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.