I'm downtown in Austin, on Congress Ave--the main street. The dream finds me waking in a clothing store on a corner. The place is small, nearly bare, with a simple counter at the back and a few racks of clothes near the front. It may be a women's clothing store, or it may be a shop for secondhand clothes--or maybe both. I have apparently been sleeping on the floor behind the counter. I stumble around for a few moments trying to wake up. A woman I don't know enters the store and looks at the clothes on one of the racks. I leave but feel uncertain about it; perhaps I should be staying because no one in charge is around. Do I have a key? Should I leave the door unlocked? I decide to leave anyway.
Outside I look across the street and I see the sun is near the horizon. The sky is lit up with an energetic glow. But I can't tell if the sun is setting or rising. Did I wake up in the morning or did I sleep all night and all day? This makes me more anxious, and I set out around the corner away from Congress Ave. and walk uphill. The sky is now darkening and I think that it is evening and not morning.
I search for my car, which I know I parked somewhere downtown, but I can't remember where. Anxiety increases more as I scan every car and concentrate on remembering. I come to the next street, which runs parallel to Congress and pass a black man on the corner. I feel some nervousness at the encounter. Looking across the street I see that there is a ruined building, almost a shard of a building, lit by a last ray of sun. It is brilliantly decorated with colorful grafitti covering every brick. I walk down this street for a block, then turn back towards Congress Ave. At the next intersection I notice that the block is full of brightly colored classic cars parked next to each other and filling all the spaces. They are blue and pink, and parked so that the colors alternate. I 'remember' that there is a classic car convention in town. I walk on and as I get closer to the main street I find myself amid a line of boats being pulled by cars--it is a parade of vehicles, part of the convention. I have to step nimbly to avoid being run over.
When I get back to Congress Ave. the light is increasing again, as though it is in fact dawn. I look around for a telephone so that I can call Sandy to come pick me up and help me look for the car. The only one I see has been vandalized so that the handset is missing from the cord, which dangles down. I'm going over in my mind what I want to say to her, which is that she should meet me at the old library.
Unaccountably, I find myself waking up again. This time Sandy is with me and we are in a small hotel room overlooking the main street. There are two strange men in the room as well, talking to each other and ignoring us. One of them reminds me of P, a gay man I once worked with. I think that it has been many years since I saw him and wonder if he has gotten as fat as I have. I suspect he hasn't if he continued to swim daily.
Then it comes to me with an aha sensation--how could I have been so dumb?--that stories are obviously hardwired into our brains because our unconscious dreams in stories.
I wake up.
4.15.2005
4.04.2005
Things that go boom in the night
Sandy and I are watching TV in a room on the second story of our house. A large window is on the right of the TV, and from my angle I can see only pale blue sky through it. There is a booming noise outside and I look at the window where I see a small dark blue compact car flying through the air. I leap to the window and see a puff of white smoke rising from the trees and houses in the near distance. Looking back at the car I notice that it is continuing on through the sky, its initial arc flattened into a smooth trajectory so that it seems to be flying rather than shot out like a cannon ball. It passes out of my vision to the right, but now I notice another strange event. In the middle distance there is a large white factory, something like an oil refinery but cleaner. It is set among neighborhoods and trees, but dwarfs them. In the far distance is a line of low dark hills, and above everything the sky is now a brilliant deep blue. The factory is exploding. White smoke, then yellow flames, wash out of it. I give a glancing thought to the people who live in the nearby houses and then turn to Sandy. "We've got to turn off the gas!" I cry, and rush down the stairs to the basement. There I see a gas powered water heater that is knocking and hissing like a cartoon boiler. I search frantically for a moment, then find the on/off switch and turn it.
I wake.
I wake.
3.23.2005
Tigers and wolves, oh my
Sandy and I are standing below two fenced areas that extend from the wall to our right. The lower one is larger than the top one and is suspended below it. A wooden stairway connects the floor where we stand and the two enclosures. The lower one holds an enormous tiger, which is mostly white but with various warm colors on its back. It pads softly around the area. Above it, in the other cage, two adult wolves and a cub pace back and forth. They are giant wolves, the size of small horses.
The stairs somehow open to us and we ascend--but as we do the wolf cub zips down the stairs and escapes. We hurry up the stairs and find that there is a third level where we may stand. Spread out beyond us is revealed a magical landscape of hill and forest. The trees are brightly colored with rust and ochres, something like a fall landscape. The light is clear and brilliant. Seeing the view is exhilirating.
But as we admire the view we are also aware of the animals now below us. The wolves in the area immediately below seem angry and distraught, possibly because the cub is missing. One wolf in particular keeps poking its snout into our area and snarling. The head is enormous. I can see its yellow teeth and sense it malevolence, but am somehow also jazzed by the beauty of its pelt.
We decide to leave and the stairs suddenly fold into a slide, which carries us quickly down past the animals. The dream ends.
The stairs somehow open to us and we ascend--but as we do the wolf cub zips down the stairs and escapes. We hurry up the stairs and find that there is a third level where we may stand. Spread out beyond us is revealed a magical landscape of hill and forest. The trees are brightly colored with rust and ochres, something like a fall landscape. The light is clear and brilliant. Seeing the view is exhilirating.
But as we admire the view we are also aware of the animals now below us. The wolves in the area immediately below seem angry and distraught, possibly because the cub is missing. One wolf in particular keeps poking its snout into our area and snarling. The head is enormous. I can see its yellow teeth and sense it malevolence, but am somehow also jazzed by the beauty of its pelt.
We decide to leave and the stairs suddenly fold into a slide, which carries us quickly down past the animals. The dream ends.
3.17.2005
Gov Perdue meets the snowman
At a high school, outdoors, talking with Sandy. I take a can of whipped cream or shaving cream and spray it over all the grass in the immediate vicinity. The plan is to make it look like snow. I go inside, where Gov Sonny Perdue is the principal of the school, and try to convince him that this could be a great fundraising activity for the school--Christmas in July or something like that. Sandy cautions me to be careful and warns that the Gov is tough and bossy, with a low voice.
3.04.2005
My friend Oeddie...
3:00am. I wake from a dream in which I am being swept by a large body of clear cool water towards the lip of a dam. The dam stretches widely to either side of me under blue sky. As I get near the lip of the dam I see that my mother is there with a young boy. They are both about to be swept over the top, but the boy is trying to hold her there. They thrash about in the water and teeter on the brink. I approach and yell to the boy to hold her. I get there before they go over and grab my mother to fling her back from the brink. That was where the dream stopped and I woke.
I stayed awake for two hours, though I didn't feel any special anxiety--just couldn't go back to sleep. Finally I did get to sleep again and dreamed that I was in a big car on a city street. The street was very wide, ridiculously so, and was grassed over instead of being paved. The driver of the car was a black man, fairly young, and I sat in the passenger seat. We were at the top of long hill, so that we could see the street dropping before us across a series of rolling hills until it came to the bottom. There was some body of water there, and another vista stretching beyond it. The sky was golden with sunrise or sunset, and the colors were everywhere bright.
I looked down the road and thought that it would be fun to just zoom down the hill in the car as though it were a carnival ride, maybe flying into the air as I crested the descending hills. This thought made me so happy that I reached to my left and grabbed the steering wheel from the driver, and used my left foot to step on the gas. The driver was irritated by this hijacking, and I was afraid that he might think I was a racist, that I thought he couldn't handle the driving.
We went down quickly, picking up speed. It was thrilling to fly along and I turned the wheel this way and that to make the car playfully swerve. But halfway down we were going too fast and I began to brake. By the time we reached the bottom of the hill I was pushing the brake pedal as hard as I could, so that we barely were able to stop before running into a car at the crossroad there. We turned and drove on to my apartment(?).
I enter the apartment by myself. The rooms are dark and no one is there. I hear some noises from the bedroom in the back of the house and for some reason interpret them to be from Sharon, a woman I once lived with. I make my way to the bedroom, but find that the sounds were from Sandy's grandmother, deceased for several years now. She is crawling around the large bed there, crying out in distress. The bed is Georgia earth colored, as large as four beds, and there are old gravestones scattered across it. Sandy's grandmother is crawling around among them, wailing for her own stone. "Where is my gravestone?" She picks at one stone after another searching for it. I notice that some of the markers are very worn, hardly more than small rough stones without letters. Finally she does find it. "Look what they've done to it!" she cries. It is smaller than a loaf of bread, pitted and worn. She holds it in her hands and thrusts it into my face.
I leave the bedroom and turn down the hall that leads back to the living room. As I pass the door to the kitchen I'm confronted by my own mother, dead now for several years, looming from the doorway. She is younger than when she died, and she fills the doorway. I stagger back screaming in shock and nearly collapse to the floor. She enters the hallway, not especially in a threatening manner, and tells me that reports of her death were greatly exaggerated. In waking life I would not have expected her to quote Twain.
Then she stumbles or somehow starts to fall. Her body is rigid and she falls like a tree coming down, almost in slow motion. I leap to her and catch her to break her fall. It works but I end up almost on top of her on the carpet. I feel compelled to tell her that I love her very much: "I love you so much," I cry out. But the moment is decidedly erotic and I throw myself off of her immediately in guilt. I wake with heart pounding.
I stayed awake for two hours, though I didn't feel any special anxiety--just couldn't go back to sleep. Finally I did get to sleep again and dreamed that I was in a big car on a city street. The street was very wide, ridiculously so, and was grassed over instead of being paved. The driver of the car was a black man, fairly young, and I sat in the passenger seat. We were at the top of long hill, so that we could see the street dropping before us across a series of rolling hills until it came to the bottom. There was some body of water there, and another vista stretching beyond it. The sky was golden with sunrise or sunset, and the colors were everywhere bright.
I looked down the road and thought that it would be fun to just zoom down the hill in the car as though it were a carnival ride, maybe flying into the air as I crested the descending hills. This thought made me so happy that I reached to my left and grabbed the steering wheel from the driver, and used my left foot to step on the gas. The driver was irritated by this hijacking, and I was afraid that he might think I was a racist, that I thought he couldn't handle the driving.
We went down quickly, picking up speed. It was thrilling to fly along and I turned the wheel this way and that to make the car playfully swerve. But halfway down we were going too fast and I began to brake. By the time we reached the bottom of the hill I was pushing the brake pedal as hard as I could, so that we barely were able to stop before running into a car at the crossroad there. We turned and drove on to my apartment(?).
I enter the apartment by myself. The rooms are dark and no one is there. I hear some noises from the bedroom in the back of the house and for some reason interpret them to be from Sharon, a woman I once lived with. I make my way to the bedroom, but find that the sounds were from Sandy's grandmother, deceased for several years now. She is crawling around the large bed there, crying out in distress. The bed is Georgia earth colored, as large as four beds, and there are old gravestones scattered across it. Sandy's grandmother is crawling around among them, wailing for her own stone. "Where is my gravestone?" She picks at one stone after another searching for it. I notice that some of the markers are very worn, hardly more than small rough stones without letters. Finally she does find it. "Look what they've done to it!" she cries. It is smaller than a loaf of bread, pitted and worn. She holds it in her hands and thrusts it into my face.
I leave the bedroom and turn down the hall that leads back to the living room. As I pass the door to the kitchen I'm confronted by my own mother, dead now for several years, looming from the doorway. She is younger than when she died, and she fills the doorway. I stagger back screaming in shock and nearly collapse to the floor. She enters the hallway, not especially in a threatening manner, and tells me that reports of her death were greatly exaggerated. In waking life I would not have expected her to quote Twain.
Then she stumbles or somehow starts to fall. Her body is rigid and she falls like a tree coming down, almost in slow motion. I leap to her and catch her to break her fall. It works but I end up almost on top of her on the carpet. I feel compelled to tell her that I love her very much: "I love you so much," I cry out. But the moment is decidedly erotic and I throw myself off of her immediately in guilt. I wake with heart pounding.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)