11/2 dream: we performed the play in white. bathed in light. white curtains. it ended with mild applause and i was in a daze- i had remembered all my lines but suddenly realized i had no idea what the play had been. i lifted her dark hat for a kiss on the cheek which i finished by blowing air softly through her cupped hand ...and he joked how short i was holding onto her belt...
11/4 I dreamed our faces were painted forever...
and
Dreamed of some festival circus, clowning, giant rides with swings and spins, some magic whiskey given by an old friend brought back from a far off land- "that's the equivalent of three bloody sunrises" also my friend was addicted to peanut m&ms and somewhere in there the Simpsons offered solace...
11/24 Dreamed this morning of precariously balancing on a tall pole that acted as a gate hinge while two large wild bulls raucously snuffed about below- then labyrinthine wandering in the dark- a porch full of toys and masks, then...
...there was a vampire cat- I think it bit me and wanted more but I kept it at bay with it's emerald eyes prowling...things were heating up with a mysterious woman then interrupted when another vampire-like man who had been hunting me show...ed up...I was in process of transformation myself(from the feline bite i think) and my enemy grew suddenly scared with the awareness that I shared the same powers as he- the dream ended with the two of us encircling each other closer and closer for a death match- I distinctly remember being eager to tear voraciously at his jugular with my animal mouth...
feet landing slowly after a 72 hour dream levitation into the underwhirlled. a feast. a fervor. a succession of heart murmurs. this morning- i recalled a part of my dream: my father and a few others i think, were preparing to explore a deep underwater system of submerged caves. i was to join them and i was a little nervous as i hadn't been scuba diving in a long time and was concerned about our safety. my father had a very calm and confident demeanor about the matter. suddenly, i was deep underwater. it was dark and i could see light pooled at the surface above me. my father was there and i was flailing my limbs, trying to call out. i was worried i wouldn't be able to make it to the surface before i drowned. it seemed so far away, but then, determined, i began the ascent, shooting upwards like a bird and waking just as it seemed i was about to breach the surface...
this evening i was thumbing through dog-eared poems by W. S. Merwin and found this passage from a poem of his called "The Dreamers" :
a man with his eyes shut swam upward through dark water and came to air it was the horizon he felt his way along it and it opened and let the sun out so much for the sun and in the morning he began groping for the horizon like the hands of a clock day and night.
hawks flying about. we were driving in the country alongside a creek and old oaks and fields in the distance. i caught the hawk in my hand, and it turned into a baby hawk staring up at the sky. then i saw an armadillo by a lake. two mountain lions were circling about it and my sister and some others were there. i approached and one of the lions began to chase my sister who came running towards me, the lion both terrifying and exciting, but also playing like a cat.
penthouse suite.rooftop garden.a party.a crashing helicopter exploded-i jumped the rails to hero but green flashing light-it was a promotional stunt. showed my sister my wounded hand:pulling back flesh to reveal muscle.veins.dirt,"should i wash it?" "no!" she poked me with a needle,then my hand drained blood.ser...um.mud. "i may have to give you something else-this induces psychosis." "wha?"-hallucinations...
a dance competition on a hillside with someone else in front of a big crowd. afterward there was a giant metal fan flying through the sky over a big field- it flew right into a dark tornado and pieces went flying past our heads- someone said "one of these days we're gonna get hit." ended with me wander...ing a festival in the woods at dusk...
i was the newest member of a performance troupe and expectations were high. it was one of the member's 41st birthday and his present was that the young twins would spend the night in his room. i fell off the balcony and someone with a mat feathered my fall. i hadn't read the script- i wondered how it would flow...
flirting with a young woman next to my garden and then i pulled my crumbling back tooth from my mouth which was still attached by a strong skinny filament that kept growing- i wondered if i should pull it all the way out, but the broken tooth was a relief to rid...
"The rest of that day and most of the following one passed in a confusion of pain and laudanum-dreams. Sometimes Childermass thought he was standing on the ancient road under the speaking sky...A tight-rope was strung across the sky and a great many people were walking on it...Sometimes the pain in Childermass's shoulder escaped from him and ran about the room and hid. When this happened he thought it became a small animal. No one else knew it was there. He supposed he ought to tell them so that they could chase it out. Once he caught sight of it; it had flame-coloured fur, brighter than a fox..."
from Jonothan Strange & Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke.
ride your REM cycle, live your life while...
in this afternoon's dream a friend posted something online to me that said "i have never dreamed about you but today i dreamed we were dancing about a giant forest of trees with very deep roots..."
i wonder sometimes how much is process and how much is prophecy. self-fulfilling inner drilling.
"i dreamed i was a race horse...fighting fighting...i dreamed i was a beast of burden and i couldn't walk straight and i couldn't walk far...and i dreamed i was..." laura gibson
(seeing either of these two perform live, especially together, is entering the beehive weather of sleeping prayer- get in on that honeycomb and run it through your hair)
"You know that apple Adam ate in the Garden of Eden, referred to in the Bible?" he asked. "You know what was in that apple? Logic. Logic and intellectual stuff. That was all that was in it. So -this is my point- what you have to do is vomit it up if you want to see things as they really are. I mean if you vomit it up, then you won't have any more trouble with blocks of wood and stuff. You won't see everything stopping off all the time. And you'll know what your arm really is, if you're interested. Do you know what I mean? Do you follow me?" "I follow you," Nicholson said, rather shortly. "The trouble is," Teddy said, "most people don't want to see things the way they are. They don't even want to stop getting born and dying all the time. They just want new bodies all the time, instead of stopping and staying with God, where it's really nice." He reflected. "I never saw such a bunch of apple-eaters," he said. He shook his head.
-from a story called Teddy in J.D. Salinger's Nine Stories.
Dreams uproot the fruit tree for a new kind of see. Logic wobbles. Our whole way of thinking shifts. For instance, I might find myself in a city which is obviously not that city but in the dream there is no question. As if it is a stage prop. Dreams as the most convincing films in their suspension of disbelief. Most especially effected.
and more from Salinger's Teddy:
"You know Sven? The man that takes care of the gym?" he asked..."Well, if Sven dreamed tonight that his dog died, he'd have a very, very bad night's sleep, because he's fond of that dog. But when he woke up in the morning, everything would be all right. He'd know it was only a dream." Nicholson nodded. "What's the point exactly?" "The point is if his dog really died, it would be exactly the same thing. Only he wouldn't know it. I mean he wouldn't wake up till he died himself."
When I was around 20 years old, and living in Austin, I had a neighbor named Michael with a dog named Missouri. I had always been more of a cat person but Missouri made an impression on me with his old soul countenance. He was mottled with blacks and grays and whites like smoky ash and had warm, content eyes. He had traveled all over the country with his owner in an old van. I can imagine he had a lot of stories to tell. So Missouri got sick and it seemed clear he was nearing the end. I had a very intense dream one night in which Missouri showed up. He jumped into a swimming pool and halfway across underneath the water he transformed into a naked man who then climbed out on the other side. I woke up startled at the lucidity of the dream and the strong presence of Missouri. I couldn't recall ever having a dream with such an intense presence of an animal I knew, especially an animal that, though I had affection for, was not that close with. I looked over at the clock and noticed it was around 3 in the morning. A few days later I ran into Michael and asked how Missouri was doing. He told me sadly that Missouri had passed away. "Did he happen to pass on Tuesday, somewhere between 2 and 3 in the morning?" I asked. Michael got a strange look in his eyes and answered yes, wondering how I knew. "Well apparently he decided to visit me on his way out," I replied and proceeded to recount my dream...
The other afternoon I had a dream and in one part it was dark and I was on top of a hill looking down at some sort of lagoon or pond. There was a crocodile-like creature floating about gurgling and making primitive monsterish noises. Then it slipped underwater and transformed into a beautiful nude woman who climbed out on the shore...
"In the beginning Adam and the animals were together in Eden. This is one of our culture's oldest and most widespread stories. The story says that the animals passed before Adam, who gave them each their names. He looked and he saw. By the display of their living forms as they crept and strode and galloped before him, as they hopped about and flew away, as their fins and tails quivered under the waters, he recognized them and said their names. He knew who they each were...They still pass by nightly in our dreams. They still ask to be given 'names.' They still claim from us a knowing response that wants recognition for their individually specific natures...Are they coming to remind us of our affinity with them, to keep their presence before us? To guard against extinction, both theirs and ours? They may be coming to us so that the creation itself may perpetuate. If so, then they claim close attention such as Adam gave them at the beginning of the story of the world, now at what might be the ending of the story of the world. They require us to find again Adam's eye..."
-James Hillman, from Dream Animals
"I think I'd first just assemble all the children together and show them how to meditate. I'd try to show them how to find out who they are, not just what their names are and things like that...I guess even before that, I'd get them to empty out everything their parents and everybody ever told them. I mean even if their parents just told them an elephant's big, I'd make them empty that out. An elephant's only big when you put it next to something else- a dog, or a lady, for example." Teddy thought another moment. "I wouldn't even tell them an elephant has a trunk. I might show them an elephant, if I had one handy, but I'd let them just walk up to the elephant not knowing anything more about it than the elephant knew about them. The same thing with grass, and other things. I wouldn't even tell them grass is green. Colors are only names. I mean if you tell them the grass is green, it makes them start expecting the grass to look a certain way- your way- instead of some other way that may be just as good, and maybe much better..."
Animals trusted him, stepped into his open look, grazing, and the imprisoned lions stared in as if into an incomprehensible freedom; birds, as it felt them, flew headlong through it; and flowers, as enormous as they are to children, gazed back into it, on and on.
And the rumor that there was someone who knew how to look, stirred those less visible creatures: stirred the women.
how blurry is the border between which dream? waking as the parting and the entering. eyes closing and then another opening.
as in
I am not I
I am not I. I am this one walking beside me whom I do not see, whom at times I manage to visit, and whom at other times I forget; the one who remains silent while I talk, the one who forgives, sweet, when I hate, the one who takes a walk when I am indoors, the one who will remain standing when I die.
- Juan Ramon Jimenez (translated by Robert Bly)
or
Song Of The Race
Many people have gathered together, I am ready to start in the race, And the Swallow with beating wings cools me in readiness for the word.
Far in the west stands the Black mountain Around which our racers ran at noon. Who is this man running with me, The shadow of whose hands I see?
-an american indian song from the southwest
talking with my friend the other day about dreams and how we often either have the perspective of the participant or the observer. a fully-embodied "I" consciousness of experience in dreams versus the sense of being a detached audience watching your self, or someone else, from behind a thin curtain. I am typically more of a participant myself...
something from a book i enjoyed last summer...
"From there Nailwal took me to visit another swami who lived up in a high cave, halfway up a sheer precipice...His name was Swami Parnamad Addhoot Maharaj, and he sat with his legs crossed in the lotus position on a pile of straw. By his side he kept a pot of ink and a sheet of paper, and when I asked him why he did that, he told me he used them to write down his dreams.
'Dreams,' he said, 'prove that another life exists besides this one, and they also prove that life itself is a dream. Usually the most painful dreams seem to be the most real, but then when we wake up we realize that what we experienced was nothing more than a dream, and so we are relieved and happy. The same is true of life, for when we die we shall realize that we have been dreaming, and that our sufferings were not real. We will wake up and be happy in death. Another quality of dreams should also be remembered, and that is that dreams usually make no sense; they are often absurd and the themes are disconnected. But the truth is that life is much the same. Thus it is entirely vain to try to give it some meaning or to direct it. Life is only a little less absurd and disconnected than a dream. The same pattern may continue in death, and it may prove to be only a little less absurd and disconnected than life. Everything is repeated as in a series of mirrors.'
After he had spoken, the swami began to nod his head back and forth, and he said nothing more. I myself began to feel cold, for my thin clothing was from the south of India and I was not able, as Swami Parnad Addhoot Maharaj was, to produce internal heat.
We then went down a path cut into the face of the rock, which eventually led us back to the temple. I sat down on the steps and found myself in the company of beggars and sick men, saints and bandits, assassins, magicians, and poets."
and some fire: i dreamed of jealousy and a man who didn't want to answer her question. my mother reciting a poem. comforted by my sister's love. a party and complaints of lame excuses for one who couldn't come. a house that looked like it had been abandoned or burned down once. it felt familiar from another dream- that i had been in it once. the next day returning and the same house now on fire inside filling with thick white smoke. i pulled out in my old car then turned around, wanting to go take a picture to post- had this very clear image of my hand in smoke. a firetruck was arriving or leaving and blocked my way. once again thwarting my chances of taking photos in dreams as this has been a recurring theme- mostly as pertaining to trying to snap photos of whales in dreams...
and
fire jumping instructions for persian new year:
jump over the fire and say "zardi-ye man az to, sorkhi-ye to az man." That means: My yellowness goes to you, your redness comes to me.
dream from a week ago: a gathering in a building with lots of people. telling about a dream within a dream. kept trying to connect or share with someone i loved or had history with. her boyfriend was there. at one point she grabbed my hand while i was telling a story and he came over and complained. then everybody had to go outside for an emergency or a drill. we were in the country. long road and a big open field with trees on the horizon. i saw this amazing creature flying above the trees. it was a cross between a manta ray and a hawk. double-tailed light pouring through golden brown and white feathers. it was flying in elegant drifts and swoops like a manta ray under water. then it was in the road or maybe it was a different one, but crumpled in a dead pile. there was a man with a forklift about to scrape it up. i was distraught and yelling, perhaps because i wasn't sure it was dead and then it turned into a mountain lion. a big golden brown mountain lion with pointy white-tufted ears and even little horns i think. she was injured and had locked eyes with me, staring right at me, into me, intensely. i suddenly became afraid knowing she would be dangerous and unpredictable when wounded. i started to move in another direction and she leaped up and began sprinting as if to attack. i braced myself, unsure if she would follow through or whether i should retaliate, throwing my arms up in front of me. she was on top of me biting and scratching but i got the sense she wasn't using all her strength maybe even playing, and i stopped struggling- a bit of a surrendering over to fate or defense as measured by playing dead. she remained poised over me for a short while that felt eternal. i wondered why no one had come to help, starting to check in with my body and sensing my injuries were not critical though my right hand was cut open across the palm. the lioness was gone and i clambered to my feet, dazed and a bit dizzy, completely alone. holding my hand and applying pressure, walking slowly down the country road as i awoke...
