our conversation through the open door.  Both colleagues have names that begin with J.  I shall call one J 'rage' and the other J 'prudishness'.

How can my analyst say these things to me within their earshot I wonder?  I say nothing and she does not let up until it is time for me to leave.

I am outside again on the street but now I cannot find my husband’s car.  I am convinced that I had parked it immediately across the road but it is nowhere to be seen.  Other cars line the street but none of them is mine.

I talk to people who go back to their cars, one or two of whom I recognise as other colleagues.  They do not know where the car has gone.  Eventually and reluctantly I revisit my analyst to ask if I might use her phone to call the police and to report the car as missing.  She lets me in although she is still busy sorting.  Her husband is more sympathetic than my analyst when he overhears talk about my missing car.

Through the front windows of my analyst’s house I see my husband’s car driving down the road as if the driver is about to park.  The back of the car is covered in scratches and is dinted on one side.  I rush out onto the street thinking to at least get a look at the thief who has presumably taken out my husband’s car for a joy ride.

Another of my colleagues has also recognised the car and I can see her from the front steps of my analyst’s house as she tries to get the driver to stop.  She hangs onto the side door handle as the driver swerves to get away.  I wish she had not done this as I do not want the thief/thieves to know we have seen them.

In trying to escape from my colleague the car swerves, hits another parked car, goes into a spin and crashes.  Through the force of the crash the entire roof peels off and the car comes to a stop, a pulverised piece of twisted metal, with its occupants still seated within the security of seat belts.

There is a group of five in the car and the driver is a young woman I do not recognise.  An older man in the back seat snarls at me as I move in to remonstrate with them for stealing my husband’s car. They seem too dazed to make a run for it, and I wake up.

I don't remember when I realized I was in the dream, but I remember it felt normal.

I am in an MFA program and this dream was taking place in an MFA program.  The only difference was that this wasn't taking place in a writing program; it was taking place in a mixed martial arts program.

The classes did not involve any physical contact. 

I remember thinking, "I am getting this MFA in the martial arts to go ontop of my other MFA, in writing, and help beef up my resume."

I do not remember the financial aspects of this mixed martial arts MFA program being considered by my dream-self.  This is odd, because in real life I worry about personal economics constantly.

I remember discussing my reasons for entering the program.  It had to do with the fact that it was very much a philosophy degree, but less rigorous possibly, and also a "cool thing to study."  The problem of eurocentrism in mainstream American philosophy was discussed.  Comparative philosophy seemed to be my main interest.

The classes did not involve physical contact.

I remember enjoying reading and learning about the different types of martial arts, and I remember thinking (rather, my dream-self thinking) that I was eventually going to have to take a course that met the "physical contact" requirment before I could graduate with my MFA in mixed martial arts.  I remember my dream-self thinking that I would wait until the last semester.

When I awoke that morning from this dream I felt like shit in the most casual hilarious way.

The wattle trees in our garden are abundant.  In my dream I decide to find secateurs to cut off a few branches to put in vases.  I resist the impulse to borrow my daughter’s sewing scissors for fear of blunting them.  When I come up close the flowers do not seem as abundant as I had first thought but still I manage to snap off a few twigs.  The flowers drop off as the twigs fall and cover me in yellow pollen.

I go inside to find vases just as my husband arrives home.  The wind builds up and we go out together to check the trees, which have now disappeared.  At first I imagine the wind has toppled them but soon realise someone must have chopped them down.  Their stunted trucks look tiny compared to how I had at first imagined them.   I am relieved that my cuts did not cause them to disappear when the alarm wakes me up.

There were these ink-dark beings, sometimes resembling humans and sometimes resembling snakes, that seemed almost liquid, that we all had to protect ourselves from. They sought out human frailties and fed on them. Too much exposure would lead to a full-force attack, and would kill a person.

So what one had to do was keep all skin completely covered, so that any one of these beings (which resided in the rafters and on the ceilings of this world that seemed mostly to be a sort of large gym), could not see any human part, because that triggered a feeding frenzy.

What one did to survive was keep covered, all in black, with a series of hats, hoods, cloaks, and when an ink-dark being neared, one crouched down on the floor or ground and wrapped one’s coverings around one and played dead.

I had a soft spot on top of my head that was now bald due to an attack where I had not properly covered myself. I had to wear a black hat at all times, and be constantly vigilant, continually scanning the ceiling beams, nooks and crannies, to try to discern where one of these dark shape-shifters might be hiding. I had to keep my head bent down and my hands covered at all times, just to survive.

Chris, Gideon and I looked around a store to get items to help organize our house. It seems like a home store, but I bought a purse here recently. I spoke to the saleswoman. One of us commented about the Banana Republic was back in it's original spot in the mall. I had forgotten that it moved to the other (less used) end. I said that end of the mall felt like a totally different mall. The saleswoman agreed.

* * *

We moved out of our house mid-morning and into our new house. The old owners of our new house moved right next door. The man was older, shirtless with a big fat belly. I didn't like the former owners living so close to us. Our old home seemed to be nearby too. The new owners moved in. I wasn't sure for who, but for one (or more) of us these homes were a transitional space until we moved again.

* * *

I sat in a Poets and Busboys waiting for my former poetry teacher to arrive for a one-on-one meeting. I held the Poets and Busboys pencil that he gave me, still unsharpened. I remembered that he introduced me to this place before he had his falling out with it.

(Poet 1) and (Poet 2) joined me at my table. Maybe they were meeting with my former teacher too. The two poets talked about an amazing, brilliant woman who seemed to be able to do everything. She was a poet, the most alluring and sexy stripper who men relentlessly pursued, a Playboy model who drove men wild when they saw her nude photographs and now she was a conductor. She did everything except have children, which they said was because she was too smart for men. She was to be joining them soon.

Poet 1 and Poet 2 excused themselves from my table. I got sleepy and slumped over at the table as I waited for them to return. Poet 1 brought me a cup of coffee. I saw that she and Poet 2 joined this amazing woman at another table. This amazing woman had red hair, was middle aged and a little heavy. She didn't necessarily look the part, but I knew this was her. I felt left out that Poet 1 and Poet 2 left my table for her's.

I am in supervision with a friend and writer, C, in the front room of my house in which I consult.  The blinds are drawn but there is a gap at the bottom through which I can see out onto the veranda. 

The doorbell rings.  ‘I’ll ignore that,’ I say to my supervisee.  We are discussing her writing.  The doorbell is a distraction but I imagine the person who has rung it will move on soon, but he rings again.  I look out through the crack under the blind on the window and can see a tradesmen of sorts, in casual clothes.  He talks on a telephone.  His utility truck is in the driveway.  I cannot hear what he is saying only the low drone of his voice which sounds agitated.  I worry that he can see me and slide down onto the floor.  My supervisee looks perplexed but given she happens to be a friend I think she will understand.  

Eventually the man leaves.  I watch him get into his car and his assistant, a woman, who appears seemingly from nowhere uses a special lift up tray to get into her seat on the passenger side.

Somehow I manage to finish the session at the end of which my supervisee asks me about my availability.  She can only come on a Tuesday at 8.45 in the morning.  Am I free then?  I realise I am not.  I share a writing group at this time.  It seems to cement my supervisee’s decision to take up another proposition that has been put to her, namely to teach creative writing at the university.

I go out into the hallway and run into a man, another tradesmen, who seems to be working on the wires near the front.

‘What a you doing here?  Who authorised this?’

I am furious and tell the man to get out.  He is reluctant to move but I force him to pack up his bags and move out through the back door. 

As I go into the kitchen in anticipation of him an elderly couple come through the sliding door.  Each carries a heavy box loaded with household things.

‘Who are you?’ I ask, ‘and what are you doing here?’

The couple look perplexed, furtive.  I tell them to leave as well, and begin to bolt the door so that no other intruders can get inside.

I am furious and troubled.  I have been away from home and work for several days until now and I wonder whether something has gone on in my absence.  Have some people tried to take over our house? 

I try the telephone to ring my husband but can’t get through.  I’m in a panic.  They cannot simply take possession of someone else’s house.  Or can they?

I had been given the task of presiding over a friend’s daughter’s wedding, not as a celebrant but as a sort of pre-wedding planner, not of the practical kind, but more one who helps the bride in particular to think about what she is letting herself in for.

I took this task seriously but found myself slipping into the role of therapist.  I could sense that my friend’s daughter, the bride, did not enjoy the questions I put to her, questions about what getting married meant to her.  She wanted simply to have a good time at the wedding.  She wanted only to party, none of this heavy serious stuff about meaning and commitment.

My friend’s mother came up to me.  She took me aside and asked me to stop being so serious.  It was clear she was angry with me.

Now I felt useless, as if I had failed in my task.  I could no longer enjoy the wedding preparations.  Somehow the wedding went on and I was not there.

Soon after we gathered for the wedding reception.  No one came forward to take the role of MC and my husband moved to the microphone.  I rushed up to him to warn him of what had happened to me.
           ‘They may  not want you.’  And sure enough my friend came up to him and asked my husband to tone it down.  He went off in a huff.

We were now both alienated.

I had taken a drug, some variant of peyote, that maybe I'd gotten from a Brujo of sort. Instead of random hallucinations, I saw people's heads reconfigure to reflect their souls. I was in a hotel, and then in some transit center in a foreign city, very modern. Many people looked bland and passive, almost pulpy like certain breeds of dogs, but others -- way too many -- were quite obviously monsters. Some of the monsters were wandering about with children in tow -- all the kids looked beatific. I knew that terrible things were in store for them. Then at some point, I realized that the monsters could tell that I could read their souls and began to gather themselves about me. I looked for a way out and if I'd been on a high balcony or bridge I would have jumped to escape, but here on the ground floor of this transit center there was no way out, so I twisted & twisted until I woke up. I was afraid to look in the mirror.

I drive out into the desert with a couple guys from work. The venue is small, the seating haphazard- it might be The Switch, or the Alice Coltrane Memorial Coliseum. It starts to fill in. Pound is reading, I manage to secure a spot next to him on a couch, along with another friend. One of them has pulled out a "Golden Book" and Pound thinks it is incredible, that it must be beyond value. We discuss children's books, and I show him a book of psychedelic children's art from San Francisco, which he finds amusing, but dismisses. Pound is very kind. He recommends I read a book of essays on labor, which he describes quantitatively, praising the symmetry in the sizes of its sections.

In my dream I am with a group of women and children all familiar to me, my sisters, my daughters, my friends, and we are on a journey.  I take the wheel of the car and drive through foreign streets into a wide well lit tunnel.  It is as if I am driving in reverse as I need to get my head around these unfamiliar surroundings and it takes me some time to orient myself.  The whole time I imagine we will crash, but as often happens in my dreams the car steers its own steady course safely through the tunnel and I manage to right the wheel in the nick of time.
Later I spend some time with my older brother.
‘I’m thinking of visiting Dad’s graveside,’ my brother says.  ‘Do any of you others want to come’.
I have been trying to tidy my house while my brother makes plans.  Children’s toys pulled out of order, doll’s clothes spread across the floor and bits and pieces of games and toy sets, some broken and in pieces spread around me.
I am desperate to get the place in order even as I think I would like to join my brother.  What chance is there I wonder that any of the others will want to come?
In my dream my father is buried at Hall’s Gap.  It is a long drive and I pitch myself forward in my imagination to his graveside when I wake up.

In my dream I visit old friends who live nearby in a ramshackle house that they have partially renovated in places and in other parts left alone.  I have not seen these friends for some time and their children who were babies when last I saw them have grown into young girls, preschoolers now.  The older of the two prattles on about the title of a book her mother had been reading and I am impressed by her ability to articulate long and complex words.  She seems almost-genius like in her knowledge.

There are other friends visiting this house friends who are obviously in regular contact with the owners, and I am conscious of feeling left out.  Someone is cooking duck on an outdoor barbeque. I  chat to the male half of the couple, M,  about how things are for him and speculate on whether my husband might join us later.  M's wife I know disapproves of him.

Then M’s wife comes along.

‘Your children are amazing,’ I say and their mother preens.   M nods approvingly and looks over at his daughters . ‘They are like peas in a pod,' he says.  'One ribbon is too long for the two of them.'

My own daughter, now a toddler, trails after M’s girls.  I follow them down a long laneway.  We pass rabbits in hutches, rabbits that look wild and rangy. The grass here is high and the fields cluttered with junk, old tools, furniture an bits of cars.  In places I notice there are maggots feeding on the dead flesh of animals long gone.

I turn the corner into the house and go into the old nursery.  M’s wife has kept it exactly as it was when her babies were born.  I comment on this to M who comes to wave me goodbye.  'I have kept our nursery the same,' I say, and wake to the alarm.


*



I dreamed of a baby born to a couple who did not love one another even at the point of his conception.  I  was responsible for looking after this baby along with several others.  We took it in turns to hold him.  At one stage I brought the baby over to see an old friend, M.  The baby wore a dark sailor’s cap on his head which made him look older than he was.

M asked me about this baby, from where he had come and what I was doing taking care of him.  As she spoke I noticed for the first time that her front tooth was rotten through.  It had the grey colour of death.

‘You must stop being so generous with your money,’ M said.  ‘If you’re not you’ll wind up with nothing left for your old age.’

M then asked the whereabouts of the baby’s mother.  She had gone on holidays to the beach, I said.  The father was elsewhere.

I took the baby to change his nappy.  By now she had morphed into a female.  She was asleep but needed a change.  I knew because she stank.  When I took off the Pilcher her nappy almost exploded and I worried for the red and burned skin on her bottom.  She had been left in a dirty nappy for hours.

(dreamt my last night in China 2011)

First, I go to an event, and I am on time. The Washington poet Lana Hechtman Ayers is there. Then somehow I am late. I have to crawl up through a very high window to get in the class. I have trouble, and people help me. I throw right leg over a ledge. Someone pushes me on left side, from below. Another I tell to pull my arm up from the window above, to a rung like a ladder. I finally get in the window, but the class has started already. That's where Lana is. She and several others are dancing and singing. It looks interesting. But the teacher is unkind about me being late. This bothers me, so I leave. But the class interests me too much, so I come back. But by the time I come back there are so many people. There are people from high school (Chris Limbo). There are people that worked with me in college at La Taqueria (Danny Glover). This is like the new exercise, dance-theatrical sensation. There are things each person acts out. Each person seems to be acting out their own imagined play. But somehow this happens fluidly among all others. It seems to me like a Greek chorus. People are packed tightly lin a large room, a room like a studio in which dancers practice. People practice in lines. I wake up and write down the phrase "dream of the dancing, living game."

“100th Greatest Poet of All Time Berrigan” read the blue underlined headline in the Google reader on my iGoogle home page. I clicked the link and it took me to the Poetry Foundation’s Harriet blog. “Is Ted Berrigan exactly the 100th greatest poet of all time?” the blogger wondered. The post went on to say that someone, I forget the name but it was hyperlinked, argued just that. I stopped reading and clicked on the link which took me to an article on The New York Times Website. “Ted Berrigan is exactly the 100th greatest poet of all time,” the piece began. I read a couple of more sentences, I forget what they were, but they lead into a consideration of a volume of his called Face-off. The writer explained that this was “a series of two-line quips that played off each other culminating in. . . .” My mind added the ellipsis in the dream as I began to consider my own short suite, was it any good, of interlocking two-word insult poems which I had made a couple of years ago and all but forgotten. I tried to get back to reading the article but I started to drift toward wakefulness. I heard a small cry and I thought it was my daughter, then I thought it was the cat, then I realized it was nothing, which meant I was awake.

boyfriend had an affair with husband's girlfriend

I called the husband to tell him, he said don't call me, I said I have to tell you this news

at first he said hedidn't mind, saying that people were supposed to have one-night stands

but then I said it seemed more serious

and he posted something bitter on some social network, I can't remember...

I suppose I am not free. silly subconscious!

it was... where was it... there was some bank, or hotel... where there were these tropical island tours. it was near me but I had never been there.

on the lawns of the tropical island were these golden tongues

sculptures of golden tongues

they meant something... memorialized something, I am not sure what... some sort of... sea leprechauns?

and a friend lived near there with a prairie for a huge backyard... his children were frolicking there with his girlfriend... it was "India"... and it looked as though there were a huge fire in the yard, all red and purple and vivacious colors

and there were tumbleweeds, but maybe the fire was an illusion

since everyone seemed happy and unconcerned

My husband called in the middle of the night to let me know his plane would be three hours late departing from the European city where he had spent the last three months. I wrote the information down on a card beside my bed, afraid I would think it a dream. Just before waking up, after I had been asleep for three more hours, I dreamed my husband was there on the couch beside me without announcing he was there. I caressed his face between my hands and said something I cannot remember to welcome him home. Then he asked me if I had seen the other woman around here. I felt compelled to keep my eyes on him and did not look around but said I had seen someone out of the corner of my eye.

I was a leaf man w/ dark rich earth for my arms and vines all over.

 

It was peaceful.

My dream featured a scene from what looked like reality TV –a gigantic case conference.  A group of therapists stood up in turn to talk about their respective patients.

At one point one of the patients, a tiny dwarf like creature, stood to speak for herself.

You could barely see her above the crowd.  She listed all her difficulties but did not mention the fact of her height.  She was no taller than a five year old, though she had the body of a young adult.

 I wanted to comment on this fact, this obvious fact that no one else wanted to acknowledge, but I got the message from her silence and from that of the crowd that I should not acknowledge it.

I was walking into a jungle, incredibly dark, and that I was holding a rose before me -- a huge red rose -- this rose appears in Schizophrene, so that this, perhaps, was a dream of the edits I just completed -- a next to last phase, just now.  The rose gave off a faint light, like a torch, and I held it at the level of my heart, my sternum, so that even in the dream, I understood that my command, my obligation, was to love, to open my sense beyond their given tropes, and go into it, the dark, with infinite trust for my passage through.

Jerry Williams at Best American Poetry

Dreamed

Dreamed

I was teaching a class on magical realism (which I will be, in the Fall, so perhaps this was de rigeur anxiety dream). I had been traveling, and my book was in the outer zip-pocket of my carry-on suitcase.  I reached for it, but at that moment, felt a wave of caution, understanding that if I opened the suitcase in its entirety, an angel I could not manage or cope with would come out.  Even in the dream, "angel" was capitalized.  Even in the dream, I knew my brain was processing the question of an entity, its arrival/containment, as a metaphor for corporeal destruction (mine), but really it was something else.  It was an angel [agent] of transformation, but still I could not do it.  I could not look.  The book was dreamtigers by Borges, a book I suspect I saw in the dream because of the man I met at the holiday barbeque last night.  My friend's stepfather, he had been to India on a Mission.  And showed me the photo-project book he had made after giving a disposable camera to the son of the man who had cut his hair in "Calcutta."  "I said," he said, "go and take pictures of your life.  We'll come back in two or three days."  Then he developed one set of photos for the book I held in my hands, and gave the other to the boy.  In Guatemala, he did the same with a girl who worked in a local factory, then described going into a Safeway in Loveland and weeping in the produce section, at the sight of people purchasing bananas, whose provenance and child labor costs he knew firsthand.  Booklet.  A jungle.  A black and white tiger against a cliff in Orissa.  I dreamed of Borges, and woke with the cat against my back knee, her claws retracting and opening against my skin.  In the dream, I also met my Project Director at Goddard, Paul Selig.  Everyone was lined up with specific questions about their health, love-life, career, etc.  I said: "What do the guides want me to know?"  Everyone watching said: "Oooh," as if I'd asked a selfless question.  But really, I knew that the Angel was nearby, having exceeded my luggage.  I knew the Angel had something to say.  At this moment in the dream, I understood I was dreaming of writing.  It was the same feeling in my body. For example, I know that if I sat down to write, even today, it would come in a terrible rush and days would pass and I would not be able to return to my life as it was.  This is why I do not write, refuse to write until the last minute, and never begin.  I wish I could invent a video game that gave a person a choice between formalizing love and never knowing the truth of their physical/family origins.  A turn to the Angel represents this first choice, and risks obliteration.  The second choice would be a genetics, a furthering, a weirdly satisfying or stabilizing knowledge, but nothing would happen: life would continue with a psychological basis, and perhaps a person could make art out of this, but it would not be the same as the book of light.  A book that had the sun and moon inside it, like forces. That split the spine.  Each time you opened it.  To read.  A sun-beam would rotate from the page into your left eye, and moonlight to the right.  Reading: an act of rewiring consciousness, perception, the pathways of the brain.  Now I want to invent an e-book that does this: that produces or emits light rays.  Color healing.  Imagine a schizophrenic reading Dostoevsky, and every time they read the word -- "the" -- they see a light pink pulse of light.  Reading integrates a subject matter with simple, ritualized touch, and in this version, there is also a secular form of energy work that makes the reader register the light at a different rate to the word.  An ordinary word, in particular, rather than a word with immense local significance.  This suddenly feels important on a day when I am finishing the last edits for Schizophrene.  How psychosis omits duration as a mental stage.  Everything that happened is still happening, deep inside the spot.  I'll stop there.  Even this narrative is a way of avoiding the Angel, who has come very near, near enough to touch, behind me, as I write these words so early in the morning; my son still asleep, a freight train cutting through on its way to Laramie, birdsong, a light breeze, chai, and now the cat slipping through the ankles, mewing for her breakfast.  (Milk.)

I was in Gideon's preschool class. I planned to work on my manuscript thesis that was due soon so I could graduate. An annoying woman came in to teach the class, so I left with my packet full of poems and notebook. I opened my slim packet. It felt like there were 30-40 poems, but instead there were smaller envelops with word games and far fewer poems than I expected. All the poems needed drastic rewrites. For the thesis, I planned to show my work (first draft, final draft) and considered writing about the changes. I had a tremendous amount of work to do in a short period of time.

last night was like every other night I
again  dreamed that I was (the) Full Moon
pretending to be (a) Ripe Banana

&
when that Dumb Rock turned into "Her"
I ...erupted !

wrote a poem:

full moon
I think I'm in love
with a rock

and the this Stone Girl became my "me"


 

My dream last night, one that I at least remembered, centered on my breasts, but I was looking at them most of the time from a distance rather than carrying them. They were like two enormous mushrooms one slightly larger than the other. They were strung around my neck on some sort of cord and I was having trouble making them face the right direction. They kept flipping backwards with the stems on the outside. Then when I got them facing the right direction and creating a little décolletage in a kind of trench coat, they’d flip back the wrong way before I knew it. Their color was golden brown and shiny and they were untamable. And that’s all I remember.

 

I was sitting in a circa 80s school bus. I wiped frost off my window and saw a televised speech by "the dictator of Poland." On the balcony of a building like a Bavarian cuckoo clock, a giant effigy of the dictator cleaved the air with his arms and harangued the crowd in Hitler fashion. He was a Macy's-balloon-sized puppet with a loudspeaker built into his throat.
My late paternal grandmother sat next to me across the aisle, babushka'd, staring at the front of the bus, apparently unaware of me. I started singing "Anyone Who Had A Heart," wondering if she could hear me, if she knew the song, if she liked Bacharach. I felt a sentimental tenderness toward everyone on the bus, as if I'd had a drink or two. Some little boys were stampeding down the aisle and trampling one another. I thought I should intervene, as when I sub at elementary schools. I joked with one of them about the Green Bay Packers logo stuck to his forehead. "A third eye, eh?" And suddenly I was Barack Obama in a Macy's parade, marching through Manhatten, beaming and waving at the throngs of cheering onlookers. But at the same time I was watching myself as if on television.

I was in a busy urban environment, daytime, much happening on the streets.
 I was discovering some sort of complex, quasi-encoded creative project.
This somehow involved a map of the US w/ a few black dots on it of some
particular significance.  The logo for part of it was a detail of an
Hieronymous Bosch painting that was delineated by a diffused-outline
circle.  Surrounding the circle the painting was in color but the isolated
detail was in black & white.  W/in the circle there was probably a Bosch
character that was semi-human - perhaps a creature w/ a trumpet-like mouth
or beak.

I had found an object created by the person behind this project.  It was
like an industrial paper-towel dispenser the size of a Rolodex.  It was a
cylinder, mostly encased in plastic, w/ a central axle around wch fairly
sturdy paper was wrapped on wch there was a printed interview w/ "N" - wch
stood for "Noun" but may've also been connected to "An".  "N" was the
person behind the project.  Also wrapped around the axle & interposed
between the paper was a layer of translucent blue plastic.  Encasing these
2 layers was a hard plastic shell that only allowed access to the paper &
plastic thru an aperture.  My interpretation of how this interview was to
be read was that as one pulled the paper & plastic off the spool-axle one
was to cut the plastic off to make seeing the interview-paper easier.
However, I was unsure whether I shd really be cutting the blue plastic off
as I was.

Reb Livingston's recent celebrity dreams: here.

I looked over the bridge at the Yarra River and watched a young woman in the water swimming for the joy of it.  The water seemed clear and deeper than usual, after recent heavy rains.

‘It’s wonderful.  Come on in,’ the girl called but no one joined her until out of the blue another girl splashed in from the shoreline.  I had been wondering what it would be like to dive into this water from the bridge itself, not that I would do this.  It was sure to be dangerous.  The girls mucked around together in the water and called out occasionally to people on the shoreline.

 The people on the shoreline sat in groups.  Many of them had disfigured faces and scoriated skin.  Most of them in some way or other had surrendered part of their skin to the ravages of fire, some on their faces, others on their chests, backs or arms.  I soon realised these people had come together for this reason.

 Entire families, some of whom had several members with significant scars had come together here.  I took to talking to them.  Their burns reminded me of the way the tectonic plates of the earth shift by centimetres every year.  When one plate shifts into another, slowly and year by year, each plate moving northwards by as little as a centimetre and growing at the rate of our fingernails - the Indian plate for instance jammed up against the European - then mountains form.  Just so the burned skin as it sloughs off and heals leaves layers of skin rough and patchy in places without pigment, like scrubby mountains.

 And then I was with my daughter and husband on a train travelling with some of these burned people.  Our train passed through a display of army vehicles, tank on tank in khaki and battleship grey.  The first lot we passed were left overs from the German war.  Then we passed through a collection of Japanese fighter planes, trucks and tanks.  I worried for some of the people who sat near me who looked as though they might be Japanese or at least Asian.  They might be as traumatised by memories of the war as might the group of Europeans.

Then it was time to go to one of a series of concerts put on for charity.  I overheard one from the burns group saying that she could not bear to go to the performance  put on to discuss disability.  She would instead go to the one on racism, the one against racism, the one I also intended to attend with my husband and daughter.

We stood in a queue waiting to get off the train and into the theatre.  My husband worried that we needed our train tickets to get in.  He had lost ours but we found them again on the floor.

A couple of old friends and my older sister began to fling their arms around my husband and me, as if we were not there.  I joked that I did not exist but then decided to take our daughter to change her nappy.  But there were no public toilets.  I decided to try to change my daughter in a corner of the garden.

 She protested.  It was too public, even for her a baby.  I stood her in a garden bed and my daughter's feet sank into the soil as did mine.  She lost her little shoes.  We then struggled to find another place on firmer ground but equally private, and I changed her sodden nappy.

 I left my daughter outside seemingly asleep while I planned to go to the concert.  It did not seem so strange to me that I should leave my daughter alone in the foyer, until she woke and called me.  She was distressed that her birthday necklace had broken and her nappy fallen had off.  I decided then we might go in to the performance together, mother and baby.

An African man with skin the colour of jet busked on a street corner in the village square.  I stopped to watch with several other people.  His act looked uninteresting until he managed in one breath to draw in as much water as necessary to blow out a waterfall of colours that came out in a burst not only of colour but of pattern.  The performance went on for at least a minute and was so extraordinary that people applauded for equally long.  Then the busker sent his hat around to collect signs of our appreciation.

‘Don’t give him anything,’ my companion said.  ‘It’s too dangerous.’

‘I’ll only give him my small change.’

I fished around in my wallet and pulled out some coins, which I threw into the hat.  It was not much money but the sound of the coins crashing onto other coins made it sound like more. 

The busker’s eyes lit up and he went to hug me.  I pulled away and started for my return journey back to the room in which I was staying. 

I had been on holidays in this Indonesian island with a female friend who had already huffed off ahead of me.  The busker followed. 

‘I’ll take you out to dinner,’ he said.  I did not want his advances and managed to escape through the bushes.

‘I’ll wait for you,’ the man said, ‘after you change your dress.’

I had no intention of returning but somehow I managed to get lost in my attempts to avoid him. 

I walked past a raised section that enclosed a deep pit.  A dog leapt up onto the wooded ledge and jumped into the water, which was visible not so far below but too far for any dog or person for that matter to scale the walls for escape.  The dog tried but could not get traction.  He swam around frantically and I raced off in a panic about getting help for fear the dog would exhaust itself and drown. 

I went looking for help but my friend whom I found at last said there was no entranceway to this pit from the kitchen area. 

I went back alone with a net on the end of a rod intending to drag the dog out.  I swirled the end of the net around in the water but the dog was not there.  I woke up. 

A poet who goes, who grows, who glows, by the numb in the number, by Who knows?, 25, published a translation, a pulp, a carnation, in The New Yorker of all places, in the heart of my dream. He was young, he was mean, he was the drop of a hat and more genius than me. He was (in parentheses) Alan something G- something, one of those sanities, those post-grad manatees or careerist wannabes, a poet-chef or con-man camping in the Andes, dazzling and brilliant and dapper when appropriate, like accepting an award or daydreaming Oprah. One of those who glows, who grows, and goes by three names, who references Han Shan, the etymology of shambles, the shimmy, its catharsis, and the history of the shaman, all by inserting the phrase catch as catch can into the first line of his jigsaw meditation on Tristan Tzara's short poem “Route.” At first I think it's nothing that hasn't been done before, or I am jealous of his connections that make me feel like a jalopy puttering in the middle of a five-lane highway, then I realize it's how he would feel too if he were me, and I see him standing in a tree over the forsythia at the edge of the woods behind the Swing-and-Slide Playset, a little boy with my hair, middle finger in the air.

I dreamt I was on vacation with my wife Louisa in Philadelphia.  I followed her into a large drugstore, where she needed to buy some things.  I noticed my cousin Rick Kaplin and Ronnie Gerstle, both of whom I knew from Camp Kennebec in Maine, standing at a cash register behind the counter.  By the time we reached the counter, Rick had disappeared and Ronnie was alone there.  I forgot all the things I planned to say to Ronnie.  It was as though I suddenly forgot everything I knew about him.  So I asked him where Rick had gone.  He said Rick had returned to his store across the street.  After she paid, Louisa stopped at a high round table, where someone might sit with a coffee or a drink.  She started balancing her checkbook, endlessly.  Impatient, I headed outside without her, even though we were on vacation together.

The butcher shop across the street had a long, narrow entrance hall and a large room in back, ballooning out to the right.  Five men were working there.  “Is Rick Kaplin here?” I asked.  The apparent owner pointed to a guy in the middle.  It wasn’t really Rick, it was someone else.  This Rick looked incredibly young.  I said, “Hi, Rick, it’s your cousin, Michael Ruby,” speaking more soulfully than I planned.  There was something wrong with Rick, he couldn’t look at me, he seemed to be hiding his face.  He was schizophrenic, I decided.  Also incredibly muscular, so overpumped he was almost toppling over, and covered with small pink pimples.  “You remember me?” I asked.  “I’ve gotten your emails,” he said, probably referring to emails I’ve sent out in the past announcing various books.  “I don’t think I’ve ever sent you any.”  “I’ve gotten your emails,” he said, his tone faintly negative.  He walked slowly toward me, reaching out to shake my hand, but then he gripped my hand very hard, and I realized he wasn’t going to let go, he was going to try to kill me.  Of course, it made perfect sense.  Rick hated my guts, Rick hated me the most of any person in my entire life, Rick hated me with a supernatural hatred.  How could I have forgotten?  I struggled fiercely against the muscleman’s grip, trying to reach the door down the dingy hall.  Why did the hall have to be so long?  Suddenly, the tarnished bronze knob was in reach.  If I could open the door, I could yell for the police.  There were police on the street.  At this point, I awakened from the nightmare.  My first thought was: Thank God this is a dream.  My next thought was: Rick can’t hurt me, he’s been dead for 25 years, struck by a taxi in Central Park at the age of 28.  This was a dream about seeing my dead cousin, the person who hated me the most of anyone in my life, and he tried to kill me.

A scary celebration with dark hallways and running had just taken place.  Best friends were in the field with tall metal statues.  Time to fly, so  walk up the hill a little and run for momentum, kick off.  Only got a little air between feet and ground.  Heavy body; why does a light body become weighted so quickly? It was the right time to fly.  Does anybody have enough energy?  Now all of us on the hill, all dense perfect circle rocks thrown into a reflection pool of water, no, metal instead.  Thudded slowly.  Finally with exercise and practice our perfect circle bodies became aerodynamically smooth stones, and we shimmered off the hill into the air.  Weaving through the metal statues some of our wings were more apt for tight turns.  I had doggy-trained tricks, having watched a red Australian Cattle Dog as he maneuvers body between posts, every muscle utilized simultaneously, a block of twists and strength.  As a mass we flew through a brick neighborhood, a Philadelphian metropolis, passing a sprinkler and young tumbling boys, moms in garden jeans stretching hamstrings before dealing with the peas. 

Excited with hopes of future kisses, going to the house of the boy I loved who didn't love me yet but his family would.  The wood floors would squeak as I walked to the guest bedroom at the entrance of the house for a blanket; pulled off the bottom quilt, the pillows atop moving with the tug but ending up still on the bed, a clean swipe.  Mom of the house was being a host with older brother's friends, and watched as I ruined her organization.  "I will fix it."  Outside with blanket I was the hero watching out for the continuation of clean dry butts.  Sun would've been the hero if I wasn't here. 

My own mom came to pick me up as if from a sleepover birthday party, too much pizza and staying up all night scared of being alone in a room full of girls all better friends than me despite my having known all of them for longer.  So glad to see mom.

The crowd -- friendly, well-behaved -- hampered my progress though Logan Airport.  For compelling reasons hard to articulate now, I was lugging documents under both arms.  These burdens challenged my command of time and space when fishing for wallet, blackberry, whatever.  Yet I brushed aside offers of help.

I was en route to the college from which I had graduated 36 years ago.  The taxi made good time till Memorial Drive in Cambridge, where the engine gave out.  Rather than apologize, the driver thought I should compensate him extra “for the music.” 

He had underestimated me if he thought I was going to pay for what the taxi’s radio had supplied, don’t worry.  Besides, hadn’t I put up for miles with a gyros sweating on the spit in the passenger section?  Assured of the justice of my position, and braced by the opportunity to show my skills as an oral advocate, I told him "Fuck YOU!"

 

Relatives of the cabbie converged on the scene as if for a wedding rehearsal -- children and elders, male and female.  They surrounded the vehicle in an unthreatening manner.  

The meter read $4.90.  I gave my driver a five and moved on to new challenges. 

From where I stood beside the highway, a rustic path led uphill to where the "river houses" might well be.  The layout, the landscape:  Things had changed since my college days.  There was no telling for sure what lay beyond the forested ridge where the path, longer and steeper than it had looked at first, took a turn into some trees.

A physical sensation of unfairness welled in me, coupled with doubts about the necessity of my mission.  Its precise scope was growing elusive, too.  Had it ever been evident beyond this point?  The important files I was carrying felt heavier than ever.   

I'm in an industrial type space w/ a huge baywindow
overlooking a desolate landscape that's pitted & has no vegetation
- it seems to be mostly or all clay.  I'm there w/ someone else,
maybe another guy.  We're there to procure a giant vehicle,
I think for time-travel.  Outside the window, there're at least 2 types
of vehicles visible.  The one we're to use is huge, like a heavily armored
tank or some type of land-mover.  They have a solid wall on their fronts
w/ a cluster of giant hole-saws.  All around us the clay of the surface is
cracking open & rhinoceroses are emerging from underneath.
They're not struggling out of the earth - it's more as if they're coming up
standing on elevator platforms - but no such things are visible.
I don't see any of them actually completely on the surface & moving around.
The landscape w/ these rhinoceroses is menacing & the hole-saws on the
fronts of the vehicles are interpreted as being for defense.  Despite the menacing
nature of the environment, wch may not be Earth, wch is more likely another planet,
the 'salesperson' that we're dealing w/ seems unconcerned about our safety
& the presumed vulnerability of the glass wall/baywindow.  It occurs to me
that I have no idea how to drive the vehicle I'm about to get so I ask if it
comes w/ a driver.  In a quasi-lucid meta-realization w/in the dream, I realize
that by asking this question I'm making it so that, yes, the vehicle DO come
w/ a driver & that if I hadn't asked this question the vehicle WD NOT HAVE COME
W/ A DRIVER.  It's then explained to me, not necessarily by the 'salesperson'
- who may not even exist as an incarnated figure - that one of us (myself
& my invisible? companion) must agree to learn to copilot the vehicle.
I realize that doing this is probably fantastically difficult & that it's asking
entirely too much of me.  Both the 'salesperson' & my companion may
just be 'figments of my imagination' or projected parts of myself.

I was in a huge business complex type sprawling skyscraper type bldg in the large lobby.  Perhaps there was a school group or some other type of community group there that was about to leave in a bus or some-such.  A friend of mine's son was still not w/ the group & I was worried that he'd get lost so I asked him what was happening w/ him & he told me his father was coming to pick him up.  His dad did so - so I was reassured & I went somewhere else. 

I was doing something in another part of the bldg.  I don't remember what, I have vague memories of walking thru a generic big rm - maybe w/ tables & chairs.  Eventually, I decided to leave & someone might've asked me to get something for them.  It was suggested that the best way to leave was on the outside of the bldg.  In the dream that seemed reasonable - I thought I wasn't high up in the bldg: maybe on the 1st or 2nd floors.  I went out thru a hole in the wall.  The outer walls of the bldg, wch had been solid, as if finished, up 'til now, were now just metal framing that I had to climb down on & I realized that I was higher up than I thought at 1st.  Already climbing down the side of the bldg was a youngish woman w/ a baby in her arms.  I may've complimented the baby.  As I started to realize how high up we were I might've suggested that we climb back into the bldg.  In the meantime, the woman told me that she was from Virginia(?), specifically Newark(?) (even though the Newark I know of is in New Jersey).  She had seemed 'sane' at 1st, despite her climbing on the outside of a skyscraper w/ a baby, but then she started asking me about my reading her notices in some publication in the area where she was from.  Since I was just 1st meeting her, I didn't know anything about what she was talking about & I realized that her thinking that I did indicated that she was a paranoid schizophrenic w/ delusions that I was omniscient or some-such.  I deduced from what she sd that she was looking for a person she knew but hadn't seen for a long time &, at some point, I further deduced that this was either Franz Kamin or that she thought I was Franz.

We tried to re-enter the bldg.  We had footholds in that thick plastic mesh that's sometimes used as fencing on construction sites & there was some sort of close-together wiring or mesh that blocked our way into the bldg.  There was another young woman, maybe more, on the inside who was irritated by us or maybe just by the woman w/ the baby & who was reluctantly helping us move the obstacle out of the way.  The tension between the personalities was contributing to our not being able to get inside.  I stayed calm & reasonable & practical.  The baby was helped thru the gap but then the mother was unable to get herself thru - the climbing was too difficult.  I noticed that she was wearing flip-flops so I suggested that she remove them so she cd get a better toe-hold in the mesh we were standing on.  This worked & then I got inside too. 

I had, perhaps, started out on the 7th floor & was now, perhaps on the 5th floor.  The bldg was still like a large commercial bldg - maybe a huge hotel.  The woman & I parted & I went into a large rm where I saw that Franz Kamin was sitting.  My past in this bldg was now as if I had decided to leave while performing in one of Franz's pieces.  I walked to where Franz was & bent over his shoulder to say something to him.  He was very neatly & cleanly dressed.  I noticed in the large rm that he was sitting near the perimeter of that there were round tables w/ papers on them that people were sitting around & I concluded that they might be assembling one of his publications - perhaps as presents for them to receive b/c they'd stayed to the end of Franz's performance. 

Franz & I talked to each other & I mentioned that the woman I had met was looking for him & that I thought her name was Susan or Suzanne & that she was from Virginia & that she had a child.  Franz seemed to know who I was talking about & gave slightly cynical laugh, acting somewhat relieved that she hadn't found him, & asked if the child were about 10.  I remembered the child as a girl around that age & sd yes.  I then went to an elevator to take a safer way down thru the bldg. 

The elevator started going sideways & I realized that it was more of a train that started in the bldg - perhaps some sort of courtesy vehicle for patrons of the hotel.  I noticed that I was barefoot & realized that if it was cold outside I'd have a hard time of it.  Then I checked to see if I had money in my pockets so I cd take some sort of transport when I got off the train - perhaps a taxi.  I realized that I'd lost my money along w/ my shoes & that no taxi-driver wd pick me up w/o shoes anyway - assuming that I'd be indigent.  Thinking that the train wd just take us outside the bldg, I was surprised when it kept going.  It stopped somewhere not too far away & I asked one of the passengers whether it went further.  he told me that it went to a place the name of wch I didn't recognize but wch I thought wasn't too far from my destination so I decided that I'd be able to walk barefoot from there. 

I exited from the elevator/train at this next exit - wch was at the outside of a European-style large park / plaza w/ some sort of wall surrounding it w/ large archways opening regularly into it.  The outside of it was dotted w/ small café type tables & there were vines growing on the walls.  Perhaps there was some topiary.  the same woman who'd previously had the baby/10-yr-old-girl exited the train ahead of me, although I hadn't previously seen her there, & bent over at the waist so that her short dress hiked up over her ass to reveal that she wasn't wearing underwear & was, therefore, naked w/ her ass exposed to me.  She looked over her shoulder to smile at me & to say something, presumably sexual, that I didn't quite hear.  She didn't have a child w/ her anymore & didn't really look like the earlier woman but I thought she was the same person.  Apparently, she liked me. 

We walked together, perhaps we were going to my destination together, & she asked if there were someplace where she cd get a drink.  We were inside the plaza/park now & I sd, yes, being somewhat familiar w/ this park, & told her that there were food places about & then we saw one directly ahead of us.

I was walking into a toilet at a mall, possibly Broadway, an Asian man half my age was going through the door at the same time. He said "We have the same coats". I was wearing a long black lightweight jacket which I'd bought at In Denial in Glebe years ago. It was a similar shape to his but noticably different. "It has the same logo" he said indicating the square black sew-on patch on his jacket that was unlike the silver printed one in the same place on mine.

By then we were alongside the urinals. I moved to the furthest corner one. He followed me and stood uncomfortably close. He was looking at me as the urinal I was using changed into a circular chrome grate in the floor. It had had a Duchampesque appearance when we walked in. He was looking at me in a friendly way as he stood next to me directing his stream of urine at the same part of the grate as mine. Then without moving he was slightly further away and urinating on me, firstly on my shoes and then gradually aiming higher up my legs. "Hey" I said or thought I said. He looked as if he was pleased and expected me to be. I knew I couldn't stop him and although he was slightly shorter than me and not an obvious physical threat he had complete control of the situation. He leant back and I could feel and taste his warm slightly sweet slightly vinegary urine flow into my mouth over and between my lower teeth.

I woke with a subtler version of the same taste in my mouth.

I was outside a large bldg, probably someone's home, maybe a big party was starting.  The area I was in was like a patio surrounded by plants.  I had just gotten some records.  My neighbor in waking life, Mark O'Connor, had picked one out for me & was playing it on a device that was outside near where I was.  He wanted me to listen to it.  It was by a Spanish musician named "Raf".  At 1st it semed vaguely like electronica.  I walked over to where the turntables were to take a close look at the record & saw what might've been a circular shallow pool - like a fountain but w/o water spouting in it.  The bottom lip of the bowl-like bottom of the fountain was about 2&1/2 or 3 feet off the ground.  On it there was an approximately 3 foot long piece of what looked similar to model railroad track - w/ a slight curve for a few inches at either end.  At 1st I thought that this was some sort of new playback device for a new recording medium - perhaps invented by Raf.  I looked at the end to my right & thought I saw some sort of little object like an optical reader.  I looked closer at the whole thing trying to figure out how it worked, looking to see if there was some sort of flat object moving on the 'track' being read by the little object at the end but concluded that there wasn't. 

On a pole rising above & behind this 'track' there were a few, maybe 3, turntable like objects stacked above each other separated by enuf distance so that they cd be clearly seen w/o blocking each other.  They were each protruding from one edge of the pole, the 'front' from my perspective, at about a 30° angle downward.  Each of them had on it what looked like a record but larger than 12" - maybe 15 or 18".  I looked at each one, moving my gaze up from the bottom, until I reached the top one - wch was the only one that was spinning.  As such, I concluded that that was the Raf record that I was hearing.  As I looked at the record I cd see a sortof hologram above or in front of it that showed the guys who were making the music.  As w/ most dream descriptions, what this 'was' is likely to be pinned down by any description here.  In the dream, I simply saw an image of these 3 guys w/ a somewhat lo-fi image quality & truncated as if by a screen edge that wasn't there.  There was a musician playing an instrument on the left & a guy singing, who I deduced to be "Raf" in the middle - w/ a 3rd guy somewhat hunched over to the right, possibly singing - the furthest away from my viewpoint.  Their visual presence didn't obscure my view of the large disc.  

I was a bit disappointed by these guys b/c the more I pd attn to them & their music, the less imaginative they & it seemed.  The guy I presumed to be "Raf" had what I'll call here a 'horseshoe' mustache - a mustache over the lip w/ 2 perpendicular lines of hair on either side of the mouth growing down to the chin.  He had medium length head hair & looked fairly 'normal' - just a bit scruffy as if he partied alot & didn't have to look 'presentable' for a job.  Having lost interest in the music by now I wanted to take the 'record' off but cdn't see any easy way of accessing the 'turntable' - wch was maybe about 6 feet above the pool of water & set back 18" or so from the lip. 

I looked at my hand & realized that I had about 5 shards stuck in it that I hadn't previously noticed.  There was at least one sliver of glass & the rest were possibly metal objects - one like a finely machined part.  I Pulled each of these out of my hand & saw that the part had left behind a hole maybe a quarter inch in diameter that wasn't bleeding profusely but that was bleeding enuf, & open enuf, to need attending to. 

I went into the house wch was, I slowly realized, more of a palace - w/o the typical magnificence of one.  I was searching for a bathroom & a medicine cabinet (or some dream-world vague thing perhaps like it) so I cd clean & wrap my hand but all the bathrooms had lines of people waiting to enter them - although b/c the giant foyer I was walking thru was so large (no end in sight - at least 40 or 50 feet wide) it wasn't glaringly obvious that these lines existed.  Apparently the 'party' (some sort of social event) was starting in earnest & there were now alotof people there so every bathroom, & there were probably alotof them, had people waiting.  The large foyer or hall that I was walking thru was plush but not glacially untouchably so as a museum wd be.  It was well-furnished - perhaps w/ such things as oriental rugs & vases & chairs & such-like - & seemed comfortable - w/ everything well-crafted - as might be expected in the home of people who can afford objects made by artisans - but there was no feeling of class snobbery. 

I awoke while I was still looking for a bathroom where I cd clean my small wounds. 

The thing about many of these descriptive details is that they were more like amorphous things that seemed appropriate to fill the atmospheric gaps rather than fixed concrete objects.  Imagine walking thru a space & having a part of yr mind instruct a storehouse of images to furnish the room & having these furnishings only sortof become 'real' - solid enuf to appearances but potentially shape-shifting w/o this shape-shifting even being important enuf to notice.  Most of my description above of the more banal details are more like 'filler' - what I'd somehow 'expect' or 'want' such a space to be like - rather than anything actually solid.

*

There was a car, a Jaguar (but not really), on a hill, perhaps, & I had some casual connection to it - perhaps I had taken on the responsibility of closing its door or some such.  As I was doing whatever I was doing I noticed that there was a panel of sorts protruding from the side of the car & that easily visible inside this panel there was an array of keys.  Since it was my intention to secure this car from theft by closing the door I realized that this array of keys was easily accessible from the outside & that, therefore, the car cd be easily opened w/ them & then driven away.  I decided to try to close this panel - but it didn't seem physically possible. 

People were behind me talking about this car & discussing the difficulty of selling it for the asking price of $500,000.  Sometime around this time, a woman in her 50s or 60s w/ whitish hair saw me asked me I'd like the job of coming & sitting w/ the car from time-to-time - sortof like the way people house-sit in Switzerland to make houses seem occupied while the people who live there are away to prevent squatting (this comparison being a waking one & NOT one made in the dream).  I explained that I don't really like cars & that I wdn't really be an appropriate person to do this.  In the meantime, the car had probably grown - perhaps no longer exactly a car anymore.  The woman explained that all I had to do was hang out at the object (perhaps no longer a car at this point) & that I cd watch outdoor movies from the hill (or some-such).  This started to seem like it might be fun so I sortof agreed to do it.  By now I may've been standing on the deck of this object - wch was now a boat.  The woman was off the boat, near its back, & she realized that she wanted me to sign some paperwork. 

This may be out of sequence.  The car was somehow outside of a sortof bay/parking-space/driveway cut into the ground for it that had a slight depth to prevent the car from rolling forward out of it.  The woman pushed the car up to its capture point in the bay to secure it. 

Back on the deck of the car-turned-boat, the woman joined me & the boat started to roll forward - the bay hadn't successfully contained it.  It was going downhill, picking up speed & going in more & more dangerous areas - such as along a tree-lined sidewalk where people were.  The boat was also getting bigger - although its growth wasn't something visible - it was just that it wd be one size & then a bigger size.  I advised the woman to jump off the back while she cd & she did so.  By the time she did the boat's back was probably at least 10 ft above the ground & was also moving fairly fast so it was remarkable that the older woman cd jump off w/o hurting herself.  I wasn't sure whether to jump off but after the woman jumped off it seemed too dangerous for me to do so. 

The boat was obviously increasingly headed toward conditions under wch it wd be more & more difficult to control.  I shouted off its back to people to throw me a rope so I cd tie the rope to the boat & try to stop it.  Some people tried to do this but they had no skill w/ the rope & I got impatient & somewhat angry w/ them b/c of their inability to even throw the rope at all.  I searched in one of the rms of the boat & found an abundance of thin yellow rope, perhaps plastic-coated, that was on top of a table - w/ one end of it partially threaded around the walls near the ceiling as a decoration.  I started gathering up the rope, even though it seemed too thin to be strong enuf, & taking it toward the boat back - w/ the way the one end of the rope was laced around the rm making it difficult to move w/ it. 

When I got to the back of the boat again it was going down a ramp into a body of water.  I was again considering jumping off but as it went down the ramp the back was now very high & jumping off wd've been very dangerous.  There were people in the water below & I shouted down to them asking how deep the water was - hoping I cd jump into it & not break my legs on the bottom or drown in the process.  The people were so far away that they looked very small.  I looked toward the front of the boat to see whether I was about to head out to sea & was surprised to find that not far away was another ramp at the end of the space I was in & that that part was indoors.  As such, I was in little danger of going any further.  The people in the water were trying to turn the boat sideways so that its momentum wd be stopped by its becoming wedged in the now-smaller space.  Somehow I managed to luckily pivot the boat up on top of a railing surrounding this docking area w/ an effortless shifting of my weight & that was that: the boat was stopped & turned sideways - out of the water & up on the railing.  Stopping what had previously been a juggernaut-like motion had taken nothing but an unconscious shift of my position.  On the ground a man commented that he'd come all the way to Jamaica for this - & I was surprised to learn that that's how far the boat had careened (w/ its presumed point-of-origin having been somewhere on the NE coast of the US). 

WAKING NOTE: This seems to be a typical dream for me insofar as I think I've had many dreams where something small grows into something big & out-of-control.  What may be unusual is that it stopped so effortlessly & had a 'happy ending'.

 

In my dream I am devastated by the news that I only received a score of 155 out of a possible 250 for my English literature creative writing assignment. I had hoped for a score closer to two hundred.

How could it be?

Once the shock had worn off, I went to tackle my teacher about it. My teacher was new to me. He took fifth form students for literature and had seemed friendly enough. He was gay and seemed familiar to me, a cross between my hairdresser and other gay men I have met over the years.

I gathered that he had heard I was upset and was prepared for my tirade, but not as much as I was when ranted at him about the mark. Even I was surprised.

I have never gone to battle over the results of any of my assignments, but this one seemed particularly unfair.

A mark on an essay somehow becomes the mark of a person and for me especially my literature essay. I had worked hard on it. I had done my best.

‘What’s wrong with my essay?’ I asked.
‘Too many ideas,’ my teacher said. ‘Too many ideas threaded together. It’s hard to follow.’

This infuriated me more. To me, my teacher now seemed such a creature of his times, a simpleton who wanted ease of reading and limited complexity.

I could not concede that he might have been correct in any way, though his words nagged at me because I had been criticised before for too much complexity, too many ideas in my writing.

‘I might try to find another teacher,’ I said, and even as the words slipped out I knew it would be impossible for me to slot into another class so late in the piece. My literature exam in my dream was part of my final year at school. I could not find another school nearby whose literature class would take place at the same time of day.

I was stuck.

May 5, 2011

I had fallen asleep with the intention of having Robert Kelly's collaboration with Brigitte Mahlknecht (The Garden of Distances) lead me into a dream that would, in the morning, allow me to formulate an essay about Robert Kelly's poetics for the Logic of the World: Poetics of Robert Kelly symposium. 

The dream was an expansive geography -- as if I was in a video game simultaneously aware of the map and where I was on it. I was following my old boss, Derek Owens, out of a small doorway at St. John's University (where I recently quit my job) and into woods. Not wilderness, but woods cleared by smooth paths. I was aware that Derek did not want me following him, but the dream had no other purpose and I had a strong desire to do so, so he didn't have a choice. He led me to a circle of houses, and I entered one of them. I was very happy to see that there were lots of people there including Lee Ann Brown and her daughter Miranda. My daughter was there with some of her friends who are boys, and they all wanted to play football. So I said ok, let's play football in the house. (There wasn't any furniture.) I found a huge blue ball and started throwing it around, but realized that it had holes in it and so was letting out lots of air. I then realized that beetles were eating the ball from the inside, which really grossed me out. I tried to throw the ball far away from the house, but it landed only a couple feet from the door. Derek (who was outside) took the ball and tried stuffing it into a hole around the side of the house but this was very upsetting to me because I didn't want the beetles anywhere near the house. So I went outside (not where I wanted to be) and tried to pull the ball out of the hole where he had stuffed it, but it kept getting longer and longer. Obviously there was a part of it that was stuck for good.

we were somewhere
 
we were somewhere. a
piano bar. NYC. The
Plaza. parking garage.
suburban Super 8.
inside a hospital.
the event was over.
making our way back.
not us. but me guiding.
others. friends.
through the maze of elevators
attempting to follow
the right color carpeting.
not to home,
but to the next thing.
part of the journey entailed
driving over
a broken wooden bridge.
in the piano bar or maybe
audition. a tall weird-looking blondish man
stops singing and recites a poem.
he wants a bride.
the sincerity and naked belief
of his confidence. but
mostly the rhyming.
in the moment that rhymes
with pray I shout something.
a different ending to his
poem, that yes, rhymes.
exiting before folks have
a chance to recognize
what’s just happened.
i find the room. the
party. the shower. the
card game i am supposed
to be at.
not expecting to see you
at the end of all dreams
a dot on the map

I dreamed of a man on a tram who had been involved in a vicious attack that had left him cut and bruised.  Somehow I took him from the tram and into my car in a bid to get him to the police station where he might get help.

I can see him now cowed and bleeding, his dark suit torn.  He was slumped in the back seat of my car, which I managed to parked in the front of the police station in Bridge Road in Richmond.

Then later I dreamed of helping a friend, T, get to the airport.  On the way to the airport she needed to borrow my car, which morphed into a three-seater bike with room on the back for passengers.  T sat in the back with her young daughter, but their weight was excessive and caused the tyres to flatten.  In only a few minutes they needed to get off the bike and walk.

I offered to take them to the airport thinking we had hours to spare. As it turned out they told me had left their run very late.  For an international flight it is best to arrive at the airport at least two hours before the plane’s departure, but they now had only two hours left and still needed to get to their own home from my house to pack.  I did not tell them they would not make it before they pulled away from the curb.

I noticed then on the main road in front of my house two of our cats squabbling over a lump of meat they had found on the edge of the road.  I worried that a car might hit one of them and sure enough it did.

Our cat Mollie’s leg seemed to have been broken presumably after being hit  and I went onto the road to lift her ever so gently and take her inside.  She whimpered in my arms as I held her as carefully as I could so as not to dislodge the bone further.

It was almost impossible to get across the veranda of my house and into the living area where I had planned to telephone for the vet.  Some one had removed several boards from the veranda and it was elevated higher than it is in real life.  I could not get over this obstacle course with a wounded cat in my arms.  Still I tried.

Dream of  Franz

The dream catcher caught me. 

I have the hook in my arm to prove it.

I went to sleep and woke up in Franz’s apt.

Boy was it a mess. He looked the same. Greasy hair,

Clothes all in disrepair.

But I walked over to him and explained that there was no time to lose

I have waited so long anyway and now it is clear.

I laid out my case. 

That the other stuff doesn’t matter

That I certainly was not going to be a poet

And  I would care for him. 

Robert Kelly was there riding a brown horse which

He made kneel so we could all pet it. 

Many others were there some I know Quasha, Kim, Mitch more than I can name.

He seemed to approve the declaration and all that it implied

Franz said to me was that he didn’t want to wait any longer

Transaction accomplished, I admired his view overlooking the ocean,

What a little skin prick can trigger.

March 14, 2011

Also, dreamed a few days ago that Anne Waldman was all in pale pink and with a pink unicorn horn and she had everyone stand back to back and touch their unicorn horns together. I wrote to her the morning after the dream.  She wrote back: "Bhanu, it sounds like some kind of...initiation."

Dream 11 April 2011

My dreams this morning seemed fractured after a fitful night’s sleep.  I remember sitting in a church and the priest in the pulpit decked out in magisterial robes, gold braid and white satin spoke only in Italian.  When the organ blared out the first notes of music it became clear that not only would he speak to us in Italian he would also sing, and sing he did.

Solo in a vibrant tenor’s voice that in places bordered on soprano.  His voice was high and distinctive.  He could sing and he knew it.  Only when he sang did he manage to smile.

After the service was over the tall and thin Italian priest morphed into a woman, an older woman with dyed black hair and pale skin.  Her cheeks were hollowed out with wrinkles and in her ears she wore a stunning pair of earrings, hooped gold with a single pearl fixed in the centre of each hoop.

She stood in the churchyard with one of her grown children and spoke to me about how difficult it had been for her since her husband had died when she was only 72.  Life had not been the same since.  She looked as though she had led a good life with plenty of money and beautiful things around to amuse her and yet she seemed unhappy.

She was like a character from the movies.


Dream 14 April 2011

I am drawn to pick up a shoe I have found under an outside chair in the garden.  It belongs to a woman I know only through blogging.  I have never seen her before but I recognise her by her blog name.  She is tall, thin and glamorous, with an American accent.
‘I like your shoe,’ I say to her, hopeful that she will let me try it on.
‘You can buy it if you like,’ the woman says.  ‘It doesn’t fit me.  It's too tight around my ankles’.

I pick up the shoe and notice a tag with a $5.00 sign attached to the buckle.  The shoe is made of some strange plastic looking leather and is red, bright red, my favourite colour and I am delighted when it fits.  I call it a shoe but it more like a sandal, though the straps are thick and the toes are covered.
‘I’ll buy it’, I sty, ‘but where’s its partner.’

We search the garden for the other shoe.  My blogging friend is nonchalant.  What’s five dollars or a lost shoe to her, a shoe that does not fit anyway, but I am determined to find it.  The  first shoe fits so well.  It is exactly what I have been looking for.

On the veranda atop a wide edged pot plant I see a glimmer of red between the roots of the pot plant.  I pull at it to discover the shoe, which has somehow become overgrown with the roots of this plant such that is entirely covered.  I will have to hack it out of the pot and its bracken prison.

I grab hold of a long knife from the kitchen and a large serving fork, not that either will be any good for the job but I can see no other tools.  Besides I decide I will ask my husband to help me and he will know what to do.

I swing the knife and fork over my head in a dramatic gesture, as if I am preparing to slice someone or something up, aware that I must be careful.  I am like a child with a big stick.  Children swing sticks around their heads with little concern for the consequences, until someone gets hurt.

I wake up before any harm happens, still longing for my shoe.