: In dreams

Sun, 23 Oct 2005 20:40:27 GMT

POWER OF DREAMS They were blessing the new-plowed fields. Mr. and Mrs. Page (real-life community elders here, wealthy farmers, proprietors of the local grocery store) figured prominently in these events, small plump figures smiling and welcoming in their power. It wasn't like this was something that happened every year, in the dream. More like—I'd finally put years enough into this community to see it all unfold. The Pages brought their animals. Goats and bucks were penned together, stallions put out with the mares. Mrs. Page cautioned me away from the field: the stallions could be dangerous now. In one little pasture the fall lambs had been born already, tens of them tiny and new. In our barn suddenly every compartment, every section and pen was full-up with livestock. Starting at one end of the building and making my way to the other I passed into and through room after room of animals put together to breed, pigs and cows and goats and chickens. I pressed on past the warm beautiful animals, the green rectangle bales of alfalfa hay. Manure of the ages was layered so deep some places I had to bend down under the rafters as I passed. It was solid and hard and dry as earth. I had to climb up and out of the building through a high window, and into the house where humans lived. I found this easy to do; I swung up and out using rafters as handholds, as though I were still eleven years old. Oh the breath of the cows, their broad moist noses. The stallions black as pitch, powerful and frightening in rut. Women worked all around. Old women labored over quilts. (I paused briefly to imagine myself trying to make one, how I'd use squares so tiny no scrap of cloth would ever go to waste, and I wondered whether I could stitch the lengths of connected squares using the my treadle sewing machine, with its old bullet bobbin, whether I could keep the seam straight, would take the time and have the patience to load the bobbin again and again and finish the project...) The young wives were gestating and planning their gardens. Little girls were everywhere, serious, curious, playful and strong. (I was eating ice cream in a quiet room as a little girl in the corner stared at me. I felt guilty but I kept eating; it was so good. Maybe I'd give her the last bite....) My exhusband Gary was all through the dream, trying to come back to me, clutching a sheaf of his poems. I overheard Mr. Page say, "He's crazy, that one. He's certifiable." The river was running high, and so broad you couldn't see the other side of it. The men and boys hauled in the big fishes, competing. As he helped me attach it to a hook, Mr. Page laughed at the bait I'd chosen. I said I didn't care whether I caught what everyone else was catching that day. I just wanted to catch what I caught. Then I was riding down out of there on something, some vehicle that seemed more like a cool hummock, a little grassy mound, downhill toward the broad river. Instead of turning onto the road that ran alongside it, I felt compelled to continue onto the mud flat, the dark new minerals laid down by the flooding river. But what seemed solid and unmoving was actually part and parcel of the rising river now, and it moved forward with great power, a locomotive of mud. For a while I struggled and fought to reach the shore again, but it was impossible, and the momentum carried me on my little hill toward a horizon I dared not even look toward.

Sun, 28 Aug 2005 14:28:58 GMT

Old dark houses. So many rooms. Enormous rooms. High ceilings. Dust. On the beds and sofas and tables were sculptures of objects--on the bed a polished wooden carving of disheveled bedclothes. On the tables, wooden dishes--not individual dishes but a single carved sculpture of a meal in progress. Were there wooden people? I can't remember. I don't think so. At the back through the weeds and wild overgrowth, a chain-link fence, and beyond the fence ... the White House? Surely not. There was a sub- or side-dream. A doctor (Richard Dreyfus) and his sidekick visiting patients in a slum. Doctor bounding up the steps to check on his good friend in a tenement, who had diabetes. Coming back out with sadness, because he'd found the man dead. He sat on the top step and wept. Parents in their late forties, maybe older. A large family. Many grown and nearly grown children. They were moving into the large dark house. Only now it was remote. One traveled days by off-road vehicle and then hiked and rafted to reach it. All the children were tough--they were happy and strong and filled with good humor and love. They couldn't wait to get out of there though and into the populated world. I helped them unpack in the empty old house with its high ceilings and huge rooms. I showed them around. I was surprised; the house had many more rooms than I had thought. I had brought my cats and I introduced the family to them and explained about feeding them and to be careful of accidentally shutting them in somewhere. The cats, too, were exploring and memorizing their new surroundings. The woman was pregnant. Too old to be pregnant. But was. The family was splitting up now. The father was taking half the children with him to the city. They were so excited. Or was he taking them all? The woman wanted to give birth alone. Always gave birth alone and unassisted. There was a little girl of 10 or 11 years old. She embraced her mother in farewell. The mother looked into her eyes. "I want you to understand," she said. "This is the last time we will ever see each other. I love you very much." They hugged and the girl ran off to join her father and siblings for the hike out. There were little subplots like that throughout the dream. The teenaged girls putting on community plays. One of them wild and staying out all night. The boy so inured to remote living he could hike for many days, catch all his own food, sleep on the ground, and so could go anywhere with confidence.
The mother left behind, the family drove on highways now toward a city. It was an old pickup truck, but unfamiliar to the dad. It was getting dark and he couldn't see how to turn on the headlights. Just as he found the switch, a policeman pulled him over. Everyone chimed in to explain about how they'd just bought the old truck and were taking it home. The policeman let them off with a warning. When they arrived at their new house the children ran around happily. No one in the neighborhood had expected them and two strangers were living in the house already, squatters. The father, it turns out, was pregnant as well. Hence the split, because he too always gave birth alone.

Thu, 25 Aug 2005 00:03:50 GMT

Annals of Personal Apocalypse
In the scary dream that woke me last night at 1 a.m., enormous tigers ripped small animals to bits in the backyard. Between the slats of the window blinds I saw them snarling amid the carnage. But inside the house, and in front of the house, all was serene. In the dream, on the news I heard an American politician insult an Asian country. The anchorman continued to other topics without hesitating. Behind the house, the tigers paced. I heard a sound. I looked out the front window as the first planes came over. For a moment I thought of passenger pigeons, how they were said once to have been so numerous that flocks of them passing overhead darkened the sky. These were warplanes, however, and they flew in orderly rows, phalanxes of aircraft so dense and so neatly organized they appeared to be rows of Morse code--or, no, precisely like the tables of hexagrams that fold out on card stock at the back of the Bollingen I Ching. And before long the eastward-moving rows extended from horizon to horizon. Soon soldiers on the ground were going from house to house taking prisoners, even killing those who resisted. In the dream I had a husband and a little girl, a sweet fragile child of 6 or 7. My husband in the dream was played by Mike Farrell (who played the bland, sweet-tempered B. J. Hunnicut in the M*A*S*H television series years ago). We prepared to flee but only my husband made it out. My daughter and I were trapped in the house, and soldiers approached from across the field. She and I went from room to room, hiding. In my heart I said sorrowful good-byes to our cats and dogs and llamas; I glanced over our packed-up precious possessions and family photos and released them. We crept up one staircase after another, always moments ahead of the soldiers. I was afraid the child would make a sound, not understanding the peril, but she was so good and silent, even though she seemed unfrightened. Once or twice as we moved about she darted away to do something playful--to swing from a rafter, say--and when I asked her why she would answer, "I just wanted to see how that felt." Higher and higher we climbed, until in the highest attic room we found only a bed's boxsprings on the floor. I lifted it and we crept under, folding our bodies to fit between the wooden supports. Soldiers entered the room. We held our breaths. I expected them to fling over the springs with violence and expose us, but they did not. They left. We had escaped them. We lived on quietly in the house, without leaving, for some months. I saw a report on TV about families of the killed and imprisoned. In the film my husband stood at the back of a group of mourners, looking anguished, certain we were dead. A former neighbor who was now with an underground of escapees discovered us and promised to smuggle us to safety, to where my husband was waiting. But she took only the child. I was delayed, and then the soldiers found me. I lived for years then in a prison camp. The movie ended--the dream has become a movie I am watching with my son. It's a harrowing ending. He gets up to leave and I say, "Wait. Watch." And sure enough there is an epilog. We see the woman, emaciated, with shaven head, but all smiles, arrive before a building where her husband and child run out to greet her with embraces.

Wed, 10 Aug 2005 02:26:57 GMT

DREAM-INALS: Whales are the new tortoises. The parade of species through my dreams. Beginning around age 12--kittens. They became cats and lovebirds through my 20s (although once an owl fought a raccoon to the death, punctured with its sharp beak the soft place in the raccoon's throat, and I woke up with the taste of blood in my mouth). Coyotes in my 30s (another story for another time). Smattering of elephants (always starving, last legs, dying, or dead) right along. Then in 1994 I saw my first bear not in a zoo or circus. In waking life: True-Life Bear Encounter Anecdote

With my dog Annabelle and a picnic lunch, I was trying to drive to the top of Mt. Hough ("huff") in my vintage VW Beetle along a steep, rough logging road. But I'd come to one ascent I just couldn't get up, and the car had stalled and wouldn't start again, so I let it drift backward to a flat area, parked it, and decided we'd have lunch there, in the woods, near a beautiful clearing carpeted with blossoming balsamroot. It was noon. I sat on a boulder across from the clearing and ate my sandwich while Annabelle, an 8-month-old Queensland Heeler mix, dashed around sniffing things. When I finished eating I slid off the rock and began walking toward the summit; it wasn't that much farther. I gazed at the sky. I looked at the butterflies. I watched the large cinnamon-colored bear loping in slow motion across the clearing with the sunlight streaming behind it, lighting up the tips of its fur like a fiery halo. Parallel to my trajectory. About 50 feet away. Holy shit. Without breaking stride I turned completely around and walked quickly and silently back to the car. Annabelle had been preoccupied with something she'd found in a hole at the base of a tree, facing away from the bear. Thank God she didn't spot it; she was a hysterical barker. I got us both into the car and then floored it the remaining mile to the top of the mountain. We flew up that slope. I didn't look to see where the bear went. At the top we found a vacant fire watch tower, lots of coyote mint, and about a million butterflies. With my heart still pounding out my ribs I stood at the edge of an overlook and looked down on a glacier lake of the purest turquoise I've ever seen. Heaven. Now let's go home. Back to Dreamstuff After that the bear dreams started. They lasted until we made our temporary move to Bisbee, Arizona, to take some classes in herbal medicine (mid-'97). In the dream that came my first night there, a goofy clown bear was frightened off by a large regal elk, who stepped stage center and simply looked me in the eye. A elk?? That was it for any animals in my dreams for a couple of years. My first night back in California a mountain lion killed the elk. And so.

Then about 18 months ago that dream came, the tortoise pacing at the transfer station with a crippled owl on its back (a tortoise who is reborn as a young goat when the waiting is over). Since then the tortoise or turtle symbol has cropped up a number of times, most recently (last week) dead. Three new moons ago I received the owl alone--huge, blue, and somewhat dangerous. Not crippled, just immature. (I dreamed of the baby goat recently, too--half grown now, part of a small herd, its family, all of them spotted blue.)

And two new moons ago two blue whales fell from the sky and landed unharmed in a field. The whale has been a peripheral symbol in a couple of dreams since then, but last night it was front and center again. A single whale--I'm sorry, but a whale in outer space.

A Pregnant Cetacean Gestating in a Space Station And the fetus removed at term--great thick layers of blubber surgically folded aside and the infant removed, because it was about to be sent to Earth. When I woke up this morning I remembered that Star Trek movie I took my brother to see many years back--which one was it?--where they went back in time to 20th-century San Francisco (hey--I was born in San Francisco...) to nab a mated pair of whales to transport into the future--when whales on Earth had become extinct--to save the Earth from being destroyed (it made sense in context...). And I realize now why the whales in the first dream, the pair of them, fell from the sky--where that idea came from, maybe. Ohh-h-h-h ... So whales now, with the owl and the goat maturing. In dreams. And in life, frogs on my desk. And dead bats in the plant room.

Wed, 06 Jul 2005 18:49:02 GMT

Dream of 7/4-5/05 My grandfather was working hard on the farm, and in his few spare hours volunteered to build homes for the homeless, like a lower-class Jimmy Carter. And somehow then he also secretly owned many houses (bought decades ago when homes were cheap), groups of cabins, a big farmhouse with secret passages. All miles away, in woods, vacant, waiting. Grandma was elderly, sullen (unlike the real-life version, but much like my very angry dying mother); her right hand dropped off and I saw that it was a false one manufactured to look gnarled and old. My aunt reattached it for her; it was held on with hooks-and-eyes. I was shoving a huge heavy round oaken table inches at a time down the gravel road to put in the home I would claim. I heard then, but did not see, a train passing to the south of me, hidden behind a line of dense woods. Then a loud grinding metallic clangor as of derailment, then silence. In the east two blue whales fell from the sky and landed in an empty field--whump, whump--and lay there breathing, unharmed. Well, this is confusing! Some dreammaking part of me is dissatisfied with the logic, and so they become enormous sea lions, still blue. Too ungainly to maneuver, they simply lie there, shifting their great bulks. In the dream we see the compassionate grandfather creating, giving homes and nourishment to others, and over time accumulating houses--security and a kind of real wealth--manifesting this distantly and all around, which he neither acknowledges nor values, so absorbed is he in giving. And the sullen grandmother, disappointed and angry, dwelling mute in her disappointment, sickens and withers and loses her power--her right hand--even, and especially, her creative ability. Her right hand. Her writing hand. And I find it worth remarking that my other very powerful dream came to me exactly one month ago, also on the eve of the new moon: Dream of 6/4-5/05 We live in an apartment in a big brick building in some town. (Our bedrooms though are identical to the ones we have now.) I am in my bed and can hear my brother making fearful sounds. He is up and dressing even though it's the middle of the night. I tell him to knock it off and go back to sleep. I am not kind. He comes into my room and stands at the foot of my bed and says "I'm so cold." (He's looking me in the eyes like he never does, with eyes of a normal person, normal intelligence, and great need. He's speaking clearly.) I know this can't be true, because he has several blankets and quilts on his bed. I follow him to his room and begin tidying up. I see that he's dressed in his dirty clothes from yesterday and I tell him never to do that--always wear clean clothes, how many times must I tell him? Then I notice that the blankets on his bed are lifting and falling--there's a cold wind blowing through them from somewhere. The windows are shut, so what the... ? Then I see an opening in his closet wall. I walk into the closet and find an open door out the other side, wind blowing through it into the room. I enter the space beyond--it's an attic, a storeroom, but very large and high-ceilinged. Our surplus belongings are stacked up all around, neatly organized in rows shoulder-high and along wall shelves. Narrow corridors between the rows. On top of every flat horizontal surface stands a plant in a pot. Hundreds and hundreds of them. I'd put them there when we moved and forgotten about them--never watered or tended them, pots of dirt with seedlings in them. And yet despite this neglect here they were, a little the worse for dehydration but filled, covered, rife with fruits. Cherry-tomato-sized saffron-colored backlit (from dim premorning light through opened windows) tender globes hanging on hundreds of plants that looked like trees, like banzai trees, like an orchard in miniature, but everywhere. I felt badly about having forgotten about them, but I plucked a fruit and put it in my mouth and it burst with sweetness on my tongue. All these fruits were perfectly ripe right now, waiting for me. Then somehow I'm back in my bed here. Brian comes into the room lugging his big TV and he puts it on my bed and walks out. It takes up half the bed. I get up and ask him what he's doing. Take this back. What's going on? He doesn't understand what I'm saying. I get impatient. Use an impatient tone of voice. He stands before me, unable to understand me, unable to make me understand, again with the intelligent face and eyes, looking hard at me. He's weeping. I realize what's happening now; I feel such shame for allowing myself to be so distracted from him, so preoccupied with worry, for not always speaking respectfully to him, for not always exchanging the love that's there so abundantly to be exchanged. We put our arms around one another and just hold each other for a long time. Now he's sleeping soundly in his bed. I pace around my bedroom; it's around 4 or 5 a.m. I go to the window and pull aside the curtain, open it and lean out to look at the quiet sleeping world. (We're on the second floor of the building, at the edge of a town.) It's been snowing lightly; a fine powder of white covers everything thinly, with little drifts against objects. I have an unimpeded view of the horizon. There in the notch between snow-dusted slopes is the setting moon, enormous, but a thin crescent, so slender it's barely visible, the last bit of waning moon. (It strikes me now in writing this that in reality tomorrow is new moon; this would be the waning moon's actual appearance.) This beautiful crescent with snow under and planet gleaming nearby and stars beyond. And now I see a vacant paved lot across the street... the space there situated directly below that distant view of the moon at the horizon... a single street lamp shining down illuminating the middle of the paved space... Girls, young and very slender, perhaps 17 years old, six or seven of them, are shooting baskets together--practicing in the very early morning. And they appear to be wearing PE uniforms, because they are dressed identically--except that they wear short white sleeveless tunics, not modern clothes. And they are so beautiful and graceful playing together, passing the ball back and forth, jumping, so happy and harmonious in the cold stillness in snow, it's like a dance. From inside my apartment someone calls out "Sam?" It sounds like a child's voice. I turn away from the window, alarmed. Had I forgotten to lock the door? I go to my bedroom door and lean forward to look down the hall, frightened. But it's an old woman. The Landlady. In her nightgown and housecoat, mule bedroom slippers, reading glasses on the end of her nose. I become indignant and start to tell her she has no right to just walk into her tenants' apartments in the middle of the night, but she gives me a look that's as good as holding up her hand to silence me, and I see in the dim light that she's holding something in both hands. It's large. She holds it out toward me. It's an owl. Quite large. With vivid bright metallic blue feathers with overtones of purple and aquamarine, black sharp beak and huge black talons. I am given to understand, or I conclude (this woman never speaks, seems almost indifferent) that she's found the owl outside, it's been injured in the violent storm, she knew I was an animal person and would know where to take it. I accept the owl. Obviously though it isn't injured. Perhaps it's a juvenile in its first flight. But it struggles in my hands. I'm confident I'm holding it correctly but somehow it embeds its talons in the backs of my hands and wriggles free and makes its way up my right arm, flapping and struggling, to the top of my head. One of its talons snags in the flesh of my arm. Then it stands up there and leans its head down in front of my face. I fear it will tear out my eyes with its beak. It could very well do so. I call out to the old woman for help, but she does nothing, just stands there patiently. Gradually I woke up enough to scribble the dream down in outline. The bird hadn't actually harmed me in any way. It was just far more powerful than I could cope with.

Sat, 29 Jan 2005 22:34:48 GMT

Touching Down

I am a little girl of perhaps 6 years of age. I walk with a man--a father-provider, worried about the future and about providing for me materially--and a woman--a mother figure consumed with watching over and nurturing me at every moment.

Another woman walks behind us, my "giantess" of other dreams, enormous but graceful, powerful wisewoman who informs or attempts to inform each of us.

I comprise all four persons, but where early in the dream my awareness is mostly that of the giantess, by the end I am entirely with the child.

We walk among a range of gently rounded green-furze-covered mountains. Clear-cut paths spiral roughly up the oblique slopes. Our group progresses along one of those spiral paths and is nearing the mountaintop. The valley below us is like a great bowl of brilliant white rolling clouds.

The two parent figures are too preoccupied with their concerns to notice the beautiful phenomenon, but the child is transfixed. The parents' "job," as they see it, is to ensure the child reaches the top of that mountain. But the valley fog is rising, lifting itself up the slope; soon it will obscure the trail. The parents become hysterical, fearing we'll be immobilized.

Just before the fog reaches our feet, however (the parents busy themselves arguing about which way to go), I--the child now--spread my arms wide (perhaps at the whispered instigation of the giantess) and am lifted kite-like into the air. I'm filled with inexpressible joy--although not surprise; it's more like satisfaction--in being above the gorgeous clouds, being free, weightless.

Too soon, though, I soar beneath the ceiling of fog, under the gray skies over the flat green valley with its little houses and barns, and I lose buoyancy. Whatever had supported me withdraws, and I descend rapidly--without fear, and less as if to crash than in a rather-too-vertical controlled glide. The dream ends or I awaken just before touching down.

[1985]

Sat, 29 Jan 2005 00:37:13 GMT

Pressure

It was time. I boarded the aircraft. The crew members entered the pressurized interior chamber ahead of me. I hung back in the outer enclosed area, standing in the doorway, waving at my friends and relatives who came to say good-bye. They seemed warm and supportive.

While I procrastinated, gazing into the faces of my loved ones, doors behind me were slammed shut and bolted from the inside. Then the outer doors were closed. I was trapped in the space between--the unprotected, unpressurized space.

The craft began to taxi.

The predicament was grim. I was a slight girl, clad only in a thin cotton shift or slip. I was trapped, cold and alone, out of sight and earshot of both inner and outer worlds.

The craft began its deafening ascent. I collapsed in a writhing heap, barely able to breathe because of the pressure on my lungs. G forces mashed my body into the floor and walls. My face contorted into a painful grimace, my lips were drawn back, my eardrums were near exploding. I must have been screaming but I couldn't hear myself over the roar.

Suddenly we attained altitude. Silence. Stillness. The crew emerged and helped me to the interior, a close compartment containing instruments and room for a pilot, a navigator, and a couple of helpful attendants.

Soon I felt better. I felt wonderful. Soon I was a vital part of the crew myself.

(appr. 1985)

Sun, 26 Dec 2004 20:30:21 GMT

My boyfriend and I had driven to the mountains to go hiking, taking along my retarded brother Brian. The three of us got out of the car and began climbing up a snowy slope. The sunlight reflecting off the snow was blinding. The snow pack was so deep we walked on its crust unaware that we were twenty feet or more above the soil of the mountain. As the heat of the evolving day began to soften the snow, the crust became brittle and my boyfriend and I fell through it and were buried in snow, far from the surface. Our frantic movements created a sort of snow room where we stood, and we labored hard and with serious diligence to dig our way free. When we finally did we saw that my brother Brian, who had remained motionless on the snow surface, now stood on dry ground, and in fact the snow by late afternoon had melted all away. If we had done nothing we'd have ended up at the same dry, sunny place, in the warm light of spring. [29 July 1997]

Mon, 22 Nov 2004 20:49:17 GMT

Three of us, all me--two men and a woman--we were astronauts. We had been long in a spacecraft, in the dark vacuum of space, bound for the moon. One man and the woman were married or partners. The other man was alone in every sense, except that he and the other two were one person together, they loved each other deeply. Still, this third character felt isolated. My awareness during the dream seemed to shift from person to person, until I came to the lonely man. They landed on the moon. He was intensely excited. He thought to himself, and said aloud to the other two as they stepped out of the craft, that he didn't care if he was alone forever, if he never had another friend the rest of his life, because now he was immortalized in having shared in exploring unknown territory. Just having participated in the journey--how very lucky and proud he felt, and happier than he thought possible in having released his loneliness; he let go his aloneness, such a burden it had been, the self-pity that was always just below the surface.

One thing that I, as dreammaker, kept commenting on during the dream, in sort of a voiceover to myself, was how real everything seemed. The instrument panels and spacecraft and so on, were not shoddy, sci-fi, B-movie props, but were authentic in every detail. And the characters were so adept at manipulating the equipment. The voiceover pointed out these things and suggested I remember them in particular as evidence of my mind's creative potential.

12/16/78 (I was 25)

Tue, 05 Oct 2004 15:49:57 GMT

I Had a Dream, Too...
of Dr. Omed

It's true. But it's OK, Elspeth--you were in it, too.

We moved into a house together, sharing rent. ("It's like pre-hippie," I told a friend. "It's like 1965.") I had two of my cats, and then remembered that the house we'd moved into was located right behind where I'd left the other ones, so they could come over, anyway. I called Dr. O "Dana" and Elspeth "Els." I kept looking around for the daughters but they didn't live at home anymore. I was trying not to be a nuisance and to unpack my things and put them away quickly. Dana asked me nicely to please find an airtight container for the opened bag of dry pet food I'd left standing in the middle of the kitchen. ("I meant to do that. I just forgot.") I rode along with Els (a wild but supremely confident driver) to their former house, where she was returning the key. She drove an enormous, lumbering truck. At the old place, she tucked the key up next to the front-door hinge.

Along the hall wall in the new house stretched an illuminated collage of miscellaneous items--pictures, little notes, receipts--behind glass. I counted seven photos of my son Jesse in there, at all ages, and then remembered he'd lived in that house a few years back with a group of his friends.

As I got ready to write the rent check I remembered I wouldn't have to pay the whole thing. But I didn't know whether I'd have to pay one-half (because Dana and Elspeth shared a room) or one-third of it (because Elspeth used a third of the other resources in the house). I went looking for someone to ask. In the kitchen where Els was cooking something, Dana sat writing intently at a table heaped with papers. He asked me for Jesse's address because he was going to send him something. I thought how wonderful it was that he was always sending people little things. This time he apparently planned to mail Jesse a facsimile of a Greek statue. Half-size, but still plenty heavy.

Later Dana performed for me a short story he'd written. It was an epic poem, actually, and he acted it out on the back stairs of the house. Purely ironic, farcical. The piece was called "Suffering" and he recited it with broad dramatic gestures and operatic overacting--and with a heavy fake French accent. It was hilarious, even though the actual words were poignant and true.

Another time, I sat reading in a big chair, wrapped in a wool blanket. I realized Dana had fallen asleep across my lap. I put down my book and there he was, curled up so small, and obviously cold. I had to wake him a little so he would move and let me pull the blanket out from under him and cover him with it. It was a tender moment.

Sat, 18 Sep 2004 18:42:52 GMT

Two dreams, one sleep

In the first the little girl is shot. The father discharged by accident.
He covered the body so I wouldn't see. But I knew. I had to tell
and I ran from house to house begging telephones.
9-1-1, 9-1-1. I dialed and dialed, and as I stood on hold, or listened
to the voiceless shuffling of papers at the other end
the residents suppressed their smirks and rolled their eyes:
I was a panic. A caution.

I was escaping, I was all but aboard the damned train
when the husband had me again, steering me by the arm, manhandling
me home, where the wounded child was quiet, but alive.

***

Then my low-caste relatives and I walk in a bright clean city at dusk--
great gleaming edifices of salmon granite and yellow light
spilling around window displays--to a mountain outside of town
and the reservoir within it. A holiday next an interior lake.
The vast amethyst rectangle was crystalline, unsullied, clear
to the concrete bottom, miles across, and deep, deep, so dangerously deep.

The little girl toddled about the edges. I shrieked--how can you
permit it? don't let a child frolic near deep water! where is her life
jacket? why didn't you bring one?--and again the smirks, the rolling eyes.
I ran back to the city and probed through store after store, pawing past the elegance,
and finally with life-saving apparati at the counter realized I lacked wherewithal
to purchase anything, and dared not kite a check, even if I'd brought one.

Empty-handed I returned to the reservoir just as the baby fell at the deepest place.
I screamed and ran for her (as if I could swim!)
as she dogpaddled undisturbed, saved by some infant instinct,
and I drew her out. At least now we know you won't die, I whispered.
And as we all walked back together (in streets darker now, shining, window-illumined)
we pushed open the glass doors to pass through the buildings.
We trod their dense soft carpets and fondled their proffered silks,
inhaling the perfume of money, finding our way back home.

Wed, 01 Sep 2004 14:58:12 GMT

At least he didn't turn into a deer...

What is it with this recent spate of movie-star dreams? Marlon Brando, Brad Pitt (yeah, yeah, last Friday [blush]; well, it wasn't that kind of dream), and last night I dreamed of Spalding Gray (admittedly not for the first time).

Or this morning. I awoke at 4:30 and thought it was 5:30 and leaped from bed to the page to get it all down. Now I sit yawning with my coffee and toast, wondering whether I can stay awake through the little edit that awaits me elsewhere.

Hallways, rooms--were we in an elementary school or a prison? In all the Spalding Gray dreams we are in a school... Gray entered with an entourage--no--I don't know, he was just there, and it was a prison and it was a school, and he was disheveled and sad and performing in room after room and I was sort of a fan/stalker, and then I was a disciple, and then I was his personal assistant, keeping pace with him wherever he went, trying to keep track of his belongings (he kept losing his shoes). It seemed we were being filmed this whole time, a movie crew focused on us everywhere we went, as in a documentary. I was helping him, and he was cheering up, and this entourage began to coalesce around him, a clot of managers and experienced assistants, phasing me out, and we got through two of his plays--auditions, casting, rehearsals, opening nights--and then things really started moving fast and I couldn't keep up with them. And it's like I was left back in the school there and trying to find him a the labyrinth of chaotic untidy classrooms, retracing our steps from early on, gathering stuff he'd misplaced (I found two pairs of his shoes and one gray shoe that had gone missing right at the start). Losing my own stuff--a coat, a handbag full of important papers--and I didn't care even to look around for it; "Doesn't matter," I insisted.

Finally a long line of well-wishers, fans, movie crew entering the seating area of a theater to see his latest play. A crush at the double doors. I stood on something and looked over the faces as they entered, searching for Gray. And finally there he was, looking old and tired and battered and resigned in a threadbare T-shirt, his uncombed hair thin and yellowy-white. I got distracted for a moment then and lost him again--damn! I went inside. Someone was speaking onstage but the house lights were still up. I walked down the aisle and turned to scan the audience. Gray sat on the aisle, alone. He looked great, 40-something, dark combed full hair, charcoal gray cashmere sport coat, black shirt open at the throat. I looked at him until he glanced over and noticed I was there. I felt so abandoned. I wanted at least a hug good-bye.

He stood and took me aside and looked me in the eyes said "I see myself in you" or "We're the same, you and I" or something just as cinematic and dopey along those lines. He embraced me and whispered in my ear (a la Lost in Translation), jokingly, "Now, start keeping a journal, and move into a dormitory on 4th Street, and" other things obviously from his own peculiar past. Then he hugged me and kissed me on the cheek, and said, "Aren't you going to watch the play?" And I smiled and said I'd seen two others already in this dream and I had other things I needed to do now. And then I left, and spent the rest of the dream trying to find my stuff and get out of the damned building and find the airport...

Tue, 24 Aug 2004 18:50:57 GMT

Last night I actually dreamed of Marlon Brando...

He was ill, on his deathbed, in and out of consciousness, surrounded by employees--yes-men and managers, former lackeys grown powerful as the old man's hold on life waned. There was a lengthy and complicated plotline about this, the machinations of hangers-on. He'd ended up alone in rooms over a seedy nightclub he owned--the "Club 365." Sparsely furnished; golden variegated philodendrons in pots everywhere. I asked one of his people why these plants--were they some decorator's idea? or Brando's own favorite? No reply. I seemed to be an invisible observer.

Brando, comatose, kept changing form. At one point he changed into a deer. His handlers had his hind legs removed so they could lift and move him about more easily. After some time--days or weeks--he became conscious. He looked down and saw his hind legs were missing and his aged, sagging Brando face became very sad. He changed into a dog--German shepherd--to get his four legs back. Then he was the elderly Brando himself, and ready to die. He shuffled up a heavily carpeted hallway that led now out of a theater lobby. He parted indigo velvet curtains and entered the seating area.

He lingered in there a long time. Anything he thought of came to pass. People and animals he wanted around him manifested; he himself could appear as himself, but as youthful and healthy as he wanted. He appeared to stay around early middle age. Two friends stayed near him throughout this time. They may have been "real"--not of his imagining. As time passed, he began to look about--"for the purple," he said. I didn't know what that meant. No one seemed to understand that.

Finally we sat on a little island he'd thought up, on unnaturally white sand near the unnaturally green and transparent sea. The sky was vivid with sunset--wildly colorful, oranges and pinks. Then quietly Brando looked at the far horizon. He expression changed from one of disinterest to one of blissful expectation. There at the lower edge of the darkening sky where the water met the firmament was the "purple"--indigo, really--and what we knew as Marlon Brando's being came apart in indigo shreds less substantial than bits of silken scarves, and flew toward the horizon to join with the indigo gathering there.

Sun, 30 May 2004 22:08:30 GMT

I am homeless, living among homeless friends. I am eight months pregnant. Then, inexplicably, I am not. The pregnancy has failed. But although my belly is now flat, the dead child remains within. My friends will have to operate and remove the decaying fetus. In my mind I plan the sequence of cuts and try to anticipate the pain. I wonder whether we can make the garage we'll work in sterile enough to prevent infection. I wonder what the cutter will find in my uterus. I wonder about stitches and cramping. I'm glad I have strong pain pills for afterward. Later, I awaken in a darkened room. My dead child lies next to me. It's a boy, an adolescent, with beautiful neat dark hair. But I see the places on his body where he's beginning to rot. As I get up to leave the room, he moves in his "sleep"--awakens--sits up. I'm briefly happy, but as he smiles and sits up ("Hello, Mother") I see his half-rotted face. He tells me his age but drifts off into counting ("I'm 14, 15, 16...") and then says, "Please don't look at the rotted places. Look at me, at what I am"--but I'm backing away from the bed, confused, a little fearful. Then I notice another bed in the room, next to the one with my child. On it, an elderly white-skinned naked man sits up, his movements mirroring those of my child, and he too begins to speak, his mouth and tongue a crimson contrast to his white skin.--16 September 1996

Sun, 30 May 2004 21:50:38 GMT

I chased a deer on foot through the woods late at night. Someone ran with me. Night after night the deer forced me to chase it--gave off some chemical or suggestion--and I had to run after it. It filled me. All I knew was that impulse. During the day I complained about the unfairness of being driven by impulses the deer created.--9 August 1995

Sun, 30 May 2004 21:43:07 GMT

I was a child, age fluctuating between 8 and 14, and I lived on a farm with dream versions of my kindly grandparents. In the nearby town, a building several stories high was being constructed using immigrant labor, Asian--Hmong?--labor. But now all work had stopped because a bird had flown into the nearly finished structure, and Hmong superstition prevented any work being done in a building where a wild bird was imprisoned. Townspeople, white aldermen types, came for my grandfather. He was just a dirt farmer, but they knew he was American Indian. They wanted him to enter the building and remove the bird and appease the workers. As he set out to do this, he called me aside and handed me a bundle of items. I can't recall the items, but they were wrapped in a blue bandana. Then he told me his true name, his Indian name, and it sounded like "eee-ah(ngh)." Then he walked away looking suddenly young and very native in his denim and chambray. I wanted to know what his name meant and because it sounded like the sound an eagle or hawk makes, my reasoning dream mind concluded it meant "son of eagle," or perhaps closer to "cry of eagle." --10 August 1995

Sun, 09 May 2004 19:10:32 GMT

The First Dream

[This is the first dream I can recall clearly--no, it's the earliest dream I have kept in memory this far, because I recalled my dreams with great clarity from early childhood and drove my mother nearly mad with my morning narratives. I keep this one because I'm pretty sure it was the first important dream I had. Background: I had lived with my grandparents and two teenaged aunts on a farm in Iowa from the age of three until I was five-and-a-half. I had this dream, around the age of six or seven, while living in Los Angeles in a sort of mute agony with my mother and stepfather.]

My grandparents and aunts and I began to walk across the farmyard late one day, as the sun was setting. The sky was still light although the yard was in shadow. I held my grandfather's hand at the front of the group. We walked around the barn and up the dirt lane past the tall corn. We walked toward a grassy hill in the distance, behind which shone a brilliant light that gave it a sort of halo. When we reached the foot of the hill, the others stopped. My grandfather let go of my hand. I started running up the hillside. About halfway up I turned and looked back, realizing suddenly that I was alone.

The others stood smiling at me from the bottom of the hill. They would come no farther, but waved me on lovingly. I was a little apprehensive, but I turned back to my climb. I began to hear a great chorus of unearthly voices singing a celestial melody that got louder as I approached the hilltop. And then I was walking slowly down the other side, and the light was blindingly beautiful, and the music, the voices, indescribable.

When I told my mother this dream, she said she thought I must be watching too much TV.

Wed, 05 May 2004 21:44:14 GMT

I walk with a man unknown to me outside of dreams (but a friend in this one) on a trail that winds uphill around three progressively smaller lakes. The lakes are elliptical, with smooth unlittered shorelines. My companion pauses and playfully shoves me down the hillside toward the largest lake. I get wet, and I am furious. I climb back angrily, doing my best to remove the black mud from my white dress.

Now the male companion disappears and a female giant--the "giantess" familiar to me from other dreams--comes to show us the way--for I've joined a small group of travelers.

We walk up the trail, around the lakes, to the top of the mountain, where the trail ends at an overlook in a Visitor Center building. But to see the view one must climb a ladder to a tiny shuttered window at the top of a wall, and then open that shutter. The giantess suggests I do so, and so I do.

But when I put my face to the small opening I find I'm looking into a windowless room, no larger than ten by ten, filled with my belongings--a small folding cot and pillow, and books stacked to the ceiling on all sides. The only way in (and out) is through this impossibly small window.

Wed, 05 May 2004 20:07:05 GMT

I drive an old car up a busy mountain highway. I don't know how long I've been driving. Can't remember when I wasn't.

The highway is eight lanes across--four up, four down. Traffic is bumper-to-bumper in both directions. I'm embarrassed to be driving this old car. Its long heavy body calls to mind a wasteful era. Its dents and mends, borrowed fenders and rust evidence neglect. Caught in the snarl of travelers, I idle. The engine overheats, sputters, and dies. I've been inching up this hill forever. At this rate I'll never make it.

...Even the tall rude patrolwoman isn't sure why she's arrested me. I stand beside her desk at police headquarters pleading for release. It's a borrowed car. It's not my fault.

Finally she confronts her own prejudices--how could someone driving such a trashy vehicle not have had some unsavory plan?--and lets me go.

How will I get there now? The daylight's nearly gone.

Now I drive my son's old van. It was so good of him to lend it. It's broad and sturdy, clean and well-maintained.

The incline is steeper now. The highway has narrowed to four lanes across. Traffic moves a little more quickly but there's still plenty of it. The sun is dropping behind the mountain. I keep a steady pressure on the accelerator but the van moves more and more slowly. I press the pedal to the floor as the vehicle rolls to the shoulder and dies. Well, at least it's the end of the road. I get out of the van and walk forward in the gathering darkness. What is this? Dozens of pedestrians mill around, confused, in the twilight at the end of the highway. Is this it? Is this it?

A landscape of waste.

Someone speaks.

"You didn't go far enough."

It's a man, dark-complected, about my age. I can't make out a face.

"But this is it," I protest. "I've come so far, and the road ends here, and there's nothing."

"You've got to go all the way," he gently insists, gesturing.

I turn to peer into the gloom around me. Sure enough, the mouth of a rough road of red dirt is just visible behind the low vegetation. I move toward it, forcing my way through the brush.

And there I am in the bright bare house of my grandfather. The rooms are populated with others, male and female, from teen age to nearly my age--a generation of siblings, brothers and sisters I never knew I had. All my life I believed I was an only child, I thought. Meanwhile all these were being born and growing up without me.

The two youngest are summoned to come and speak with me. They're twins, boy and girl. They have gray skin. Their spherical heads are hairless. I become very uncomfortable when I see them, but they're so cheerful, and they seem to explain something I have to know.