 |
ESOPUS SUBSCRIBER INVITATIONAL #3 Dreams submitted by Esopus readers Earlier this year we invited our subscribers to submit their transcriptions of their dreams, which were then passed on to musicians to serve as the basis for songs on the Issue's CD. All of the dreams submitted are included here (starting with the 12 that were chosen by musicians, and are published in the issue accompanied by stunning images by artist Daniel Gordon). THE SELECTED DREAMS: Dreamed I had an extra big toe growing out of the side of my foot; I peeled off layers of skin and the toenail began to disappear. My bed was full of earthworms. I was awakened by my cat touching my back. Meg Armstrong London, England [“One Day I Had an Extra Toe,” Black Moth Super Rainbow] For many years I have had a recurring dream in which, in the course of a complicated dream scenario, I arrive at the top of a flight of steep stairs. I become frozen when I look down, because the stairs drop off like a cliff and don’t continue for at least 15 to 20 feet. The dream is always quite visually vivid: The stairs sometimes look as if they are in a beautiful old opera house or are outside in a garden. The light is beautiful, and everything is very detailed. Everyone around me is blithely descending the stairs without paying any attention, and I do wonder how they are able to go down them without falling. (In life I have pretty bad depth perception, so stairs are always a bit of a challenge.) The dream usually ends there without any resolution. After having had this dream since I was a teenager I have had an amended version where I actually go out of my way to confront the stairs rather than taking an easier route that doesn’t have them.Other people in the dream are counseling me to go the other way because they don’t want to deal with the staircase, but I cheerfully refuse. (And yes, in this dream I am very cheerful.) In this version, the landscape is much more rugged and rocky but just as beautiful and vivid. Anonymous New York, New York My most recurring dream is really quite a simple one. It involves me being very high up, sometimes in a tree and sometimes on a building. Each time, I have to overcome my fear of heights and then it becomes inevitable that I have to jump to get down—always from these impossibly high places. Each time I eventually pluck up the courage and jump, falling through the air, slowly, seemingly for ages, until finally I land on the ground, unhurt and relieved. Sonic Boom Rugby, United Kingdom [“A Heavenly Light that Shines,” White Whale] In my dream I am riding on a train. I am looking out a window at a snowy landscape. There is an overall feeling of sorrow and sadness and melancholy. Based on the feeling the dream gives me, I know that I am trapped: I don’t know where I am coming from and I don’t know where I am going to. The sky is gray, and the dream is always in black and white. Throughout my life I have felt this train ride takes place in northern Europe in the winter, a place that I have never been to. The ride never ends. I am always in the same seat looking out the same window at the same landscape, feeling the same cold sadness. Roxanne Jannette Venice, California [“Sumuvirsi,” Paavoharju] Me and my daddy are walking in a hot desert and I am about 6. We are tired and hungry, and we need shelter. Out of nowhere we see a hotel and run to it. When we get inside there is something odd: All of the people there have human heads but very large spider bodies. Although we are disturbed by this, we are so tired we decide to stay. Once we get all situated we go down to the pool. I hop in with all the spider people and then turn around to wait for my daddy to get in, but then I see that he has been stabbed in the back of the head. I start to cry and then the spider people tell me that it will be okay and I look down at myself and I have become a spider person. The pool opens up into a whirlpool and I am sucked in. As I am going down, I wake up. I have this dream about once or twice every two months. It deeply disturbs me. Caroline Duble Houston, Texas [“Me and My Daddy Are Walking in the Desert,” Hank] There’s all this buzzing, reverberating noise around me and I see flowers everywhere. Most are in baskets and bouquets. I don’t really know why, but I can’t move or walk around. It’s a little unnerving but also somehow comforting. Suddenly, someone like a 50-foot woman appears, picks me up, and takes me to a store counter, and it dawns on me that I’m in a flower shop. And I’m a flower. Or, at least, I’m embedded in a flower, because it doesn’t make sense that I could be a flower, really. Then suddenly I’m transported in this whizzing, crazy, frenetic hyperspeed sort of way to some place that’s really quiet. It’s a relief. But people seem sad. I’m placed next to a large pine box, and I see someone in it. It’s a funeral home, and I’m a token of appreciation or memorialization, I guess (as the flower). I feel sad and proud at the same time. The other thing is that during the entire dream I feel like I do when I’m exercising on a stationary bicycle. And at the end I feel like I do after a good workout: exhausted, exhilarated, more focused. The dream seems more like a momentary flash than a series of events, but somehow I have to unpack all these impressions along a time line. It’s like the dream was a quick recollection of another dream. Michael Y. Moon Castro Valley, California [“Moon Flower,” Ida] I’m in a farmyard, surrounded by cows and white dogs that look like huskies. Whooping cranes are in the air. The farmer is shooting them. As each falls among the cattle, he chants, “That’s a one kill.” “That’s a two kill.” “That’s a three kill.” “That’s a four kill.” He walks among the cattle, retrieves the dead birds, throws them in a heap. The dogs lie on top of them, waiting, smelling the warm, dead bodies. The dogs’ expressions are hopeful, patient—doglike. Suddenly, people appear and take on the expressions of the dead birds. They look surprised and dignified. Sybil Miller Austin, Texas [“One Kill,” Dirty Projectors] I have a recurring dream that started in 1999 when I emigrated from my oceanless, mountainless native country, Hungary, to Vancouver, Canada. For the first time in my life I faced the true majesty of nature: the wild forests and high mountains, and particularly the immense ocean with its powerful tides that I still admire with fear. In my dream, I sit on the seashore in the sand with wide-open eyes in blinding sunlight. I can’t move; gravity holds me tight. I am fully aware that the tide will come sooner or later; there is no escaping it. If I stay, and I can’t move, I will die. Still, I am entirely in the moment and I feel a complete physical sensation of all the elements around me: the salty oxygen traveling to my lungs and tickling my throat; the rhythmic sound of the ocean waves and seagulls’ cries piercing my ears; the cold touch of the water on my toes slowly climbing further up my legs as time passes; and the sense of the weight of my body touching the fine mineral grains of sand. I don’t know what happens then—I always wake up. I don’t ever remember struggling with saltwater in my mouth, gasping for air. Maybe because of this, I don’t see my dream as a dark one. I’ve started to appreciate instead the opportunity to live through the physical experience of the ocean and nature in my dreams night after night. Gabriella Solti Richmond, British Columbia Canada [“Oceanus,” High Places] I am in the aisles of a very small grocery store; the shelves are almost bare. John Lennon is there and says, “Even Yoko had to deal with loss.” I am slowly dressing, getting ready for work. I see a man climbing around, painting rooms in my house. He starts to open the door and I hold it closed and say, “Just wait two minutes.” He says, “Wrong end of time”—he’s gotta leave. Susan Toplikar Raleigh, North Carolina [“Two/The Machinery in Your Stomach,” Califone] Part One: In my (now-departed) mother’s basement. My dear friend Lucy is with me. She finds a dead spider and says, “These are dangerous.” She goes away and comes back and says, “They suck the life out of the sister spider. We have to find the sister spider, too.” There are old cobwebs all over dusty cardboard boxes reaching up to the ceiling. The webs are full of old dead spiders’ bodies, dead flies, and insects. Lucy says, “We have to look through these boxes.” I say I’m not strong enough (emotionally) to do that. Lucy pulls two dead praying mantis bodies off of the web. They’re dark brown, about seven inches long, and very lightweight. We are both amazed by their beauty. Part Two: I am the only passenger on a bus. It stops at a deli, and I go in to buy a sandwich. I realize I’ve left my purse on the bus, and when I go back out it’s driving away. I start chasing it and trying to use my cell phone to call 911 to tell it to stop. I pass a young couple on the street and they say, “Don’t call, just go into that store and tell them.” I thank them. I know that corner—it’s a couple of blocks from my house—and I realize there is no store there, it’s a church. I’m annoyed by their misinformation. I finally realize the driver intended to rob me, and that I had voluntarily, trustingly left my valuables on the bus. I have a vision inside the dream: I’m looking through the closed bus door, and the driver looks directly at me as he takes my wallet and pulls the money out of my purse. Jo Andres Kripplebush, New York [“Poison,” Lucy Wainwright Roche] One of my most vivid dreams took place in a café in Paris. It was lovely: the tables and chairs were fin-de-siècle black wrought iron, the walls were all white, and it was very bright inside. Most of the patrons had in front of them those old soda fountain glass ice-cream dishes with the long spoons. The surroundings were very clear, but I couldn’t recognize any of the café patrons, because every time I looked directly at them they would turn their head away and morph into a painting of their own profile. I was able, however, to focus on the hands of a fancily dressed woman having her nails painted. The manicurist was pulling beautiful crimson autumnal leaves off of a bonsai tree and laying them delicately on her nails. Lori Spadafora Norwood, Massachusetts [“Montparnasse,” Ta’Raach & the Lovelution] My dreams are in living color, brilliant and lifelike. I often wander through the past as my younger self, untested and naive. Shadows of former loves, absent friends, and tender moments weave in and out of the haze of memory—choices made, paths not taken. Sometimes in my dreams, I rewrite memories and right old wrongs—given and received. Morning brings absolution, and the joy of my present peace. Sally Keller Gurnee, Illinois [“I Sleep,” Cheval Sombre] OTHER SUBMITTED DREAMS: I am lounging among large rounded rocks by a pond, sipping a mug of black-and-tan beer. A friend is with me, a few stones away. Suddenly from across the pond an elongated neck of cactus stretches across the expanse of water. The cactus has an almost cartoonish head—green, looks like a brontosaurus but with a beak—and it begins to bite into my left forearm but painlessly, playfully. Then, this dinosaur-cactus(?) head retreats back to the other side of the pond. There is a row of five plants lined up across the opposite shore; the second, third, and fourth from the left are all dinosaur cacti. My friend walks off, making no mention of what just occurred, as if he had seen nothing unusual at all. My cousin Kelly and her cousin Tim approach, carrying fishing poles. Kelly is speaking with three of her girlfriends who have suddenly appeared out of nowhere. I stand up and try to get their attention, pointing across the pond and yelling, “Look—look at the dinosaur cactus!” Kelly is annoyed and angry with me, shooing me away and refusing to look across the pond. Wayne Atherton Eliot, ME Back-story: I’ve been having a gay affair with a married man for almost 5 years. The dream has been recurring for about the past year. In it, I am in what I understand to be my secret lover’s house (though it bears no resemblance to his actual house). I am in a large bright living room with white walls, white area rug, sitting on a long S-shaped white overstuffed sectional couch, reading a script (I am not an actor). In only some of the versions of the dream the script seems to be the story of my relationship with my secret lover. Other times, they are legible, random words on the page, and I struggle to focus and read them, looking for meaning. In either version, the script has my complete attention because I want to read about what happens with us in the future. My secret lover is somewhere in the house—I sense him there, perhaps we’ve just spoken to each other, room to room—but I never see him. Suddenly, my (estranged) father walks into the room. I want to avoid him, so I get up, and head toward the front door. As I get there, I see children’s sneakers, and a pair of ladies’ shoes inside the entryway, and know my married lover’s family has come home unexpectedly and I need to escape. Panic grips me. I begin to plot a path of escape, realizing that I do not know my way around the house at all. I wake up at that exact point. Every time. Anonymous Just recently I dreamt that a large woman in a gingham dress is standing in front of a brownstone, clutching a large book. The book is called “The Pirate Queen” and it is by Norman Mailer (probably informed by the real life title “The Barbary Coast”). She is waiting for a bus or something. Then the front door of the brownstone opens and out walks a grizzled but still vital Norman Mailer. I tap him on the shoulder and point out the large woman, telling him that he has a reader right in front of him. He takes this as an invitation to hold court. He tells me that The Pirate Queen, Harlot’s Ghost and The Naked and the Dead are all part of what he calls “The Eros Trilogy,” which he describes as people taking flight but institutions holding them down: in the case of the The Pirate Queen, it was nautical criminals keeping the characters from soaring; in the Harlot’s Ghost it was the CIA; and in The Naked and the Dead it was clothing. But people still rose, even against these resistances. There was something needy about Mailer’s pontifications and I think he sensed that I wanted to leave. But I had called attention to his reader and in doing so had betrayed some willingness to indulge Mr. Mailer and he also seemed to signify that he was a man of such vitality and fascination that he would make me glad that I stayed and listened further to him. But I felt like it was all style, even if it was style emanating from deep within him, which was fighting to hold my attention. So I told him I had to catch a movie and he asked me which one. I don’t remember what movie I was seeing. The Host, maybe. And he seemed to want to come along. And then I was confused. Because I couldn’t tell whether this vulnerability he was showing me was just artifice or whether he was being genuine and just wanted some company. So I asked him where he hung out and told him I’d come by some time, not sure if I was telling the truth or not. And that was my dream about Norman Mailer. I’ve never read any of his books. Brian Shuman Brooklyn, NY I was with my wife, Tina, and we were walking up the long walkway to the huge, four-family, four-story Victorian, the one with the huge lawn on the south shore of Long Island, where I lived when I was very young. As we got closer to the house, I saw brontosaurus heads and long necks poking out of each window. They also looked like penises. There must have been six or seven necks and heads. They were wiggling around out of the windows. I suddenly had a profound, illuminating feeling. I said to Tina, “So that’s what it means. I never saw that before, but there they are. I finally understand” (I was referring to a brontosaurus, not a penis.) When I awoke, I felt I was living within illumination but I had no idea what any of this meant. Peter Seligman Derwood, MD My sister and I are walking through grasslands. The grass is super green and knee high; the sky is clear, really blue. I’m about 15 and my sister is 10. I’ve got a bowl cut of dirty blond hair and my sister has shoulder-length blond hair. Both of us are blue-eyed. There’s a rustling in the grass a little ways away and I know intuitively (like people do in dreams) that it’s a snake and I tell my sister to stay away from it. But she walks up to it anyway. It’s rainbow but sort of a pastel rainbow like sherbet rainbow and is about three feet long (a small snake) and has small white-feathered wings about a quarter of the way down. The snake stirs then flies up to her height and looks at her. She isn’t afraid at all, just a bit curious, and the snake kisses her on the neck. It doesn’t bite her, just basically touches its lips (as much as snakes have lips) to her neck. When I saw the rustling, I knew it was this snake and this was what was going to happen to my sister. I knew it meant something very important, unchangeable, like her way of thinking her spirit or something had changed. The snake then slithered like a normal snake up to me but I accepted this as my fate too. It flew up to meet me eye-to-eye then kissed me on the neck, and I instantly woke up. Karl Schmid Brooklyn, NY My dream took place in the country, but it was not just country, it was the likes of Umbria. Somehow the light was always a thick golden dusk, before the sun hits what you would call the bottom of the sky. It was warm, and there was sweat gloss on everyone’s skin, but we weren’t hot. It seemed that everyone had a plot of land and on that plot of land was a farmhouse where we lived in small communities. Mine was mostly with the folks in my film collective but also some strangers and a remarkable young woman of 8 or 9, who seemed to be my boon companion. At one point in the dream we went for a long walk around a dried-out lake and she gave me advice (I can’t remember it, but it was sound). We lived together with love and laughter. Karl lived in a neighboring community (with water and diving cliffs, somehow—lucky). My home was on flat and open fields. He sent me a film of his countryside and at one point in the film he said, “This part is the most important thing I’ll say to you,” and then he spoke in reverse for the remainder of the film. I thought, “I’ll have to play that backwards and find out what’s so important.” Karl walked to my house with a big beautiful dog. We had been up all night (even though the light was still dusk) and he laid down on the floor in one of the bedrooms (we all slept together in large rooms, each a single bed to themselves) and I gave him my pillow. My friends were returning from their nights out in the world and had all been given free shoes that were just a little bit worn, but mostly new. ** My sister and I were walking through familiar woods. I was showing her the good swimming holes, and we came upon one in which a co-worker was swimming naked. I took off my clothes and began to run down to the lake, and my sister said, “You have to at least wear your underwear” and I said, “No way, and there’s Karl, anyway,” and there was Karl. So I ran down and dove in the lake, but when I opened my eyes underwater suddenly there were a lot of people swimming at me in a line, including Michael Shick. They all had clothes on. I tried swimming after Michael and when I finally caught up with him he seemed annoyed. We went to the side of the lake where he had set up a giant chalkboard with numbers on it. He told me if I wanted to participate in the race I needed a suit with a number on it. The suits were old-fashioned men’s bathing suits, full-bodied. He assigned me the number 45 and tried to write it on this little chalk tablet again and again with Michael-like determination, only to have the chalk fail each time. I thought this was hilarious. He did not. When he handed me my suit I thought, “I’ll be faster if I just stay naked,” but decided I felt a bit too out of place. Then I spoke to a girl on the side of the lake about the races, and she told me there wasn’t really much swimming involved, just a lap, and then you have to chug a beer or take a bong hit. Then my ex-boyfriend showed up and Karl sang tenor in an opera duet across the lake (also playing the piano) with a beautiful friend of his I’ve only seen a few pictures of. Alexis Powell Brooklyn, NY Dean and I were at my aunt & uncle’s. They were having a really big, fancy party, which was going to turn into another party for my sister as soon as this one was finished. My whole family was there and many others that I did not know. I was annoyed and bored with all of them. We went outside and leaned against a car when a huge dog jumped up on Dean and bit him in the shoulder. I felt horrible and tried to comfort and apologize. Dean was livid. I started to run inside to tell my aunt when another dog ran up behind me and bit me in the ass. I found my aunt and started screaming at her. She didn’t want to be bothered. I told my cousin (who, I realized, was about twice my height) but he was no help either. I didn’t know where Dean was now and all I remember next is that I’m on my way back to NYC on a “train.” I don’t know why I think it’s a train because I’m just standing on this rickety metal pulley which is going rather slowly over a very bumpy dirt “road.” It’s enclosed like a tunnel, but it’s also a bridge. Cars go flying past me once in a while and I flatten myself (face, stomach) against the mesh-like wall. When I get to the other side of the bridge, I open a door and find my sister and her family there in a sort of “holding” hotel. She seems annoyed and bored by me and doesn’t want to hear my story. I see her son, Aaron (who is 6 is real life), and he is twice my height. Has he grown up and I’ve missed it, or am I shrinking? Her daughter Julia is bigger than I am, too, and I run over and hug her and feel sad that I’ve missed her growing up. Then Dean walks in the door. I’m so happy and relieved to see him, but he’s angry with me for running off and leaving him at the party. I feel utterly alone and lonely and wake up sobbing. Britta Phillips New York, NY Charity casino at which I kept losing my purse and wallet; Naomi Campbell was there, covered in egg, said she was sick of egg-white omelets. *** Found a kitten in a plastic bag, like a goldfish, a fluffy ginger kitten; opened the bag and maggots swarmed out, drenched me, and ate my coat. The kitten followed me home. My sister said, ZOO, and I said, how could the zoo help? She said no, the kitten was ‘in the zoo,’ meaning beyond help. Seemed OK to me, apart from the maggots. Made a salad with a big piece of beef in the centre, and dinner guests said they would come back another time. *** Dreamed a whole Julia Roberts movie: She went to South America, found an urchin who was looking after a baby that disappeared; Julia found the baby and fell in love with Brazil, went back to the US to her stiff-necked boyfriend, an actor who could only get work in made-for-TV murder mysteries. Richard Briers was the boyfriend and Richard Gere was howling in the background. Ole Gunnar Solskaer of Manchester United appears on the street, talking on the phone; he’s signing for Manchester City and so is Eric Cantona. Richard Briers thought he loved Julia but couldn’t give her what she needed. Then the urchin from Brazil turned up; he’s what Julia needs. He’s all grown up now, looks like Che Guevara. She gets pregnant, they form a band and record a Christmas single. A technician cuts the recording because they’re all singing sharp and Che says, NO, you must record us as we really are. Julia nods. Che tells her he’s going to Colombia to get some cocoa beans to support the family. Julia is horrified. But this is what freedom means! He tells her he never loved her and she falls over like a piece of timber. Richard Briers is starting to look like a good option. Luckily they’ve remained friends. He puts Julia in charge of his university. Sotheby’s come to value her documents and find this entry in a journal: I write this to show how Broadway my cell can be. The Sotheby’s valuer sits down on a bench which is like a shelf in a sauna, orders the floor to be flooded with cool water, turns to me and says, What’s all this about Cantona going to City? *** Dreamed I was married to Hugh Grant and we had two daughters who were just like stiff pink flannel to carry around. Everyone was saying to Hugh, you should have told us you had children! He said, it’s surprisingly hard to work it into a conversation. *** Renovated our bathroom in a shed instead of in the bathroom, realized it was a mistake, and then did the same thing all over again several times. Then dreamt my cats were nagging me about the restoration of order in Iraq. Meg Armstrong London, England Although the situation changes the end result is always the same. In one instance I was in a large theatre that had clusters of people sitting around. I happen to be midway center by myself with a large bowl of soup on my lap. I thought it was tomato soup at first but there were these white marshmallow-type things floating in it. Looking closer I realized it wasn’t marshmallows but teeth and not just anyone’s teeth but also my teeth. Then I wake up. Sun Min Lee Santa Monica, CA I had a dream the other night. It was set in what appeared to be my old office at the law firm but my present boss was there. I was sitting at my desk and this older, anonymous, made-up man with a grey sweatshirt and jeans on was kind of talking to me from the other side of this desk. I remember thinking that he didn’t look good or that he just looked painfully old. He wasn’t skinny in that elderly(?) fashion, but normally proportioned. I don’t recall hearing his voice, but I remember when he started to move I thought, “Oh...don’t over-exert yourself...” and he proceeded to put one hand on my desk and the other on a filing cabinet nearby, and bent his legs at the knee to do a ‘dip’ or whatever you may call that triceps exercise. He let himself down and then started struggling or shaking. Next thing I know (and this is where it gets interesting...I think the following images are a conflation of the bodies exhibit and the opening scene of Saving Private Ryan I watched a week or two ago) he was laying on the ground breathing deeply and slowly and I was over by his side, worrying about what I could do to help. But then I look down and he is no longer wearing any clothing. He would be “naked,” but I see that he has no skin. No bloody flesh underneath, either, but I could see organs and parts of the skeletal system.It wasn’t that he was suddenly transparent but rather he was that old and unhealthy or something. I looked at his entrails and specifically remember seeing his heart hanging from its aortal roots like a piece of fruit heavy on a tree branch; It struggled to beat, but it beat slowly., In this state, he appeared way too delicate to touch or move. He just kinda stared at me, not caring that I could see him like that, continuing to die. I went down the hall and said something to my boss, freaked out. I watched him pass me and walk up to the skeletal-like dude on the ground and pour a squirt of cold water from his bottle on the dude’s exposed intestines. The dude heaved in pain, or maybe he was revived, I’m not sure. That was the end. Robert Miller Brooklyn, NY I woke up to people rushing me out of my apartment... or a hotel room? It didn’t really look like my apartment and I think it was in NY. These strangers and magazine reporters were getting me dressed and hustling me into a limo parked in the front of the building. In the limo photographers were popping photos of me while a woman in a very Third Reich–looking uniform was applying my lipstick and trying to tame my mane. A man from the seat across from me leans forward and tells me, “When you meet them you need to present them with these” and he hands me a large plate of powdered sugar donuts stacked like a pyramid. I whisper, “Okay.” The limo stops and the entourage of about eight people push me out of the car onto a red carpet while I try to keep the donuts balanced. The red carpet leads to a very Winsor McCay type cartoon circus big top that I make my way towards while thrones of cameras are popping and flashing. Once inside it looks like a low-rent hotel bar/convention room—all maroon and brass, cheesy wood-veneer tables and little cheap vases with fake flowers. There are TV cameras everywhere. The Nazi woman has me set the donuts down on a table while she primps me some more and then she points to a large white screen. An old newsreel of The Beatles arriving in a Pan Am plane starts rolling on the screen. They walk out onto the tarmac and then the screen goes black and starts back up with one of those old countdowns from “5.” The Nazi and the man who handed me the donuts take me from either side and walk me to the side of a stage. I look back at the countdown screen and as it hits “1” I can hear screams from outside the tent. I look at the entrance and see John Lennon smiling and waving to the cameras, while the rest of the band are entering behind him doing the same. They are young and wearing the same suits that they were wearing in the Pan Am reel. The Beatles walk onto the stage and John says, “We are very happy to be giving this award to such a deserving person. This honor goes to Jennifer McCabe for her excellence in diction. Come on Jen, don’t be shy.” With this the Nazi and the donut man push me towards the set of steps leading to the stage. I walk up them and try to look out from the stage, but all I can see are lights. I walk towards John tentatively. I stand in front of him and he kisses my cheek and hands me a glass pyramid that has “Jen McCabe for excellence in diction” etched into it. I look at it and murmur a “thank you” and look at him. He motions with his eyes towards the microphone. I turn and face the lights and crowd at the mic and say, “Thank you, John Lennon and The Beatles for this very special gift.” I look offstage towards the donut man and he nods. I look back out into the lights and say into the mic, “I would like to in turn present you with these.... powdered donuts.” I hand John the plate and there is a frenzy of shuffling and bulbs going off;it’s so blinding I can’t see anything. Once my eyes refocus I realize I am standing in front of the countdown screen with the Beatles and there is a line of photographers waiting to take their turn. I am standing in the middle of them with John on one side and George on the other. John passes out donuts to all five of us and we each bite into them at the same time and end up with perfect sugar mustaches. We link arms and the photographers take turns taking our photo. I don’t remember anything else except sitting at one of the tables drinking with Allen Ginsberg. My friend Polly comes up to the table and leans over to hug and congratulate me. I introduce her to Allen, saying, “Polly, meet my friend Allen. The most sexist man in history.” And then Allen and I burst into laughter. Jen McCabe www.myspace.com/honeykennedy I was told I had to fly to London; I had just returned from the UK so this seemed an odd mandate. I boarded the plane; it was huge and totally empty, save for a few lost souls. I had a strange feeling about the pilot. She seemed a bit on edge and not prepared to chart the Atlantic under any circumstances. So we took off anyway and then the plane landed again after only what seemed like a few minutes in the air. I knew something wasn’t right; I tried to tell the pilot she couldn’t fly this plane again. Then, from a distance I watched as some people arrived and proceeded to shoot down the pilot. I ran out of the plane into a dense forest. I was in New Jersey. Somehow I came to a steep, paved road with a gas station and I proceeded walking, knowing I could find my way back to New York... then I woke up. Annie Kurtin Brooklyn, NY I had been dreaming this dream for years, from when I was still a teenager until I finished studying at the university. About 10 years, that was the time that film showed frequently in my head and probably in my soul, too. I would be in a city, and it would be hot, and the city would be deserted, as I was looking out of the window of a small, unfurnished apartment on the 10th floor of a rundown high-rise. It was close to midnight and the streets were dimly lit—hardly a living soul would pass by. And if they did, they hid in the shadows of walls and entrances, for they knew just like I knew that there was a killer waiting in one of the other buildings. The streets were unpaved; Sand and dust covered them instead, which made it difficult for people to move along sturdily. It seemed as if the whole neighborhood had been invaded by sand, for there were hardly any plants or trees visible. I was alone, and after some time I felt that I had to go down now and get out of this house, out of this city. With great unease I rushed down the staircase, for the elevator had stopped working a long time ago, like so many things electric in these decrepit and deserted blocks. I slid out of the entrance and carefully moved along the sandy canals towards where I did not know. It was easy at first, for nothing happened, no one shot at me, no one approached me. Not a sound was to be heard; it was unnaturally quiet. Until I came to that one high-rise with the marks of terror on it: black eyes of apartments that had burnt out a long time ago, an ugly grayish yellow facade, holes and cavities in the walls as if from heavy streetfighting, some apartments still holding tenants, though, as could be seen by sparse lights here and there. I knew the killer would be waiting in there. It was a matter of good timing and speed: catch a moment when the killer would catch his breath (was it a man?) or even sit on the toilet, cross the sandy lane at high speed to escape the bullets. I had to try since I wanted to get away, so I tried. The moment I left the wall I had been hugging and ran (as far as running was possible), I saw in the corner of my eye the gun in the window flashing at me and I knew the sound of a bullet leaving the barrel would be next… Suddenly there was the noise of a low flying airplane in the sky, overhead, getting nearer very fast. The shot I had expected never left the barrel of the gun, and its owner had forgotten about my existence. The silver passenger plane, for that was what it was, was visible for an instant as it flew over the top of the buildings, its jet engines deafening. It was flying far too low; it would not make it; it would crash. I ran on, reached the other side of the street, kept close to the wall, and when I reached the corner I peered around, only to see the plane make it over the hill a littler further away. Then it dropped out of sight. Shortly after there was an explosion, a fireball rising over the hilltop. In my sleep I knew that all the passengers were dead, and a great sadness washed over me. At one point the dream stopped coming. For a long time I only vaguely remembered the high-rise and the gun, the deserted streets and the airplanes. I felt like I had been cured. Last year, the dream returned--only once though, as if to remind me of the old nightmarish times, never to forget. And then, shortly afterwards, I saw a picture of that high-rise and the deserted street in the paper. The very same scene! I cried, and showed it to the woman I still loved. She told me I should cut it out and keep it, which I did. Later I moved out of our little house into a new place, taking everything with me. But now that I want to back up this dream story of mine, the picture is nowhere to be found. Stefan Erhardt Munich, Germany The dream I remember most vividly happened in college, not long before I quit the wrestling team. I was riding in the team van, on our way to a big meet. Our snappy, energetic coach was at the wheel, telling bad jokes as the radio lost and found distant stations. The road stretched forever through rolling hills. Suddenly over the next horizon appeared several, then dozens, perhaps hundreds of colorful parachutes floating lazily to the ground. Picnickers and blankets (or were they parachutes?) dotted the landscape. We stopped the van and got out. I went to talk to a guy who was barbecuing, still wearing his aeronautical jumpsuit. Parachuters continued to float down around us, many wearing futuristic costumes and helmets that were vaguely cinematic. The barbecue smelled amazing and I was famished (I was probably cutting weight before weigh-ins). I couldn’t quite place the smell–like baby-back ribs, only gamier. When I asked what was cooking, he looked at me like he had never heard a stupider question. “Ewok. What else?” Charles Fairbanks Ann Arbor, MI I go to college, where I attend all my classes, participate in all class discussions, study, and learn. But I never take any of my final exams. I go pretending to be a normal student, not a student auditing the classes. I go back the next year (semester) and repeat the same pattern, year after year after year. I keep expecting to be busted and have some professor or administrator ask me what’s going on, what is my problem? Until writing this for Esopus, I never remember dreaming about the mid-semester exams or quizzes. Just the final exams, but I don’t think I took any type of test. Michael D. Melet Flint, MI Bear barricades, these bright yellow gates, block the doors to all of the buildings in my dream. Irritated, I walk up to the WalMart and ask what the fucking problem is. The WalMart greeters tell me that there are bears inside the store. The bears are chained, they say, but can still attack. Curious, I walk through the doors and past a rack of bathrobes. From behind a toothpaste display, two bears charge; I turn to run but one of the bears gains on me. There’s no chain at all. The bear swats me on the ass with its claws, and I emerge from the store bleeding. In front of me, an employee is showing a video of a man riding the same dusty, brown-yellow bears. It’s Tom Hanks in the video and I don’t know if he’s being paid to promote bear-riding or what. Daniel Johnson Cambridge, MA It’s always the same dream. My husband sells our house without my consent or knowledge. He always has a reason. There was an offer he couldn’t refuse, the house was too big now that our children are grown, or another house came along that was better and could hold his books. In other words: more wall space, fewer windows. Once I awoke convinced that I now lived in a Croatian neighborhood in a Long Island style rambler with a chain-link fence. The Croatian neighbors pointed to me and spoke in Croatian. They hated me, I hated the house, and I hated my husband for making me move there. But he blithely pointed to his books arranged neatly on the walls of the rambler. “They look nice here.” Sometimes he moves us to a bigger house, sometimes to a tent, often to an apartment that is much too small. And where do his books go in the tent? Somehow they’re not a part of the tent dream. After these dreams I awake in a fury, my body rigid with rage. And there is my husband, sleeping blissfully next to me. I have to resist the urge to scream, “You sold our house—again!” But I know this means nothing to him. And the strange thing is, he would never, ever sell our house—our home of 20 plus years—without my consent or knowledge. He wouldn’t buy a chair or a plate or a saltshaker without consulting me. In fact, he never buys anything at all. I have furnished our house, scouring antique shops, flea markets, furniture stores. I have painted and gardened and rearranged and replaced. And he usually doesn’t even notice. He is a happy man as long as his leather chair is in the corner of the living room and his books are close by. He is a great husband and a wonderful father. A kind and good man with the aesthetic sense of a fly and the material needs of an ant. But twice a year, in my dreams, he sells our house. Alice Powers Washington, DC I am in a white room that is streaked with mirrors. My right hand is resting lightly on a ballet barre. A long line of ballerinas is behind me. We are wearing leotards of varying tinctures of purple that cling tightly to our prepubescent bodies. A corpulent Russian woman with apricot hair and a stick waddles toward me. The pianist stops playing. My eyes widen. I want to yawn and scream at the same time. I bite my lip. She taps my feet with her stick, Thwack, Thwack, Thwack. She roars, POINTE, POINTE, POINTE–I bite my lip. I look down at my feet and my toes are missing! I raise my chin and my bun falls from the crown of my head. It lands on my shoulder, then plops onto the floor behind me. Kerplunk. The sound reverberates towards the mirrors, causing them to gash down the middle. Gulp, I think to myself. The Russian woman nods her head and a petite ballerina with brown hair and a jutting right hip lumbers over to me. She brings with her a very large pencil sharpener, like the one my mother bought me for my pencil case, but bigger. I recall having put it in my knapsack that very morning. The Russian woman yanks my feet out from under me. I fall on my coccyx bone. Ow, I think. She inserts both of my feet into the sharpener; there is room for two. She turns it on, yet I do not see a plug. Grr, it says fiercely. I roll over and moan. The pianist plays loudly Chopin’s Sonata No. 15. The young ballerinas bourre around me, chanting gaily, POINTE, POINTE, POINTE. The Russian woman doubles over laughing. Black and white marbles come out of her mouth and swarm over to the pianist. He needs them to play, come what may. Suzanne Dottino New York, NY About half a year ago I had a dream about my friend Sean. The dream was in black and white and had scenes in it, like a film. In the first scene my friend Sean was using an old 35mm camera to make a documentary. It then suddenly cut to another scene in which two large black dots appeared, and there was blood everywhere. Then it cut to the last scene, in which Sean’s mother was approaching the viewer (who was me, I suppose, even though I wasn’t there—I was dreaming it) and she asked, “Did you hear about Sean? He cut off his fucking feet, to get some raw footage.” Shane Morrissey Northport, NY Every time I try to have sex with a girl in a dream she either shrinks (in one she became a piece of candy, a Jolly Rancher shaped like a girl), turns into some sort of animal, or disappears. So there I was, licking a Jolly Rancher in an elevator the size of a hotel lobby among an assortment of other elevator-ers. If I force it everything falls apart, so now I’m just as shy in dreams as I am in real life. Take a handfull of sand, let it rest in your loose fist and you can hold onto that sand forever. Try to grip it tight, and sand pours through your fingers, until you are left holding nothing. Nicholas Caminiti I saw them coming across the ocean: 3 biplanes, each flying upside-down, One huge bomb strapped to each of their bellies. One of the planes was headed for our hotel. I ran from the building and got about 25 feet and fell to the ground, hoping I had made it far enough not to be killed. I felt the force of the explosion. Against my feet and calves But was only somewhat burned there. I saved myself from where I had been standing. No. Where I had been standing was okay But nearby part of the hotel had a huge hole In the roof. A while later, walking past another part Of the hotel, a waiter inside motioned To me through the window as though to say, “Now the meals are free, come in.” A second bomber comes, I run again, This time towards my car. A bomb is dropped. I have fallen by the car and can’t move. Flames spread toward the car. Then there are flames around and underneath The car. Still, I can’t move. I am pulled Away to safety by friends Who later laugh that a car Filled with gas is not a good place To go in an attack. Later, I am watching out over the sea. I see a plane coming and yell To everyone inside to scatter. It turns out to be a bird. Lots of birds fly by the coast. Drew Camard Portland, OR I got a homeopathic remedy a month ago and have been dreaming my ass off ever since every night. Really cool. And so I have just been waiting to the end for the best possible one. This one was a favorite. I mean that while I was having it I was really enjoying dreaming it. So most of my dream is me watching Tom and Jerry cartoons in a fancy screening room. The screen is so big, like times square-style. The great thing about Tom and Jerry is that there are no humans, and no talking. It is all really cool, weird orchestra music on the soundtrack. And the theater is so dark, like a depravation tank, and the image is blinding, the surround-sound dizzyingly loud. And T&J are projected so gigantic! So I am an inventor of interactive playgrounds for kids and their adults. Most of my “work” is placed on beaches. and I am really popular, very busy throwing these things up on lots of shores. each is designed individually to work on the coastline shapes. okay so then I get to go back to the places and watch people “play” on them. and I am very unsatisfied with the kind of play happening so I lock myself in this screening room to watch the T&J cartoons to gain expertise in the art of PLAY. So when I wake during a water fast and my mind is whacked from days of endless cartoon music and insomnia and I have just gotten the “solution” and its this exhilarating instant and I snap awake. I, me, “not dreaming” Xylor, doesn’t get to know the answer to play. maybe it is like seeing your own death in a dream. Xylor Jane San Francisco, CA ONE I take my little girl Zoe to visit a foreign country. We walk along a dirt road...it’s a little humid & muddy. We see a family living in a “ticky tacky”–type wooden shack with two levels and four rooms. You can see all of the rooms at once; there is no front to the house, as if a tornado just took away the facade. Inside the bottom floor on the left side is a thin man with his child. They look like they are from somewhere in India, perhaps...dark hair. It is hot, so they wear wrap shorts only. Hanging from the ceiling and in fact throughout the entire house are thousands of heavily tanned, thickly fur-lined baseball gloves. The whole place smells of leather and oil. We see some of the gloves are so thick with fur and they have not yet had the palms sewn onto them. He asks us about life in America and what is it like to have electricity. His small wife peeks out from behind a doorway connecting two rooms, but since there is no front to the house, we can see her whole self anyway. Her head peeks from one side of the door, and her whole body protrudes from the other side. Suddenly, my old dog Smudge runs in and across the room. She’s a wire hair fox terrier and way out of place in this location. She is much heavier than she used to be, but I know its her and she is wagging her tail quite happily. I’m surprised to see someone—or something—that I know in this place. Zoe is laughing. I wake happy. TWO In another dream I am with people whose friend committed suicide. I don’t and didn’t know him... he is gone... for some reason we are sent to collect his things. We enter his room and everyone is surprised to find thousands of minute, meticulous, idiosyncratic artworks throughout the room,as if he were a true outsider artist, but no one who knew him had had any idea . Each work looked as if it took months and months to complete... years even...yet no one had any idea. The wallpaper covering all of the walls was hand woven, with different thicknesses of cotton and silk threads, jillions of tiny knots and weavings. woven palm frond and rope and string hangings are dripping down from the ceilings. The bathroom tiles are tiny, and each one hand cut and placed meticulously in mortar. Some have sayings on them so tiny I can’t read them. I can’t help but wonder: if he had lived in a bigger place, would he still have work to do, and still be alive? But he must have felt he was complete here, and ready to go. I wake feeling like I know him better now. THREE I’m at a big, fun party. I’m often at a big party in my dreams, meeting new people, watching whatever is going on. I’m walking around, people are enjoying themselves, and I head out to a lanai area that looks like a rectangular glass room with a rectangular swimming pool all underlit and quite turquoise-y beautiful. I notice two dogs jump into the pool and realize the water is sub-freezing. They instantly freeze under the water and their long fur is floating from their bodies. They cannot move, but no one is going to help them, so I go to them and pull on their fur from the side, walking pointedly down to the shallow end while pulling them along underwater—dragging them, really—to get to where I can reach in and get them out. One dog comes to immediately and just walks away. The other is shivering uncontrollably, so I wrap him in blankets and carry him like a child in my arms, warming him up. Everyone around me continues to drink, laugh, talk…no one notices anything that has been going on at all. no one offers any help. Eventually, the dog is warmed and is thankful for the rescue. He snuggles me and then begins to turn into a large, hawk-like bird, eventually flying away. I wake up delighted to have had a lovely visual dream, and to have gone to a good party…dogs ‘n’ all. Wendy Cohen New York, NY March 1, 2006 I’m sitting in the White House library, cozy and happy in President Clinton’s lap. I think, “Well now! I must be important for the president to see me.” I’m feeling super-confident, like whatever I say is going to be fascinating. I tug on his hair a little and say, “Let’s make it bigger, like Einstein’s hair, so people will notice you, you big puff of white.” And we both laugh at the idea that nobody notices him. He’s clearly so into my flirting, and I think, “I believe I’ll go to bed with him; it should be exciting to say you slept with the president,” and I’m getting in the mood for it anyway. But suddenly it hits me: “No! It would be a bad example for him about how to live.” I have a profound feeling of caring for his mortal soul; I stand up from his lap and at that moment a Chinese delegation walks in and I think, “Well, I sure won’t be sleeping with him, now.” March 21, 2006 I see my sister with a giant apple and a giant pear, made from some kind of papier mache. They had been peeled, but she was putting the peel back on them, and making them whole again, and I thought, “In this way, things that were lost become beautiful again.” September 2006 I dream I urgently have to get home to let out my pets, and I walk in the door and stand there and see every pet I’ve ever owned since childhood—four dogs, a cockatiel, and 11 cats. They’re all crowded together around the door when I come in, looking at me expectantly. I think, “There should be something where at least you don’t have to let out the dead pets any more.” November 9, 2006 My parents have bought a huge, huge house, kind of a mansion, in Germany. It’s red brick, in disrepair (the fourth story has some windows missing), but it’s real exciting that they bought it. My thesis advisor, Heilke, and his family are over for dinner, and I tell them they can go stay in my parents’ house in Germany any time; There are 14 bedrooms so they don’t need to worry about space. We’re eating dessert and I run out of things to say, so I tell them that my Korean colleague’s daughter got into this very elite school that flies her home four times a year for free, plus pays all her tuition. Then I go to the kitchen and I’m talking on the phone to somebody and I realize I’m ignoring Heilkes, but I linger anyhow. I come back into another dining room and see it’s also set for dessert, and they’re all in there with my sister Amber and her husband, Shawn. I say, “Oh wow, so we’re gonna have two desserts huh?” I’m happy about it. Shawn is cutting a cheap white-frosted chocolate cake in a pan, when he suddenly throws down the knife and sticks his whole hand in the cake, digging furiously. Everybody goes “Wha . . !” then I look at the floor and see there’s a huge black beetle sitting there in the cake crumbs. It’s alive. I look up deliberately and address them all, saying, “Wow, guys, he lived through one hour at 350 degrees Fahrenheit. That’s more than I can say for any of you.” Nov. 17, 2006 I’m walking outside in a parking lot and someone comes up to me and shoots me with a gun right in the heart. I think, “This is it, for sure I’m going to die, no one can survive this.” I start yelling at a policeman nearby, “You stay here with me!” and he agrees. I ask him, “Can you dial the phone, so I can talk to my mom while I’m still conscious?” Then the ambulance comes, but it doesn’t have a bed or an IV or anything in it; in fact it is not even an ambulance but an old van! I am stumbling around and going in and out of consciousness, but then another ambulance comes with all that stuff in it, and the paramedics take out a stretcher and start bouncing me way up in the sky on it. From the ground, I watch my body flying up into the night sky, twirling around and then coming back down. This part looks like a Matisse cutout, just navy sky and white stars, with a yellow ring around the edge of the picture. March 3, 2007 I’m working in a shop where they sell Christmas stuff, and I should be ready to open, but something’s wrong; I didn’t do something properly and it causes a big upset. The lights won’t come on, and there’s 150 people trying to get in the shop. I leave to go get something that’s necessary for the store, and I ride my motorcycle, but what should be the brakes is really the gas, so every time I want to stop it goes faster. The other drivers on the street assume I’m an aggressive girl on a motorcycle, when actually I desperately need help. I finally crash into a car, and then I get out and try to drive the car, but it’s rolling backwards down a hill and I can’t find the key (again this is my dad’s old Ford Tempo!). I think, “It’s my nervousness that doesn’t let me find the key; it’s one of those situations where only from fear you become blind,” and I look at the floor of the car, where I find the key. Phara Charmchi Houston, TX I have a recurring dream in which I get on a subway train to go a few stops uptown. Instead of making local stops, however, the train goes express and turns from a subway to a full-out suburban commuter train, barreling through the tunnel and out into the outdoor light. I find myself in the exurbs, in a semi-populated and beautiful environment with trees and lakes. I’m anxious to return to the city, though, and despite all my efforts cannot find the right tracks, or the schedule, or anyone who can help me find my way. Sometimes I’m not on a train, I’m on a bus, and the same thing happens—I can’t find the way back, or I don’t have the right fare, and I’m afraid of getting stuck. Sometimes the location is the New York area, other times it has been London and Copenhagen. The last time I had the dream, the train pulled into the station at Greenwich, Connecticut. I thought, “Here’s a monied place,” but I looked out of the window and onto the platform and saw pretty girls wearing cheap, filmy green blouses. When their boyfriends stepped off the train they kissed them and looked very happy, but all I could do was see was the cheapness of their clothes, and wonder what they were doing there. Joyce Kaye Brooklyn, NY As with most people, the narrative arc of my dreams dissipate shortly after I wake. Confronted with familiar scenes and routines, as well as the world of logic, they crumble to dust as quickly as I try to capture them with my conscious mind. What I can recall tend to be settings rather than stories, but even these prove elusive. They are made of forgotten memories, imagined scenarios and scenes from movies, television and books, working in concert. Often they recur, creating an atmosphere suffused with comfort and melancholy. Now that I’m solidly within my middle age years and the inevitability of mortality has switched from theory to reality, one such place has become a regular setting. Very small but specific memories from my elementary school days have come to the fore. I’m in the third or fourth grade and I’m walking to the newly constructed YMCA about eight blocks from our house. I’ve got to get there for swimming lessons or some sort of craft activity. I’m not thinking about the destination, only noticing the details along my route. I leave the quiet confines of the residential neighborhood and turn a corner down the sidewalk along a busier street. The cars go faster, passing through to fancier neighborhoods. I’m not curious about where they’re going, but feel in touch with a bigger world where adults go to work in tall buildings. I imagine myself with a long coat and a briefcase. The sun is warm on me. I reach a corner and wait for the light to change. A car goes by and someone yells my name out the window. I don’t recognize them or the vehicle. I’d forgotten I was wearing a black sweatshirt with my name diagonally across the front of it in white letters. That’s all I remember. I think that YMCA and the sidewalk route comes back to me regularly because of one simple moment of memorization. One late afternoon when I was leaving the Y to walk home I crossed through the parking lot. Scanning my eyes across the cars, there was a license plate, which, as soon as I saw it, I knew I would remember. It was C53-24A, or, in the parlance of some police or military TV show I watched at the time, “Charlie-five-three, two-four-Arthur.” The perfectly interlocking way in which the descending first pair of numbers align with the ascending second pair struck me as the most durable arrangement possible, while the names bookended and humanized the data. I’ve had that license number in my mind for over 40 years. It’s been a sort of mantra that runs continuously through my life. The lot where the car was parked, as well as the route home on foot, have become welcome, reassuring settings in my dreams. I like to think that committing that plate number to memory caused it to bring along the streets, sidewalks and houses that are now called upon to be a backdrop to the fractured narratives that play out in my sleep. Believing so celebrates a small, private action I took as a boy, a memory so apart from the daily comings and goings of family and school, that it too seems like a dream. David Greenberger Greenwich, NY It was very clear that I had never received permission to use the letter “R”. It was essential to immediately receive authorization to use it whether for speaking or writing. If anyone uses the letter “R” without permission it is an offense. The closer to the beginning of the word the “R” is, the greater the offense; the further toward the end of the word, the lower the offense. High words: are, or, our, and air. I bought at the grocery three BIG cans of food containing meat and vegetables with huge whole cooked animals in them. I had a whole pig in congealed sauce. I bought them wholesale and sold them to the grocer at retail. We spent a while figuring out the mark-up, cost, and profit. When I left the grocer was looking for me. I was in the parking lot and I was happy. I started running and wondered if the people there knew I could fly. I ran over some grassy slopes and took off flying. I then walked across a road to swim in a clear river. A dark figure was swimming beneath me, but it wasn’t dangerous, it just wanted to play. I swam over to the edge of the road and a woman was sitting in a car with two bags of poison. She said people all over the world were poisoning the earth and it was too beautiful to be endangered. I got my keys mixed up with someone else’s. I bought three birds, two parrots, and another unknown kind of bird. I put them in the refrigerator in small, rounded plastic cases. This seemed the smartest and correct thing to do. The next day the middle one was melting. I took it out and it changed to a new animal, part dog, part cat. Everyone knew what it was but me. An unhappy policewoman started to arrest me but I found something wrong with her so she left me alone. I did a painting of a large colorful staircase and listened to people critique it. I heard mostly appreciative positive remarks. The steps were just a segment of stairs, not the top, no indication of where the staircase led. Then the gallery closed and the guards locked up the room. They wouldn’t let me back in so I could find out where the steps went to. My professor, also a very good friend, had some type of head injury. It was peculiar because it was serious and invasive, bloody and poorly bandaged. I was in bed next to him and the bandaging apparatus encircled the top of his head like a mechanized halo. It was disgusting and revolting and its involvement with his head and neck seemed inappropriate, painful, and pointless. The points where needles pierced his scalp and held it in place were dotted with dried blood that looked like tiny bloody biscuits. I lay there on my stomach watching him sleep and when he woke he said we should go to the store. I went naked. Once at the store he picked me up to see over the counters. I said, “Stop, you’ll hurt yourself!” Holly Stewart Kansas City, MO May 9th, 2007 Perhaps under suggestion of this assignment, I remembered a dream. Maybe one wouldn’t call it a dream, as it occurred after I started to wake up, in a state of semi-consciousness, as I became aware of my surroundings. I slipped back into dream, but with “lucid” control of the dream-world, which took on a more cosmic dimension than my usual “realistic” dreamland of wooded, mountainside labyrinth-pastiches of real-world place memories. I was standing on the edge of a platform in space surrounded by a dense galaxy of jewel-like stars. I was speaking to a man I understood to be my father, but I could not see him as he was standing behind me. I spoke out, “Do you know what lies behind the face?” I was referring to the woman’s face that covered the horizon of our vision. As if in response to my inquiry, the translucent, starry face rotated up and away to reveal total darkness. I answered myself, “Nothing! Nothing!” and jumped off the platform. I felt the sensation of falling and saw my body below me plunging feet first into the blackness. My father’s golden, armored arms caught me and I woke up. John Fell Ryan New York, NY (More dreams coming soon.) ========================= added ========================= Often I dream of houses I haven’t visited before. I know their layout and explore them in detail, and yet know there are rooms I haven’t been in before, and some are left undiscovered… perhaps for later… I don’t know. This house had a long hallway that led from the large kitchen with a large wooden table and a range or aga in it. There were rooms off to the left and a huge, dilapidated conservatory on the right through which you could get to the garden and driveway. The first room on the left was run-down, with lots of timber scattered around, and I had to pick my way through to find some stairs in the far right hand corner. Light shone through from the open door from the conservatory. It smelled of sawdust and wood and stepping through it and over bits of wood made it quite precarious. Halfway down the stairs there was a room up to the right, although the stairs continued downwards. The room to the right was decorated green and had comfortable bean bags in with shelves full of CDs and records, and music was playing through patio doors to a lawn area outside. It was a room to chill out and relax in. There were guitars and various musical instruments and I was trying to learn to play. Sunlight flooded in through the windows…. the carpet was green, too. I was exploring the long hallway again–I’m not sure how I returned there—and far down on the right, after the conservatory had ended, was a highly decorated ornate room in reds and golds, with a huge four poster bed all made up in it and carved sculptures on the walls. I wanted to carry on and explore the hallway further but someone was calling me back towards the kitchen. I passed a room with a closed door and was drawn to open it. Inside it was full to overflowing with all kinds of objects: things from the past, things waiting for homes, a real treasure trove. The longing to stay and sift through it all was immense, but I had to come out of there. I wandered back through the conservatory to outside where there were several old cars—not vintage ones, just old, and there was someone I recognized from the past, although I couldn’t see their face, smoking and drinking and waiting for me…. A soulmate, a reassuring connection…that kind of feeling…being welcomed and wanted and held closely… Katie Sweeney Guernsey 1. I was on vacation with my parents and friend L. in China, high up on the 42nd floor (or whatever) of a high-rise condo building, our vacation spot. I was wearing an insane outfit consisting of bright blue shorts, a crisp white shirt, and an enormous bonnet with a sunrise (like the old Japanese flag) painted on it. My lips were very red and my hair curled like Judy Garland’s in Meet Me in St. Louis. In other words, I was a glamorous 1950s pinup girl. Apparently I was being punished, as was L My parents had enclosed us in this sweltering condo, and we were all sitting at the kitchen table as sun streamed in from the window. I couldn’t tell if this enclosure-in-sweltering-condo was on purpose or the result of my mother not being able to open the window or door, but the parents pretended that it was on purpose. Finally I asked whether my father might try to open the window/door, and he did and was able to open them, so we left. Weird. The sense of gleeful guilt was palpable, though. 2. This dream had a strong through-line and character-consistent narrative: I was sitting in the library, reading a book on China in the Middle Ages, and suddenly the thought occurred to me: if we could just figure out whether there were loan-words used in China in the Middle Ages, we’d be able to figure out which cultures interacted with China. Silk road stuff, wot. So I ran—literally, got up and went a-running—with this idea to my friend C.C., who figured in my dream as a medieval Chinese specialist but is in real life an early Modern English specialist. Hum. At any rate, I ran to him with my idea and said, “So, are there a lot of foreign loan-words in Middle Chinese?” to which he replied, “No; see my book.” (He had also already published books in my dream. In fact, he had a fancy job. But oh well.) So I looked in his book, where he had chronicled all the loan-words on one page of like 5,000. Damn, I thought. But then, before I could leave, he pulled out this pyramidal bottle of lotion. It said: RABBI MARC EPSTEIN, SPIRITUAL TOGETHERNESS RETREAT 2005 or something of the sort. He said with this really creepy grin, “Do you know what this is?” and I said, “No, although I think that’s my local rabbi.” He confirmed that he had bought the bottle in the Milwaukee airport (Gen. Mitchell International, in case you don’t know) gift shop, though he hadn’t actually attended the retreat. At this point I thought that he was coming on to me, though we both knew that he had a wife. Anyhow, he pressed the bottle’s nozzle, and out came this hard, clear tube of jellyish substance. He then said, “Watch this,” and placed the wormlike cylinder in his palm, and pressed his palm very hard against mine. The warmth of our joined hands melted the tube, which caused a chemical reaction and released a very pleasant odor. This was apparently the gimmick: people at the retreat would press palms until such a thing happened, at which point they’d usually be spiritually bonded, or at least more so than they had been before. He (CC) proceeded to invite me over to do this very thing with him and his wife, explaining that they often did it while watching Saturday Night Live. Apparently they thought it was hilarious; in fact, he was giggling madly as he went through the ritual with me. Weird. I came away feeling sort of horny and quite frustrated and confused. Oh, I should mention: In both of the dreams I had the vague sense that all the action was taking place on some part of the set of The Music Man—like, when I was running, I ran into the music-hall, and at certain points I was in the garden or marching down the street. The color scheme was also very like that in The Music Man, and I think that the Wells Fargo Wagon was rolling past in the background at times. This was all more of a somatic thing than a definite sighting, though. 3. In this one, my institution of higher learning (higher-higher, not higher) was sponsoring a schoolwide talent show, and everyone I knew was in it. I was in this routine where we all wore a different bright color of puffy pants, and mine were fluorescent pink and my not-so-friend M’s were white. She was scowling in her white pants as we observed the acts of the day, which were all orthodox Jews doing something or other. I wanted to throw a stone (pardon the un-PC self-hatred there), mainly because they were self-exoticizing at the expense of more attention-deserving groups. (Sound familiar?) As I sat there, feeling surly and waiting to go on, this woman next to me started telling me why we hadn’t been able to attend on the previous day. It turned out that she was one of the organizers of the talent show. I had wondered about that, because when we all showed up we were turned away, due to the alleged presence of a suicide bomber. In fact, the organizer clarified for me, there had been no suicide bomber, but a rather risqué topless act involving black and brown bald men with breasts, and when these performers had begun to do their stunt, the organizers had decided to call off the day’s festivities. But someone had petitioned on behalf of the epidermal/gender minorities, and there they were, doing their topless acrobatic schtick. Meanwhile, we all got into an intriguing conversation about recent events going on in the Congo—apparently, the U.S. had claimed sailing rights to all of the Congo’s shoreline and surrounding waters, with each state allotted a couple square miles in which to cavort. This seemed extremely sad and simultaneously exciting to me, since (it appeared that) I had just decided to write my dissertation on the Congo, and now it was all over the evening news. “How lucky for you!” people kept saying. 4. This was one of those dreams that was a combination of aesthetically beautiful and rich in narrative twists and turns, keeping me, the dreamer, on the edge of my somnolent seat. Here’s the story: my longtime Wisconsin friend S. and I were in wisconsin, she on a visit home from her current living-place (that being Israel—I know, it bothers me, too), and we were looking for something to eat. We went to George Webb’s, home of the 25-cent hamburger and disgusting noodle soup, but a female rapper was filming a video there, so we couldn’t stay. Therefore, we went to a steakhouse where there was way too much food (some of it “experimental,” like raw pickled turkey from China), and at one point I was literally inhaling yards of meat on a seeming conveyor belt directly into my mouth. It was sort of disgustingly delicious, and I felt bad for the dead meat and whatever it had formerly been. (i think it was largely beef.) Then, under the table this woman started crying and pulling at my pantleg, and I thought I’d offended her. but it turned out that the waitress serving us had stolen her job, and she wanted revenge. Not desiring any part of this weird scene about to play itself out under the table, S. and I decided to relocate ourselves to the downstairs seating area. This, however, turned out to be a sort of time-out-of-place, a 19th-century parlor all decked out in amber and sepia tones and lace and bodices and elaborate hairdos with large hairpins and hats and cummerbunds and etc. It was beautiful. I think there were even some kitschy Victorian knickknacks and a piano and things. Beethoven’s Ninth was playing—the last segment of the symphony, the one that Wagner liked best—and this entire dramatic scene unfolded between a Victorian woman (demure, downcast eyes, playing with gloves, reading a book with a paperknife, fingering her escaping tendrils) and a man (waxen mustaches, eyeglass, top hat which he removed to reveal shiny pomaded hair, nice-smelling, starchy linen, a man of commerce and politics and general import). S. and I watched it, entranced. We were sort of there, but not, and this was nothing like the steakhouse where we had formerly been, but at the same time I believe that we kept inhaling meters and feet and cubits of steak as we watched these delicate and otherworldly people interact. 5. We were plunged back into the holiday season (yecch!—almost a Kafkaesque nightmare, that), and my mother and all of her little friends had decided that thanksgiving should have a “London underground” theme. This meant that the musical entertainment would be scruffy throwbacks to the beginnings of punk, and the turkey was actually roasted in the London sewer, coated with a crust of shit, which was said to make it taste better. Of course, it smelled like sewage, so my mom had all these ideas about cutting it open away from the guests to deprive them of the smell. However, my father disobeyed her and started to carve it in its central place, and she freaked out and screamed a lot (nothing unfamiliar there), and we all tried to convince her that the house didn’t smell like shit (and in fact it didn’t—I think the coating had aged to the point where it no longer stank). But she was inconsolable, and thanksgiving was basically ruined, especially when the mods and rockers and proto-punks tramped mud all over the rug. 6. Essentially, I was in India somewhere, and this Israeli artist had created this huge and impressive art installation that was a virtual reality game wherein two people would enter this labyrinth composed of neon lights in non-symmetrically crisscrossing patterns on the floor and walls. Through our directed walking on these neon grids, we would be told to strip gradually down to nakedness, and then our bodies would be placed in these virtual shaping devices that would create pseudo-bodies (uniform projections of our profiles), and then we would have images superimposed on our bodies, like neon-green boots on our foot-region, and then suddenly those boots would actually appear materially on our bodies. Weird, no? So I played it with this guy who I felt was mildly attractive—I should mention that the whole point of the installation was to infuse us with the desire for sex—but by the end of the game I was totally disgusted with this figure standing across from me at a far distance, wearing nothing but green boots, his penis sort of embedded in this virtual cloak but visible as something not too impressive. Weird. And then right after this I was kidnapped by a large, bald, and hideously ugly Israeli man, who said something like “Do you like my friend’s invention?” and then, before I could answer that I did not, clapped his hand over my mouth and led me away, continuously sniffing my hair and smiling in a sexually possessive manner. for some reason it didn’t dawn on me for awhile that I was being kidnapped -- despite the ugliness of this guy and his prepossessing manner, I felt honored that he had singled me out as his object, his captive. he led me to a middle-eastern restaurant, where I lazily spelled out codes of escape in chickpeas and made plans over the phone to meet a friend in dhaka, but in fact I had no intention of escaping and even looked forward to having forced sex with this weird israeli man. the whole dream was rather happy. WEIRD. Katie Zien Chicago, IL Dream of a Tall Building and Rose Stairs The top of a brand new building overlooking a Haussmannian boulevard, only, oddly, not in Paris but in Kuwait. The peach light of late afternoon like a hesitation between a glorious day and a dust storm. It has the urgency of something spectacular about to happen, not the spectacle of corrupt politics or the opening of a new mall, but of a secret about to be revealed or an encounter that might change someone’s little life. I am at the top of this tall building looking down at a boulevard so long it turns into a pinpoint, at the sidr trees lining it, at the buildings on either side, boxy and beige, different sizes. I climb up rose marble stairs. I’m already as far up as the steel elevator goes, but the stairs can take me higher. I don’t know what to expect. This is Kuwait. What could I possibly expect to be up there? I don’t understand why I am so intrigued, why I think I might actually be surprised. It’s this that matters, I think to myself in the dream. Remember this. This feeling that I might be surprised by something at the top of a building on a Haussmannian boulevard, oddly, in Kuwait. And the light, the orange light that is almost Rome’s. A light reflected in the rose of the marble stairs. I notice as I go along that the workmanship is perfect. Perfectly cut rose marble, almost edible. The stairs curve and the railings are a chocolate bronze. I get to the top of this building which by now I know is residential. (I immediately think to myself that I must ask about the rent; I must move into this space at all costs; here I will be happy; here I will remember how to be surprised.) At the top of the stairs, it’s a Café Central. It’s Vienna. My father’s Vienna. Gilded mirrors and marble floors, rose and green. Square tables covered with crisp, white tablecloths. Vaulted ceilings and newspapers on sticks. And here too a view of the boulevard and the peach light coming through massive, arched windows. I am bewildered in this room, but it makes me think that Kuwait too can be a Paris, a Rome, a Vienna, a place with orange light and rose marble. A place where the finishing is divine. I imagine candlelit perfection and no war. I wake up and can think only of my father, young. And a Kuwait that doesn’t exist and probably never will. I ask my father whether he used to go to Café Central when he lived in Vienna. No. Café Central had not been reopened yet after the war. It was Café Havelka, close to the Russian sandwich shop. No gilded mirrors, no vaulted ceilings, no rose marble. But he remembers her, Frau Havelka, with her thick album, layers of photos and clippings, and, in recent years, her daughter too. “I remember her face. Nothing has changed.” But it has, and this dream reminds me that it has. Mai Al-Nakib Kuwait My dream is a transparent half-balloon house in the middle of mild wild woods close to a massive lake with natural brown trout and other species, and with full independent solar wind powered energy delivery system, including a wood sauna. The house contains a high quality music studio and fine art studio and an excellent kitchen and wellness bathroom on top of the house. there is a landing platform for my small, solar-powered helicopter, which can in winter times also be used as skidoo or at any time as a water boat. It has full wifi, the fastest available internet connection all over. Beside the house there is a smaller but equally designed greenhouse where I grow my own vegetables, mushrooms, berries, and fruits, which is 90 percent of what I feed myself with. The rest has to be fished, bought, or traded once a week on top of the greenhouse. There is a wind-protected open sky yoga place with direction to the east where the sun rises. I would live there with my family in absolute privacy or visionary solitude. the place would be protected by powerful singing angels from any harm nature and humans can come up with. agf Berlin Like a lot of people my age, I’ve all but lost the ability to recall my dreams. So I started asking my daughters about their dreams when waking them up. I was hoping this would be my opportunity to peek into their subconscious minds—that the narratives and symbolism of their dreams might reveal something about their understanding of the world. Not so. What I discovered was that they dream about the same images that occupy their minds when they’re engaged in imaginary play: stuffed animals, baby animals, fairies, etc. For example: Lucy O’Dowd (age 6): ”First, there were two baby cheetahs playing together in the secret woods where only baby animals play. There was one human baby who had a secret door and could go back and forth to the baby woods and play with the animals there. Then, all the parents came to pick up the baby animals and take them home. But one of the baby monkeys slipped through the secret door to the human world. A fairy brought the baby monkey back to its parents. Then you woke me up.” Lily O’Dowd (age 9): “I was playing in the backyard with some stuffed animals, and I was the same size as them. Then, a huge bird that looked like a pterodactyl swooped down and picked us up by our tails (I was surprised to find out that I had a tail too). The creature flew to the park and dropped us. We floated and floated until we landed in a big tree. We stayed there because we couldn’t figure out how to get down.” I doubt your artists will find musical inspiration in these dreams, but my daughters would be disappointed if I didn’t submit them. Kyle O’Dowd Washington, DC High as a Kite with a Home to Lose I watched myself swim across the screen and into a tunnel, shivering at the peculiar fish that glided by. It was dark and cold inside, hardly what I fathomed of this underwater world. The scales on my mermaid’s tail looked pixilated in what little light there was, and my flowing, fiery hair didn’t match my personality. Frightened by the abyss-like passageway, I closed my eyes and swam as fast as I could. It was getting harder to breathe when then the air became clear, smelling like cardboard. I opened my eyes. My mermaid fin was gone, and I was standing next to my family on a giant Monopoly board. “Who wants to go first?” my dad asked. “I do!” I shrieked, jumping for the chance to get out of this strange place. They put me in the green plastic cannon and shot me across the board. I landed in the cellar. There were colorful toys all around, and two kids playing Monopoly. They looked up at me in surprise. “Look! It’s a mermaid!” As they were running towards me, I noticed a yellow tube slide at the end of the room. Feeling fear, I ran to it and slid down, out before I knew it. I looked up. I was in a smaller, pitch-black cellar room, but something was different about this one. I noticed an open door at the wall, light pouring through every inch of it. Light, I knew, would lead me somewhere I wanted to go. Light that I could feel would lead me somehow to safety. I walked into the light, finally going home. The Beginning of Life: Snakes “Maura, why are we here?” I asked, following her cautiously into the giant movie theater. “I thought it looked interesting. There aren’t many places that hold conventions and show movies in the next room!” she said, wide-eyed. The movie theater was panorama-style. A wide, low expanse; basically the opposite of an IMAX. We sat down and Maura stared into the screen. I tried to watch, but the call from the booths in the other room was distracting me. I didn’t really want to watch a movie about the beginning of life, either. “I’ll be back in a minute,” I whispered to the shadow next to me. She nodded and I sauntered over to the door, turning the light silver knob into a world of sellers and buyers. The area had a high ceiling and plain stalls lined the great expanse. Simple gray carpet and plaster covered the walls and floors. Although boring, it was a lot to take in. “CAROLINE!” a maternal voice yelled to me. I looked across the room to my mother, who was standing in front of a table and a tired-eyed woman. “I’m coming,” I sighed, my bewilderment interrupted. As I got to the table, I noticed that the woman had a mysterious edge to her. I also noticed the green tree snake lounged across her forearm. “I want to see if you’re allergic to snakebites,” Mom said. And why would you want that? I’m not going to the Amazon, or anything. I sighed again, muttering under my breath. Although this didn’t make sense, I thought about how it wouldn’t be a big deal and gave in. I would actually give this crazy woman my attention. Sitting down, the mouse-haired woman gently touched my hand and then quickly stuck the snake’s fangs into my skin before I could even say a “go ahead.” It didn’t hurt. In fact, the sensation was quite odd. It almost felt relaxing… welcome… maybe even good. “No, you’re not allergic,” she said. I could sense a bit of sarcasm welling up inside of me mere seconds after the pierce, and I settled on letting it out. “You’re right,” I smirked. “I’m not allergic to the snake, I’m allergic to you.” I walked out of the building with the snake now lounged across my arm. “Thanks a lot,” it smiled. Caroline, 14 Seattle, WA May 6, 1994 Picnic and rest in the grassy median strip with the family. The tiny rabbits that live in the hedge are bouncing around too close for me, so I ball up my socks and throw them at one particularly bold rabbit. May 13, 1996 The waves hiss and steam as they crash against the slowly-creeping lava. I go to the street at the top of the dunes where the lava is still glowing orange. Someone has left a bunch of jellybeans here, and I toss them onto the lava to watch them melt. The temptation to eat the beans is great. June 23, 1997 My stalker is back. He caught up with me in the gift shop where I was admiring the twisted, intricate things in the counter cases. It was the same spiel as before. We were meant to be one. Our lives, our fates, are braided together. Blah blah blah. He leaned down to put his pleading face before mine. He didn’t look as bad as I’d last left him, though one of his irises was missing—I could see the driver slots in the threaded socket as he tried to lock eyes and sympathy. I smashed his head against the wall a few times, wishing there was something more substantial there than colored plastic pushpins; something to penetrate that thick skull of his. I cracked his jaw against the counter and then looked him in the working eye. “I’m sorry,” I said, “but I don’t believe I know you.” Another few thumps. “Please don’t contact me again.” I gathered up my bags and speed-walked towards the exit. “OK, wait!” he called. “It was the integrator!” (And somehow I could picture it, a tiny shiny machined module bristling with electrodes, strangely like the jewelry I’d been appreciating.) “It was supposed to unify my processors, but instead it formed the creative core of an organic mind! You!” I stopped dead on the doorstep. Whoa! Maybe he has a case! June 20, 1994 I don’t remember how the dead whale ended up in our canal, but I remember the little animated TV short about its removal caused a stir over its bad taste rendition of the canal being flushed like a toilet, and—especially—over how they illustrated the faint tang of blood drifting back into the canal. Still, it was very well done on such short notice. Almost as soon as the TV feature was over, I found the truck parked outside my house, where the sponsor Mr Jalfrezi paid the driver the $10,000 whale-removal fee. I went outside to thank Jalfrezi and the driver for disposing of the whale. The back of the truck was dripping with red blood and green cash. The driver was eager to chat about the short animated cartoons he’d produced on his computer and distributed through a firm in New Delhi—apparently, that was how he really made most of his money. A classic American self-made millionaire! Looking at some of his videotapes, wrapped in the pale blue liners of the Video Library, I was surprised to see that he’d been producing these things since the early 80’s, and some of them had gained considerable critical acclaim. The pictures on the videotape covers looked hand-drawn to me, though, not computer-generated. I wonder if he had produced the TV feature on the flushing of the whale? The truck driver/animator wanted to hold a concert in honor of the whale and its disposal, in the dry canal bed in front of my house. He and his partner sat in the back of the truck, improvising on drums made of old coffee cans, to produce a musical portrait of Mr Jalfrezi. He was to create an actual portrait as well, by scratching an image of Jalfrezi into the plastic lid of the coffee-can drum as he played, although the little reference snapshot he showed me, of a man with a fluffy gray beard and unruly hair, didn’t seem to match the young, clean-shaven, dark-skinned millionaire I’d met a few moments before. I took over the second drum after a few minutes and did my best to follow along. The shiny duct tape covering half of the coffee-can lid made it harder to find the drum’s sweet spot, but did allow more variation in timbre. After a little while I was confident enough to lead the improvisation for a few moments, drumming a countdown in honor of Jalfrezi’s moon-rocket career, while the truck driver beat the drone of the engines. After the concert, he told me how the banana-crystal flute adds the atmosphere he needs for his animation soundtracks. It was a heavy thing about the size of a banana, yellow and glassy, and it sounded like the chanting of Tibetan monks. June 27, 1993 ...wandering around in a landscaped park, damp from a recent rain, possibly with a companion. The park has pleasant and cozy spaces formed by hedges, wooden trellises, etc. Other people are there; the atmosphere is subdued. In a little “room” of flowering trellised vines I find some sort of craft sale; someone is selling attractive, homey ceramic pots and different flavored sugars. I feel sad seeing that they’re almost out of cinnamon sugar and there’ll never be any more. The vendor turns out to be my ex-landlady, and we talk with strained politeness. I ask about a large covered jar filled with sugar, and comment that it would look nice in her kitchen (in the house we used to rent). I don’t want to spend money, but I’m tempted to buy it anyway, just a small bit of pleasure before it’s all over. I’m at home, but it’s someone else’s home; perhaps I’m visiting another city and staying with a friend. I put the yellow-and-white flowery jar full of sugar on the kitchen table. Things are cluttered, abandoned: Windows open so the misty rain is coming in, and there are piles of stuff on the floor, as if the owners of the place left in a hurry. I’m starting to feel weak, want to talk to someone. I realize that my friend Eric, whom I haven’t seen for years, lives nearby. I look out the big glass patio doors, above the houses across the street, at the ones up much higher on the hill: I bet that’s where Eric lives. Light glints off of the distant houses. Rain coming in the open doors has blurred the pages of the phone book, which is half covered with unopened mail and such, but it’s already open to the right page, and I can see his name and number underlined, although the felt-pen line of ink is fading and separating into a soggy rainbow. No answer. I go outside, where the sun is shining mildly now. My hands are shaking and my joints are sore. Lots of people are lying in the street, motionless, dead. Maybe aspirin will help, I think, if I can just control the stiffness and joint pain until it passes. Back inside, I struggle to open a bottle of aspirin, and shake out three pills... why is one of them pink? I swallow them dry and go get a glass of water. I start to write on a legal pad as I go back outside. “I’ll be better after the rain.” That’s it, I’ve heard that people with arthritis, etc. are sensitive to stormy weather. “My head hurts; it’s hard to think.” Like the feeling of being awake for days without rest. “THERE’S NO RAIN.” My handwriting is visibly shakier lower on the page. I have to sit down, on the sidewalk, look at the vacant eyes of the bearded man lying in the gutter. I can’t hold the pen anymore. I lie down next to him. April 16, 1997 We decided to elope to Jupiter. In the excitement of new love, though, we had forgotten the eccentricities for which the cruise lines were noted. We bought our tickets at Moonport, and the reassuring bustle of the terminal was the last we would see of ordinary human commerce. Buying a ticket did not guarantee us a berth on the ship. With hundreds of other ticket-holders, we navigated the entry-maze, rushing forward when the blank-faced cultslaves with their polearms let us pass, cutting under ropes or leaping barriers when we thought we could get away with it. At the airlock we got separated, and she helped me... (...at the airlock we got separated, and I helped him under the final gate to board.) The ship was a vast maze of huge cargo holds connected by tiny closets and narrow corridors. The only accommodations for humans were whatever they could scrounge out of cargo. Our section had been settled for decades, and, as the local holds seemed to be used to transport mostly lumber and lawn furniture, was reasonably well equipped. We settled in a small sheetrock apartment near a bulkhead, with food (mostly frozen vegetables) and water within a half-hour walk, and no other passengers in evidence. We found an antique computer in a glass-walled room that would read our music tapes, and settled down to pass the four-month trip with fucking and Led Zeppelin. And when the ship rang like a gong and the world turned sideways I knew that life was over. I’d been wandering a few holds away from home, and everything had changed. Corridors had vanished; familiar (wooden; colonial or ranch style) doors opened to blank walls; airlocks had been sealed, strangely, with plywood. It took me six days to find my way back, and she wasn’t there. There’s no news channel, no net, no crew on a cruise ship. I’d lost track of time and had no idea how far we were from Jupiter or whether we were still moving at all. I spent a week raging and weeping in a faded plastic lounge chair with a jug of alcohol I’d found in a closet, until another passenger showed up. I’d been camped in my chair in a wide notch where some long-past passengers had created a sort of auditorium of folding chairs between the bulkhead and endless racks of water-stained lumber. He was at the far corner of the hold, shouting; it took me a minute to focus and far longer to stand up. I followed him to a lounge, of sorts, that I hadn’t seen before: three old couches arranged around a cardboard box; a tape player; a toilet in a plywood cubicle. There were people here. They were talking to me. My head throbbed. I’d been planted on that decaying sofa for some time when one of them climbed up on the back to flip some switches high on the wall. Something about restarting the ventilators. The lights went out; the soft hum of the fans, which I’d never noticed before, faded out. A click, and everything was as before. And I could see it in my mind’s eye, behind those glass walls, that old machine, with a single tape loaded and ignored for weeks: the old computer rebooted, restarted, replayed, and the walls echoed with Led Zeppelin. Ranjit Bhatnagar Brooklyn, NY I’m with old friends—a lot of them—and it’s almost as if we’re going to attend a class and we need school supplies. Jessica finds one pen that we need, which costs $200. We decide to buy it. I leave the class (or whatever) to find a cheaper version, and we cross a vast mountainside to get to wherever we are going. I am driving on a ledge barely wider than the car. I later return in the same way, and conclude that rather than pay the $200 we owe, I’m going to return the pen, even though there technically are no refunds...I figure that since we haven’t paid for it yet, the pen is still in their possession and therefore we can’t possibly be billed for it. I run into a coworker, Chris, in the parking lot. He convinces me to join him in stealing a van, which is parked outside the pen store. I go inside the store, slip the pen back on the shelf, and quickly detour to the cat litter aisle to grab a big bag—I think it will give us an excuse for “using” the van. I run out, after paying, and the store manager asks me not to run. Then I escape, stealing the van with Chris. Then I am in a hotel room, by myself, lying on the bed, which is just a mattress and boxspring on the floor. The room is colored with mauve and gold, some orange. Billowy curtains. The radio is on. I’m lying face-down and I know I’m dreaming, maybe even daydreaming, while I listen to a story on the radio. It’s about women in India, or somewhere in south-central Asia, who are being killed by men for having too many babies. Flash to a woman descending a narrow staircase with two babies in her arms. One is bigger than the other. It’s within a labyrinth of a castle and I am able to spy on her. I watch as she plucks one of the babies from her embrace and sets him, Indian style, as if a Buddha, upon a briar bush. But the bush’s thorns look like the twists of barbed wire. She flees with the other child. The baby sits atop the bush, bleeding, and when she’s gone I rush to him, pick him up, and put him in the sling I am wearing around my neck, which cradles him like a hammock. He cries for the first time. I hush him and hurry to my room. Again I have a vision–I’m without the baby, and I’m spying on an Indian woman come before a judge. She stands before him, head bowed, and he scolds her. I can’t understand what they’re saying because they speak Hindi, but as she turns to go I can derive her parting words...she turns around and tells him that he forgot to make one of his men rape her as punishment. Yes, he says, and demands she strip before him. She wears a beaded bikini beneath her robes, and he nods... then a man wearing basically nothing leads her into a room to the right. I see him doing it to her from behind, and I run away. I’m back in my hotel room, awakened by knocking. I see a group of my friends. All enter and I’m fearful that the sexual nature of my dream might have meant them seeing me in a compromising position. But they didn’t, so I supposed I hadn’t been in one. I tell my friend Marlena of the horrible things happening to the women in India, how they are being killed for having too many babies, how I’d heard it on the radio. Ansley Murphy Well, I have been on sabbatical and living in San Marcos, TX, for the winter, and for the first time ever in my life, have been writing my dreams down. I guess it’s a benefit of the sabbatical that I actually have time to do this sort of thing, plus, the dreamscape seems richer when I’m working in the studio everyday, and am not weighed down by the pressures of teaching. So, here is one from the morning of April 5. I am driving my old 1969 Econoline van with my black lab Apolo (yes, he is named after the speed skater), and we are on country roads in Michigan on a sunny morning in the summer, trying to find the building where you get parking permits for the college campus. Suddenly, I am driving up a mountain road with my oldest sister. There is fog and slushy snow and the van drives like a champ, but the altitude is starting to mess with me (I suffer from altitude sickness above 7000 feet). The car ahead of me hits a large animal, perhaps an elk or a really large deer. It careens into the oncoming lane and lands on top of another large stricken animal, which lies against a concrete lane divider, like the kind you see on freeways when they are doing road construction. The light is dim, late afternoon winter light, and I go over to move the animals out of the way of the traffic so they don’t get hit again. The animals get up suddenly and run away, unhurt. They are running with a pack of horses. I am standing near an old gas station and one of the horses passes me. It is very prehistoric looking, or like a bronze sculpture, and it is enormous, with a wavy, sculpted mane and coat, blue-green in color. I touch it as it goes by me. I wake up thinking about the Franz Marc painting at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis called The Blue Horses. Billy Mayer Holland, MI, and San Marcos, TX I was staying at Rosanne Barr’s house in California. It was a big rambling home with a pool and many rooms. She was married to Howard Stern. There were many other guests staying there besides me, and they all had children. It was kind of like staying in a stucco-y resort hotel. Nobody knew whose children belonged to whom, but there were a lot of them running around. My husband was staying there with me. Before Rosanne came home I turned on all the light,s and she accused me of stealing. I knew I hadn’t stolen (or broken) anything, but was immediately worried that I wouldn’t be believed. She wouldn’t let it go and in her inimitable way told Howard (Stern) about what I’d broken. I overheard her and objected, “Well, I really don’t think it was me, Roseanne, but if you think it was, what can I do? I mean, I can replace it or fix it, I guess.” Howard was far too busy to get involved on anyone’s behalf. At one point in the dream I felt that she must be jealous of me, because one of her sons asked me to join him in the one of the many pools. I wrapped a towel around my body to cover up and agreed to a swim. When my husband, John came to the house later that night I was whimpering like a dog and told him that I was prepared to leave even if he wasn’t. I didn’t want to say at Roseanne and Howard’s big house anymore, but he resisted, thinking that I was taking everything she said too personally and making a big deal out of nothing. Alexandra Gersten Vassilaros New York, NY I consistently have dreams with mundane plot-lines and bland conversations. During the unfolding of these dreams I notice that I have either a loose tooth, or a sharding tooth. The tooth continues to bother me during the entirety of the dream; sometimes it comes out, leaving that strange emptiness that a missing tooth leaves behind). I find myself tonguing this emptiness as if it were an oxblood-painted curio shop of flesh. However, this dental issue never enters into the plot of the dream. I remember reading that Freud believed that dreams of crumbling teeth meant that the dreamer had castration fear. Although my teeth don’t actually crumble in the dream, it still makes me wonder. Tyler Blake Safford, Arizona Many years ago I went to south France, we drove by Picasso’s house. I really wanted to see the inside, but it was still private and there were three big black dogs guarding it, so there was no chance to even have a peek inside. For some reason I was really upset by this. Months later I had the following dream: I was back in the little village close to Picasso’s house and ran into his daughter. We got into a good conversation; there was a sparkly attraction between us. She asked me if I would like to come home with her. I accepted, and thus ended up being inside her father’s house. I felt like a kid on Christmas. The light that streamed throughout the house was an ocean of reflections. One room, vivid in my memory, had a billiard table in the center. There was a sculpted head protruding from the middle of the table. Everything was covered in a light-blue/grayish velvet: the walls, the doors, the ceiling (including the chandelier), the billiard table with the head, and the window frames. The air was filled with hovering pearls everywhere. My new friend walked to the window and opened it. There was a red slide that went directly into a pool that was shaped like one of the cubist naked women out of Picasso’s paintings. Next thing, we where both sliding down into the pool…and then, very unfortunately, my alarm clock went off. I am sure Sigmund Freud would have been very amused by this dream. Laula Fritz New York, NY I once dreamt that I was hiking in the mountains amongst magnificent and dramatic scenery that sparkled with light and hyper-saturated colors. My goal was to reach the top of the mountain and I steadily climbed a path that would take me there. As I neared the top, I picked up my pace, anticipating a spectacular view. Arriving, I walked towards the precipice, sensing no danger. About a foot from the edge, I suddenly and sickeningly lost my balance on some loose gravel. In a flash I knew I was going over the edge, unable to save myself. At that moment I made a conscious decision to take what control I could. If I was going to fall to my death, it was imperative that I control the fall; I somehow knew this could change my fate. With this thought, all fear left my body. As I went over the cliff, I formed my body into a perfect swan dive. In a state of euphoria, time slowed, and I was able to see my surroundings with crystal clarity as I flew head first, arms gracefully outstretched towards a river below. I awoke before reaching the bottom. Sharyn Charnas San Rafael, CA I keep having dreams where I’m building art installations. I am not an ‘installation artist’ (in real life); I am a painter. In this dream I was suspending the skeleton of a car from the ceiling. The site was a huge, dilapidated wooden building, like an old house with four or five floors and very high ceilings. There were lots of windows and the light was great. White paint was flaking off the walls inside and out. The whole place was very beautiful. The car skeleton was different parts of a car connected by chains or other flexible joints. It was like a fish skeleton. I was looking for more ideas and elements for the installation. I was exploring a part of the city that belonged not to people but to machines—trains, cranes, giant sorting machines with chutes and belts. The streets were abandoned; they were completely overgrown with lovely soft grass, because nobody ever came this way, for the streets just dead-ended in this world of machines. It was really fun and exciting discovering this unknown strange place in my city. I would use these living machines in my installation somehow. Another part of the installation required me to insert thin slices of meat into the optical drive on my laptop. It was difficult to get the floppy pieces of meat to load in straight; I had to hold both edges and guide them in slowly. The information from the slices of meat was being used to create T-shirt designs for my art show. Sam Sanford Austin, TX I have to get stiff paper at Staples. I leave my apartment and am jostled by the crowds of tourists with shopping bags and street maps. My dog won’t take a piss. People keep stopping me on the street to tell me that she looks like a fox. I open the door and enter a white room with furry rugs and plastic couches. I go to the window and watch the wild animals outside. They are licking big blocks of salt under artificial lighting. My Dad and I take pictures. He puts on a business suit and walks out. He has gone to get stiff paper at Staples. Robin Kahn New York, NY I dream that all our grandparents could be young again for just one day...to climb trees with us and play baseball in the park. Wouldn’t it be lovely to climb a tree with your grandmother? Rees Price I was never able to figure out why they kept coming, but I have an idea on how I got them to stop. I grew up in a split-level, three-story house, the oldest of four. Our basement was divided into two sections: one part was easily accessible by staircase, and the other part, the crawlspace, was accessible with some effort. The crawlspace was an expansive graveyard, covering the entire first floor just underneath the sunken family room, with only three feet of vertical space in which to navigate. It was where all the detritus from childhood went to rest... forever. It was where Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Christmas awaited resurrection. It was also a rich source of nightmares. The crawlspace was dimly lit by two bare bulbs my father had strung, the first of which was accessible at the entryway, behind an I-beam responsible for many headaches and colorful explosions of profanity. With the bulb lit, its rays barely threw light far enough to glimpse the next bulb, which had to be turned on at the socket. It was always a little damp due to a past flood. It smelled of aged cardboard and fireplace ashes, and you could use long grey metal doors that flipped up from the file cabinets as makeshift paths on which to crawl over the roughly-poured concrete. Even when my siblings and I would play hide-and-seek, we would never venture in much further than the spread from the first light bulb. One time when I was 8 or so, I did. I climbed far into the back corners to where an ancient changing table and an unsafe wooden play crib took up final resting places. The light from outside the crawlspace did not make it back this far: from my vantage, I felt like I was looking out from a tunnel. I was startled by something strange from the very dark opposite corner, and fearing the devil or a screaming skull or worse I ran as fast as I could on my knees, narrowly missing that I-beam. The dreams began soon thereafter. As I lay sleeping in a black and white world, comfortable in my twin bed, I awaken in a lucid dream state. I sense a presence that is neither benevolent nor evil. I levitate, floating just above my bed and begin what is to become a journey that will become familiar over the course of a year or more. I keep my eyes closed, fearing what I might discover upon opening. The house is silent; my sisters and brother, my mom and dad are all asleep. I float through my bedroom door on the third floor and sense the familiar counterclockwise descent down the staircases to the basement. The final door opens with a slight creak and onward, downward I float. The last turn to the left will bring me to the entrance of the crawlspace. Something is taking me to the crawlspace. My black and white world changes upon entering, with oranges and reds and yellows coalescing behind my closed eyelids: it’s warm but not particularly comforting. I never open my eyes, preferring to ignore the event and that this is actually happening. I drift deeper into the crawlspace where the light activity slows down and I presumably drift into deeper sleep. I thought of telling someone but never did. Instead, I decided that when I was ready, I would simply open my eyes when the colors began. My midnight journey would happen regularly, and I was getting curious, brave in spite of my fear. I did not know if wI would be able to open my eyes when the time came. Several events had happened where I did not—could not—allow myself to open my eyes. It happened again one night in the midst of a hot summer. I floated from my bed, always at such a slow pace, all the way down to the basement. I entered the crawlspace. The lights began. And I opened my eyes. Patrick Fox Milwaukee, WI This is not so much about a dream (although I will describe one) as it is about the effect this dream has had on my life since I had it. The dream itself happened one night right after I had been studying in the college library. There, I had taken a seat at a desk, where I noticed that someone had left a volume of some psychological journal or another on it. Browsing through the journal for no apparent reason, I came across a study on some phenomenon where a dreamer is aware that they are dreaming. The article gave a few tips on how to become aware that you are dreaming. As this was twenty years ago, I can’t remember some of them, but apparently turning a light switch on and off, trying to fly or levitate, and pinching yourself were three of the “reality checks.” I sort of filed this info away, but somehow remembered to try these very same things in a dream I had that night. The dream itself must not have been very interesting, since I can’t recall it, but when I remembered and looked for a light switch in the dream and tried to turn the light off, nothing happened (I guess electricity doesn’t work in dreams). When I tried to levitate and actually started to do so, I became very aware that I was dreaming and became filled with this weird/peaceful sort of awareness that I had never experienced before. I was “super-aware” of everything like I imagined God must be, or Buddha, and it felt wonderful. I next pinched myself and found to my dismay that this broke the spell and I was awake and back to reality. Since that dream, I have tested many light switches, tried to levitate, and pinched myself when I have found myself in surreal situations, or situations where I wish I was not in hopes of realizing it is a dream, or “waking up” and ending the ordeal. Later, when I fell off a roof in an accident and hurt myself bad, the first thing I did was pinch myself to see if it was a dream. When my dog, for no apparent reason, collapsed at my feet and died one day, I flexed my knees to try to float and pinched myself. When I accidentally burnt my wife’s wedding dress with an iron the morning of our wedding (she asked my to iron it), I tried a light switch. Even in non-surreal situations, I sometimes try these things to see if I am dreaming. To outward appearances, I might look a little crazy when I do these things, but that one dream and the feeling I had when I became aware that I was dreaming is the cause of it all. I have never experienced it again. Michael Norowski Gainesville, FL The Weeping Willow When I first met him, he reminded me of a weeping willow, a walking one, like the one in the garden close to my place. This particular tree always reminds me of an African beauty uncurling his long hairs down to his knees. When there was some wind, I almost imagined him combing his curls with dark fingers. I really liked him at first sight. Soon, we started to go out together. Few days after our first kiss, I had this most strange dream: I dreamt of him. He was not human anymore; he was the tree: the weeping willow. His long rastaflocks grew leaves, and his golden skin grew thick and woody. He was still, not walking anymore; his feet were set and rooting in a large open green field, scraped with strangely shaped grey stones. I was a kid again, playing in his shivering shadow, white-blonde, petite, and purely happy again. Rapidly, I grew older, a teenager passionately and lovingly attached to this tree. I thought that the wind in his branches was murmuring love secrets. I spent all my spare time in this field with the Tree. Often, I embraced him, folding my arms around his trunk, caressing his bark, touching his new leaves, breathing in his shadow, often having naps folded in his roots. But, one day, a very old woman, old as the Tree himself, came by and chased me, forbidding me to ever come back in the field, to approach the tree, her field, her tree. I stayed away, and I felt so lonely, longing so badly for him. I did not forget him, but as I was young enough I managed to get along with my life. Almost a year after being chased from the tree, the very same woman came back to see me. She asked me, she begged me as a favor to go back to see the tree, because he was dying, and because she though that I may be the only one who could actually save him. I hurried to see my beautiful dark tree, and I found him almost dead, so dry, so grey, leaves-less...only a colorful carpet of dead ones. I caressed his skin, his bark, and the skin peeled off, falling in dust. I whispered to him that I was back to him and thousand of other love secrets, but there were no answers in his branches. I folded my arms around him, and, listening carefully, I heard far away, and weakly, a light pulse of sap in his veins. Slowly, the trunk opened up around me, and I stepped in, starting to be absorbed by the Tree. Once I was inside him, it was pure bliss, a happiness like I never felt before, a fusion so absolute like no lover can even hope to form one day. Something light and unforgettable. The last image of my dream was a bud opening softly on one of his highest branch. Marie Malcles London, England I was 16 when I had this dream. It clearly had come from the news of a senior in my high school being pregnant. I’m two months pregnant, but my belly is huge. In front of me I can feel (still) the texture of my belly—it feels as if it’s a whole inch thick, and it’s dried and cracked and orange-ing. Everywhere around me, people are rushing me to get to the hospital. I keep telling them that I have seven more months, yet I find myself in a hospital. To appease them I even lay in a bed. They’re telling me to breathe and push, and I keep telling them that it’s not ready! After a long while, I tell them I’m going to the bathroom. I just get up and walk to a bathroom. Even before I sit down on the toilet, I can feel its coldness. Still, I almost have a little shock from sitting down on this very sterile, cold, hard linoleum. I pee and just rest for a second. I get up and take one step, and feel a tug “down there.” I motion forward again and feel the same. I move my feet back to where they had been before I moved forward and look down between my legs. Lying curled, motionless, and purple was a tiny baby that was attached to my umbilical cord. I reach between my legs and grab it and run to the doctors. While it’s still attached to my umbilical cord, they try to push and breath life into it. Alexandra Brand Sunnyside, NY
|
Esopus 9 (Fall 2007)
CONTENTS:
CONTENTS:
