dreamers' songs leave track marks

recent dreams:

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...

I Get Along

"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)

Believing is Seeing

"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...

Zoophobia from selfburning on Vimeo.

"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..."

-Salinger

Return as an Animal from Bruno Dicolla on Vimeo.

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.

-from Turning Point by Rainer Maria Rilke

mirrors for the other us

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."

-from The Serpent's Paradise by Miguel Serrano

Garuda from Andres Salaff on Vimeo.

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.

soundtrack:
Sonido Martines Mix: El Somnambulo Orientalista
(i like his t-shirt)

and



"sleeping in these foxholes, hungry and cold, i had a dream last night. i dreamed i saw you..."

zoology inside of we

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...

closed eyes archives

"Into the earth I go down, go down.
Nothing but earth will I be seeing, will I be seeing.
I sink down into the old river-bed,
Down into the interior."

-from Songs of Kumastamxo



do they come to take away, or do they come to return? either way i pray as i lay me down to sleep such dreams to come and reveal deep- if god is always on our side, then in the dark we burn and spark with fire light.

recently finished "Ficciones" by Jorge Luis Borges whose rich, layered pieces always feel culled and sifted from mysteries underneath:

"...he knew that his immediate obligation was to dream. Toward midnight he was awakened by the inconsolable shriek of a bird. Tracks of bare feet, some figs and a jug warned him that the men of the region had been spying respectfully on his sleep, soliciting his protection or afraid of his magic...

...The rice and fruit they brought him were nourishment enough for his body, which was consecrated to the sole task of dreaming...

...He understood that modeling the incoherent and vertiginous matter of which dreams are composed was the most difficult task that a man could undertake, even though he should penetrate all the enigmas of a superior and inferior order; much more difficult than weaving a rope out of sand or coining the faceless wind...

He dreamed that it was warm, secret, about the size of a clenched fist, and of a garnet color within the penumbra of a human body as yet without face or sex; during fourteen lucid nights he dreamt of it with meticulous love. Every night he perceived it more clearly. He did not touch it; he only permitted himself to witness it, to observe it, and occasionally to rectify it with a glance. He perceived it and lived it from all angles and distances. On the fourteenth night he lightly touched the pulmonary artery with his index finger, then the whole heart, outside and inside...Within a year he had come to the skeleton and the eyelids. The innumerable hair was perhaps the most difficult task. He dreamed an entire man- a young man...Night after night, the man dreamt him asleep...

In the dream of the man that dreamed, the dreamed one awoke...

His misgivings ended abruptly, but not without certain forewarnings. First (after a long drought) a remote cloud, as light as a bird, appeared on a hill; then, toward the South, the sky took on the rose color of leopard's gums; then came clouds of smoke which rusted the metal of the nights; afterwards came the panic-stricken flight of wild animals. For what happened many centuries before was repeating itself. The ruins of the sanctuary of the god of Fire was being destroyed by fire. In a dawn without birds, the wizard saw the concentric fire licking the walls. For a moment, he thought of taking refuge in the water, but then he understood death was coming to crown his old age and absolve him from his labors. He walked toward the sheets of flame. They did not bite his flesh, they caressed him and flooded him without heat or combustion. With relief, with humiliation, with terror, he understood that he also was an illusion, that someone else was dreaming him."

From The Circular Ruins, Jorge Luis Borges



Dreams as the poets of our sleep; tirelessly sensed with symbols- meanings that we seek.

sleeping with a mouthful

"The man who thought he had perished
dreams thus about himself:
I keep feeling
as if I had gotten home."

- Song of Qaqatcguk
Tlingit
songs from the northwest coast



the other day, wandering in the rain, i discovered a used and out of print bookstore that had just opened. this made me very happy. a stout old man with big, thick square glasses sat at a little desk and seemed confused when i addressed him with enthusiasm. a nest of ashy hair in his ears and hair white like sea-surf, i left him to his devices and wandered through the scant collection of books tucked on shelves that looked like they had been rescued from a thrift store or garage sale. always curious to read salmon rushdie, and a recent recommendation by a friend lodged in my subconscious, i was drawn to "the enchantress of florence" on display. I randomly turned the book open whereupon my eyes immediately caught this sentence,

"He returned to the House of Mars where the ruffiana Giulietta grudgingly agreed to let him have unrestricted access to the memory palace, because she, too, hoped he could wake that somnambulant lady up, so that she could start acting like a proper courtesan instead of a talking statue."

With emphasis on such somnambulation, it did seem a rather synchronicitous advertisement for purchase. the four dollar price tag also made for an easy seduction. and with the old man finally warmed to my presence, brought to full attention from his slumber as a bibliophiliac gatekeeper now suddenly made to concentrate on his neat little cursive script in the notepad, his owlish bushed eyebrows levitating ever so slightly and his nose crinkling perhaps from microbial bits of dust from slightly flapped pages, or perhaps in order to portion his thick-rimmed vision over the edge of his nose, he remarked, "hmmm. rushdie." a hmmm that sent me wandering back out into the rain with a tacit gust of approval. my suspicions were confirmed later, immediately enjoying the tale made to tantalize. it wasn't long before i came across another testimonial of we, the observer's dreams...

"As soon as he fell asleep half the world started babbling in his brain, telling wondrous travelers' tales. In this half-discovered world every day brought news of fresh enchantments. The visionary, revelatory dream-poetry of the quotidian had not yet been crushed by blinkered, prosy fact. Himself a teller of tales, he had been driven out of his door by stories of wonder, and by one in particular, a story which could make his fortune or else cost him his life."

I wonder sometimes how much we tell our dreams, or whether it is them who tell us.



My dream that afternoon:
n what seemed to be an open air church...rows of pews...a performance going on but just a few of us there...Lee was asking to bum a cigarette....the song being played was an eerie cover or rework- i wish i could remember the song but i commented on it and was dancing...i looked up at this very dark-skinned man in a suit- seemed like he was on some security detail- i looked him in the eyes dancing and he would not crack his stone cold expression...i told Lee i was off for a bit and wondered if i should say goodbye and give him a hug now or see him later as i was going to be embarking on some long trip the next day...then i was in the back row pew sitting next to an old high school friend Erin Dooner. the paparazzi was outside waiting for her or someone else i knew because they were a famous pop star singer and part of me wanted to be photographed in her entourage slightly mysterious and disguised like with my hoodie pulled over or sunglasses. but i left alone with no fanfare and wanted to find the perfect cookie which i knew could be found at some bar in austin(later upon waking i realized the bar i had in mind was actually from a previous dream last year and does not to my knowledge exist in the waking world)- i would just have to cut through the davis arboretum to get there...then i was getting indecisive about trying to plan the rest of the night before my big journey...i went to go scoop my friend Traci for the night's festivities...she lived underwater...i went to her house and she opened the door and i made some comment about the house being underwater and she looked very serious and just responded "glug glug" but then i realized she was being sarcastic and joking so i responded "bubble bubble glug blaub blaub" and she smiled and invited me inside. her mom was taking a shower. they were living together now. next i was having to escape for some reason and had climbed out of the third story window of the house...it was no longer underwater and now downstairs i heard an older gentleman and someone arguing...i got the feeling he was a professor and the other voice started as a woman or girl but soon turned into a young boy's. for some reason my pants and shoes were off and i knew i had to escape undetected...but it became clear in overhearing this argument that this professor was in some sort of love affair with this younger boy and i felt very uncomfortable. the boy came to the window and i tried to lay flat in the darkness but he saw me and opened the window and i told him "shhh don't say anything and i won't tell your secret" and then i scurried off and i think the boy was trying to follow me...there was an escape ladder built on the side of the house which i wrapped my pants around and slid down super fast then ran off into the dimly lit trees trying to get my pants back on though i was interrupted by an asian transvestite asking me directions...

use your tiger style

knew year of the metal tiger.
here is to feline dreams prowling us out...

(he)artists mean there dreams*

rediscovered this excerpt from an interview with devendra banhart this morning in a magazine i like called Tokion...
I once had this homeless man living with me for two weeks; I just picked him up on the street. I was getting a cup of coffee and he just started talking to me about some films that I love, The Color of Pomegranates and Holy Mountain. I thought, This guy is rad, and I was like, “Do you want to come over and take a shower?” He was going to stay indefinitely, and one morning I said, “What did you dream last night, man?” And he said, “I don’t like when people ask me that question so casually. Like, ‘Who won the game?’ Something personal like that really needs to be respected.” He told me that before he goes to bed he says, “I’m here, dream psychopomp. You’re going to lead me to the dream. I’m open to whatever you have to share and show me.”

He told me saying this is really helpful, so I thought I would try it. I was going through a tough time, and the dream I had showed something to me that eased my pain and gave me some real true understanding about the situation. I felt wonderful when I woke up, and immediately I get a phone call from a friend of mine, and she says, “Is there someone strange that you don’t really know living in your house?” I told her yeah, and she says, “Well, they got to get out. I had a weird dream about someone living in your house, and they have to get out of there.”

Normally in a million years I would have never kicked the guy out because some fool had a dream, but because of what he told me—“respect the dream”—I had to tell him to leave. He basically kicked himself out by telling me to respect dreams. Really strange. It was painful because he had been living on the streets for thirteen years, and he wasn’t an alcoholic or drug addict or mentally unstable. It was just one day he decided to walk into the desert and surrender his will, so he left his girlfriend, his car, his job and his apartment and gave himself to the kismet of exterior forces. If someone drives up and says, “Get in,” he’ll get in. It’s an attempt to be in the present.

Did you explain to him why he had to go? Yeah, he understood.

He told you his rules, and you applied them to him. Love it! I’m not a skeptic but I question—it’s important. A skeptic is a bummer. They’re always bummed out. You want to know why and how things work, but you want to see the magic in these things. An explanation should never be an attempt to erase the magic. You can ask why the caterpillar turns into the butterfly, you can explain it, but there is still some element in there that is magic. It’s the crossroads between God and everything.

You’re an accomplished visual artist as well. If you have a feeling, thought or idea, do you know immediately which medium you are going to express it in? No, not really. It’s like some mantra will arise, and I need to express it somehow. Yesterday it was, “No Destruction, No Creation,” over and over again. I need to destroy something in order to create something. I need to destroy something that I’m doing to myself in order to be in a different place to create something—to have that new perspective. Without destruction, there is no perspective. Without creation, there is no growth, and creation is change. Those aren’t literally the lyrics to a song, and that’s not something that I know what it looks like. I don’t know exactly what the drawing is, and I don’t know exactly what the lyrics are to convey that, so the place it comes from is a faceless, soundless, odorless, colorless place. The origin is more ethereal.

and to tie it in with last night's post, here is a music video that Michel Gondry did for one of Banhart's songs...



"i'd like to sleep sleep sleep with you..."

are we directors or directed?

aesthetics brim with surreal images and the playful imagination of a child- aren't most children constantly drifting in a sort of daydream in childhood, still retaining the ability to pass through a thin veil separating the waking and the hidden world of visions?

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (asleep, running about through a subconscious labyrinth of memories)

The Science of Sleep (do we ever really wake up?)

slivers-

UGO: What fascinates you about the idea of confusing reality with fantasy?
Michel Gondry: I don't think I want to confuse reality with fantasy. Reality confuses me with fantasy.
UGO: Do you have nightmares?
MG: Yeah, sure. Terrible ones. I dream that I bought an apartment in some weird street in Paris. A small workshop. I wake up and I'm like, "Oh that's true! Where did I put the key of this workshop?" I had to go through my hiding places for 20 minutes. I talked to scientists and they told me that there is a part of your brain that is not working when you're sleeping. When you wake up, part of the brain is lazy to get up. You can be fully operational and then believe what you dream is real so some of the stuff can be really scary.
UGO: So, much of the stuff in Science of Sleep is from your dreams?
MG: Yeah, not necessarily the visuals. I can't say I dream in cardboard. But I wanted to create a style that made you feel your imagination. It is not exactly how dreams are. You don't go into a world made from your hands, they are made from memories all mixed together.

and being interviewed by his 15 year old son...

PG: I really thought it was about you because you can never sleep and you always have these problems with dreams. You always write them down and talk about them.

MG: Do you remember your dreams?

PG: Yeah, but not always. When it's too much of a strong dream, I don't remember it because too many things happen and I get lost. I can't build a story. It becomes like a bunch of pieces, like a puzzle.

MG: Have you had the same dream many times?

PG: Yeah. You remember when we lived in Hollywood and there was this house that was covered with all these pieces of fabric? My dream was of that house. There's a tower in that house, and I'm in it just having a perfect view of the city. It's weird. You can't really explain a dream. That's why you did a good job with this movie because it's something that's hard to put on the screen.

MG: Your dream of this place may have something to do with lots of events that have happened that may be emotional. I have millions of dreams of the house where I grew up in Versailles.

and

this morning i dreamed of walking across people's front yards in an old neighborhood with tall trees, including a twin redwood, as well as a towering stone wall in one part that i was wondering if i would have to climb. it felt like the Northwest. i enjoyed not walking on the sidewalk or even the street but i also felt maybe i wouldn't be so happy if people just wandered through my yard. then i was wandering about some sort of retreat center. there was an older couple buried to their neck in what looked like a giant cheese block except it was actually some concoction of enzymes and minerals meant to do wonders. they were the inventors and smiling but it looked rather uncomfortable to me- rather like being paralyzed in a bowl of stale porridge. behind them was a huge aquarium tank with most beautiful blue water and it was filled with people doing aquatic yoga- little bubbles drifting from closed mouths as men and women held various poses suspended a dozen feet below the surface. one very fit man caught my eye as he extended his arms and throwing his weight into the soft pressure of absent gravity, spun himself about in whirling circles...

later in my waking day i heard from a friend in portland who told me she has been doing a yoga teacher training recently, feeling increasingly stronger with the daily practice amidst her circus of activities...

their tongues slip with dreaming loves

The skull of St Valentine in the Basilica of Santa Maria in Cosmedin


for this day of lovers, their ghosts and saints...

(for the saints)

WHEN, WITH YOU ASLEEP...

When, with you asleep, I plunge into your soul,
and I listen, with my ear
on your naked breast,
to your tranquil heart, it seems to me
that, in its deep throbbing, I surprise
the secret center
of the world.

It seems to me
that legions of angels
on celestial steeds
-as when, in the height
of the night we listen, without a breath
and our ears to the earth,
to distant hoofbeats that never arrive-,
that legions of angels
are coming through you, from afar
-like the Three Kings
to the eternal birth
of our love-,
they are coming through you, from afar,
to bring me, in your dreams,
the secret of the center
of the heavens.

-Juan Ramon Jimenez (his eros bio)




(for the ghosts)

I was trying to find this interview I remember reading with Michel Gondry in which he discusses love and lovers- how old lovers will still often show up in our dreams long after separation and leave us waking with a sense of their presence...

...I remember returning home to Austin heartbroken on a greyhound bus from Chicago when I was around 21 years old. There was a coffeeshop I frequented called Mojo's and i had been building a soft acquaintance with a woman, Kate, there before I'd headed to Chicago. She had big, round opalescent blue eyes and it was mostly with those that I had mostly been speaking. On the bus I had a very intense dream that she was with an abusive lover. I think she had a black eye and bruises and I was very concerned, taking her under my protection. When I arrived back in town, I headed over to Mojo's around two in the morning for a pack of smokes, as well as a cure for my restlessness. There was Kate with her big eyes sitting in the corner. I walked over and told her about my dream, after which she immediately grasped my arm and said, "you're coming home with me." We began a brief and tempestuous affair that felt like a riotous dream. It turned out she was a bipolar manic-depressive who had not been taking her medication and had recently embarked on her annual breakdown tantrum. There was a little black cat, lots of Sufi poetry, channeling of a dead grandmother, other spirits- mostly in the radio, watercolors, laughter, and appropriated forms of voodoo. She soon earned the nickname, "The Tipsy Gypsy" and she followed me about with the hypnotic allure of a tornado, scraping me with gazes from those two bulging blue eyes. Despite her conviction, as told to others without my knowledge, that we would be getting married; our escapade as companions lasted only a month or so. She became my first, and hopefully last, stalker- waiting for me at work hours before my shift, then sulking and cursing when I wouldn't serve her any alcohol, returning later at night wobbling drunkenly in the arms of some stranger demanding money for a taxi. I found trinkets on my staircase- a gum wrapper, a little plastic doll. A wine bottle went missing from above the fridge- I learned later that she had crept in one day in my absence, and drunk it in its entirety before having sex on my bed with someone else. For at least a year after that she would show up in my dreams here and there like a silent witch, always leaving me anxious. I can still remember an image of her in a dream: it was night and i was wandering through a neighborhood and looked up to find her perched like a vulture on top of a roof nearby, staring at me with those saucer eyes. Back in the waking world, she eventually calmed down and in fact, last i heard, did end up getting married. And once we had reconnected after some space and forgave each other whatever grievances had lingered, i was relieved to find she no longer haunted the house of my dreams...

we all have sometimes dreams

Chucky: It's quiet here.

Fresh: Yeah I like to come here.

Chucky: It's lonesome. You know what's whack? When I'm down with the posse or at home and shit and everybody be screaming and yelling and shit, it gets real lonesome. It be like crowded and noise and screaming and suddenly it feels like I'm the only one there.

Fresh: The more people there is, the lonelier it get. I have this dream.

Chucky: Yeah, like what?

Fresh: Nothing. Sometimes I have it, that's all.

-from a film I love called Fresh.

evening escapades on the stages of our making.

this makes me feel like i've snuck into a dream. even the little girl sneaking out at night makes me think of her escaping into a wild place found only in the hours of slumber. feels like our waking imagination is also a kind of dreaming. and creative expression the closest medium capable of revealing slivers of the mystery. the ethereal threads like little silk connections between our states of being and seeing, eating and sleeping. always on the prowl to scout out signs and hidden meanings...

JumpTrumpRumpBump from Molasses Murphy on Vimeo.

Slash And Burn

EXT. WOODS-DAWN

The Boy opens his eyes, he hasn't been asleep, listening to the Man cough, worried. The Man returns and eyes the worried boy.

Man: What's wrong?
Boy: I had a weird dream.
Man: What about?
Boy: I don't want to tell you.
Man: Why not?

The Boy considers it.

Boy: I heard you coughing in the night.
Man: Were you awake?
Boy: It was in my dream. Then it woke me up.
Man: What else was in the dream?
Boy: Just you.
Man: What happened to me?

The Boy's face crinkles up, he starts to sob.

Man: Listen, when you dream about bad things happening it shows you're still fighting. You're still alive. It's when you start to dream about good things you should start to worry.
Boy: Do you dream about bad things too?
Man: All the time.

The Road

I watched the film adaptation of Cormac McCarthy's novel "The Road" yesterday. I haven't read the book though I had been told it was a rather bleak and depressing tale and that the film translated accordingly. A landscape washed free of color then filled with fire and ash, shadows and blood. Though filled with suffering and despair, I found the film to be hypnotic. Violence left in ruby ribbons splashed against the snow of an endless winter. In such a hopeless universe, gestures of compassion burn like flares. I found myself, like the characters, turning to stone or having my heart constantly shattered. A father and his son wandering a desolate world of bones and the barely living. There is a sense that this boy reserves one of the last slivers of divinity and innocence left in the world, and his father will do anything to protect it as it is the last piece of himself, may be the last piece of any of us...

Man: You have to keep carrying the fire.
Boy: What fire?
Man: The fire inside you.

Which ties into another McCarthy adaptation that made a huge impact on me- the film "No Country For Old Men." Another journey through a sparse landscape riddled with bullets, tense flights of escape, men and all their darkest questions...it ends with the telling of a dream:



Despite all these terse images, my dream in the afternoon was rather tame:

I got a call from a lover. She was at work but it had been turned into some sort of gallery and she had several pieces that had been chosen to be in it. i went walking to the cafe to get an espresso. it was getting dark and i noticed some change on the ground. i bent to scoop it up only to find more and more change appearing. i was most excited about a handful of quarters and felt like iwas becoming greedy and protective when a middle-aged couple stopped to gather coins too. i got to the Delta and an old foreign man with a thick accent began asking me questions in a somewhat condescending tone. he said he needed some scuba gear and seemed annoyed when i told him we didn't have any but for whatever reason i was amused and politely told him to go to the store across the street. He insisted that others had given him terrible directions to things before and he didn't trust me so i offered to walk him across the street. the cafe at this point had turned into Rutamaya, the cafe i used to work at in Austin. I didn't recognize any of the stores and quickly apologized to the man, admitting he was right about misdirections, but excusing myself with the fact that i hadn't lived in austin in a long time and i no longer knew its landscape as well as i once had. this frustrated me a bit...

p.s.sst

albums that soundtracked today-

MV & EE with the Golden Road "Drone Trailer"

Jose James "Black Magic"

Ekkehard Ehlers & Paul Wirkus "Ballads"

Cocteau Twins "BBC Sessions"

When you lay me down...

in sifting slips, seeking what from lips might lean towards the dreams, i flipped through Roots and Wings where my finger pointed this:

"Darken me, erase me,
Blessed sleep,
As I lie under a heaven that mounts
Its guard over me."

-Jorge Guillen
from Quiero Dormir(I Want To Sleep)

which eventually led me here:

"I want to sleep the sleep of the apples,
I want to get far away from the busyness of the cemeteries.
I want to sleep the sleep of that child
who longed to cut his heart open far out at sea."

-Federico Garcia Lorca

from the beginning of Gacela of the Dark Death

Very fitting, as Lorca gave me the Somnambulist kissing in my ribs, brought back Luna, and sent me on the drift...

inception.

initiation.
in sleep- walking, waking, and talking.

my self.
all selves.
ourselves.

textual sketches.
reference points.
marked
and
marking.

works in progress.
nebulous,
curious,
and
unrehearsed...