Category: dream

Dreams Recovered

Two inches of whiskey cut the slightly sugared ice cube that clinks against glass.

And, it strikes such that I wonder if

the movement from barter-subsistence economies to cash-wage economics

redefined the notion of freedom.

⊙

I dreamt I found the missing earring.

⊙

Do I still appear obstinate and obdurate?

My back feels tight.

⊙

I dreamt the very same knotted muscle could be helped by the difference in a table that could seat four and a table that could seat two.

It made no sense on waking.

⊙

The re-couping of regime change wars.

Quid pro quo and blahblahblah.

A political revolution or a social one?

Who is allowed to feature in a narrative?

The disability resulting from uncertainty.

Costs of innovation.

I need a hair cut, but have not been here long enough to

to know to whom to go.

⊙

I dreamt a being with violet eyes, violet hair, and violet eyebrows came to me because it was said I knew how to not break but to bend.

Dream of a sleepy hum.

Hush and sleep: he says.

You know the effect such words from you, produce in me, brut(e): I think.

I smile and snuggle under the covers.

I thought I could catch you: I mumble, frowning a bit, fretting you will be gone when I re-enliven.

Outside, hail begins softly falling.

Dream of the leveled field

The meadow languishes.

Three pairs of your feet’s steps remain visible now,

even though you lied down, minutes ago.

Grass pressed into small etches slowly refilling themselves to full volume.

My eyes go loose and wide as

they stop seeing and start imagining the imprint your form will leave

when you arise.

Topiary impressionist piece.

Watching the moody weather make its precious, little changes.

False threats of pending precipitation.

The sky throwing a hissy fit for our benefit.

I finally sit down to watch it proper.

Strange grid-like lines buzz low intensity neon colors into a concaved and convexed axis.

Strange maths laboring, barely concealed by a cloudy cover.

I feel that sudden lucidity accompanying

the realization that I am dreaming.

Sunday Morning Song

Elizabeth Cotton picking and singing Freight Train.Turns out this was the first song Lucinda Williams learned to play.

{Hither and zither, the sheet music “shows you which notes to pick”.

Giggle.

⊙

None of the clocks on my appliances match

the time displayed on the screens of my devices.

Because moments changed

Over night,

As if by magic.

The practicality of protracted wakeful periods during daylight hours.

The associated productivity increase.

You can get a lot of work done, outside, when you sleep all night

And only become conscious when the sun is up.

But, you can learn a lot by staying up all night and sleeping through the day.

⊙

My alarms continue their incremental resounding.

Like they do when I gotta work the restaurant.

But, not today.

Today

is my

off day.

⊙

/

[clears throat]

Al(l)right…

/

⊙

I let

the alarms

keep

going

off

⊙

/

Freight train,

Freight train,

runs so fast

/

⊙

I do strange things with my sleeping.

An alarm set at 3:33 a.m.

To force me awake to immediately resume sleeping.

I easily become lucid in dreams this way.

At the very least, it consistently improves my dream recall.

⊙

/

Please don’t tell what train I’m on.

They won’t know what route I’m gone.

/

…

I sleep upside down,

time

to

time.

Bed properly remade

Clean sheets

But with my head at my feet.

Pillows at the wrong end.

Feet by where a head usually is.

⊙

/

Place the stones at my head and feet

Tell them all that I’ve gone sleep.

/

⊙

I wake,

again,

thirsty.

Flit to the kitchen.

Make the mistake of reading poetic words

And I feel my heart beat.

Like the water had actually been coffee.

Dream of cloaks.

Í think í awake to the feeling of faint fingertips tracing my stermum.

Í jolt and suddenly say: í want to write for you.

He says: you do that already, yes?

Yes, but í mean to say í want to write to you.: í say

You are not conscious, yet, aurora. Slow down.

⊙

Let me trace your collarbone and the ligaments that pronounce from your neck. Let me delicately pinch that sweet Adam’s apple in your throat.: í say.

He says: Anything to stop you fidgeting with your fingertips.

That’s why í keep this cord wrapped, seven times, around my left wrist. Í play with knotting it.

He says: I know knots. I also know that you loosely bind your wrists together with it when you sleep.

Sometimes, because í am curious and desirous of that which no-one has done to me.

He says: I know.

⊙

He asks: did you dream last night?

Yes.

Tell me the story you saw…

Í am in a pub by the shore. Minimal decoration. A few pithy sayings adorn the walls. The wood of the floor and the glass installation behind the bar is the crowning aesthetic detail. There is the one drunk guy. The level of toleration he receives suggests he is a bar fixture, as well.

There are, perhaps, seven tables total, yet there are multiple hostesses. They sit at a service area by the front window, giggling in hushed voices and rolling silverware into cheap, paper napkins. Bohemian Rhapsody plays.

Alone and a’sat at the bar’s counter drop, í drink my beer too quickly.

It gives me goosebumps and a head rush.

The chandelier is double-sided and made of eighty, clear, glass beer bottles with candles burning inside. Í count them up and think: í must be back in Electri-city, where there is only candle light.

It is nearly charming, but the staff is in their own world.

Bad service kills the ambience.

Í see eight people sat around a large rectangular table.

That’s my group: í think.

Í rise and find my way into the only unoccupied chair.

As í lower myself into the chair, a courier enters the pub. Wearing a solid black cloak; the hood pulled so far overhead, no face or form is visible.

The courier strides to me and hands me a parcel wrapped in brown paper and tied with twine.

Í take it.

No words.

The courier turns and walks out the door.

Open it: urges my table mates.

Í do. Inside is a hooded robe. The colo(u)r of burnt sienna. There are stars and slivers of new moons in col(u)ors nearly unnoticeable.

The others at the table clap and cheer, like this is important. Like í have earned it, somehow.

Like they already knew and had planned this as a celebration.

Í leap to my feet, having, still, spoken no words.

Í run out the door. Í look wildly up and down the street.

Who was the courier? Í must know.

This is no time for celebration, this is another moment of testing.

Í feel my heart pound.

Í want to be scared but there is no time; so, í imagine

Í am a beast, a wild animal.

A junkyard bitch set to strike and kill.

And, the adrenaline becomes ichor and not poison.

Then, í woke up to sensing your fingers on my sternum: í tell Him.

Dream of a Watery Cavern

It was a sub terrain keystone cavern of cathedral proportions, carved out from the processes of semi-precious, conductive mineral excavations.

I dreamt I lived underwater, there,

in a little house on the floor of

the Sound,

it was filled with water.

It rained heavy droplets of oxygen,

pattering on the tin roof.

I drop my pen, it slowly floats downwards.

You catch it with your mouth, before it reaches the ground.

Your eyes look up at mine with pride.

I see you shiver.

I silently say: Come and let’s lie down together; you on your back.

I wrap my legs around you, and

slide my thighs and calves against yours,

rubbing limbs like how crickets sing,

until you are warm.

Satisfied sighs bubble from your lips.

You keep shivering well after becoming warm.

Mountain presses sky

A rising reddening mountain

set against my pink sky.

States of matter change.

Snow returns to the peak,

with the seasonal shift.

Dripping downwards.

More will follow,

like bulbs remembering how to

burst forth in full bloom,

after being held back in a hard

petal enclosure.

Dream of a rude awakening

A pair of legs splayed to show well placed snaps.

“Undo them.”

That’s what he said.

I do.

“You want to feel the rise of my serpent up your spine’s

base.”

I roll over for this rude awakening.

Dream of vulpes vulpes & serpent

I dreamt I was a sweet, sly serpent.

I wrapped myself around you, into a möbius strip.

Eating my own tail.

Skin ceaselessly shifting

and sliding against yours.

We wrestled playfully in the numina of everywhere and

know-where.

Your face flowed like magma, between two appearances: the face of a man burning into that of the red fox.

My infinite sliding scale skin tethered your temporary

states of flux.

Fall for the Fool.

There I was in the sunny shine shiny.

Apposite the Alps, wearing my best burlap, with berry and leaf applique.

Knapsack number eleven over the left shoulder, loosely slung.

Greyhound, red eyes, nipping at the ankles of my bare feet.

Onward, onward.

Stepping over the cliffside.

Behind me to the right, the foal of a chestnut mare looks on,

intently,

at the journey of

This Fall,

Or perhaps, s/he was just eyeing the ten and one, white lillies to my left:

I think

whilst falling,

yet still, and

looking up upon.

Speculatively responsive

Did you think about what I said?: he asked.

(My nostrils flare)

I said: You said alot; but, yet again, I thought more about what you did not say.

I tried to answer your questions: he said.

I guess I’m more interested in what you think about the questions you don’t know how to answer: I reply.

I don’t know what to say about that which I do not know: he said.

Soft words, volutary: I respond: what did your mind howl in

speculative

response and resistance?

I howled last night while dreaming!

Highly excited about this dreaming experience.

Regular readers (thank you!) probably have noticed howl much I dig using [howl] in my writing. I say it in my daily life as well. I bellow it, in silence, at night. (You have to be quiet it the flat where I stay, see.)

I have lucid dreamed since being a young child. I realize I am dreaming quite quickly in the dream state.

Sometimes this realization empowers me to change the dream consciously. Sometimes, I realize I am dreaming but do not realize I may be able to alter the dream state. (But, howl. Why change a new experience for what you assume would be better? The idea does not occur unless I feel real suffering.)

Many times, dreams feel like another plane of reality upon which I have landed, where, the best I can do, upon realizing I am dreaming, is to choose to try to wake myself up.

I am overly familiar with the sensation of sleep paralysis. Of becoming mentally conscious before being able to move my body. It is a weird feeling, but I have never felt the terror others describe when experiencing the sensation. No aliens. No demons. Just a simple inconvenience.

“Oh, howl. I gotta sit here and think, ‘wiggle your big toe. wiggle your big toe,’ ” for what seems like an eternity.

Eventually, my big toe actually wiggles.

Enough context.

Here is the dream.

⊙

I stand at the top of several flights of stairs.

Wooden floors.

An old, antebellum-style home.

Southern gothic.

Crown molding with runners.

There are no lights and

“It was a rainy night.”

A strike of lightning flashes. I see a very, strangely, white child appear on a bench, below. Situated upon the first landing, one flight of stairs, below.

Right before the stairs cut around to the next segment of their spiral.

He looks up, directly at me.

His eyes go wide.

Yawning like mouths.

Too wide.

I do not want to be here. It hurts more than it needs to.

Instead of thinking: wiggle your big toe,

I say, softly,: howl.

I know that I am dreaming. I cannot change the dream.

I want to wake up.

I start bellowing out:

HOOOOOWL.

Lightning strikes again. It illuminates the same bench.

Now, there are ten more children, with yawning eyes, where there had previously been only one.

I howl myself awake.

Serendipitously, “howl” took over and took care of me.

Tight Lungs

I saw your raven’s claw hit the mark too squarely.

The clip of the talon’s clasp.

Snatching telephone cable as I watch three lightning storms

consume the sound.

Thunder.

I do not buy nonchalance

anymore than I am willing to eat soft words when

my eyes go hard.

Uncanny does not always equal canny.

Ariadne now knows how to lucid dream.

A hand poised, around a throat from which

“take my breath away” is whispered with

an accompanying half grin.

Pyre-amid Dream

I dreamt I was not quite a teenager.

I fed ducks in a park on a bench, with a Holocaust survivor. He was a mean man, and we got along well.

We did two things:

1. Feed ducks bread crumbs

2. Play a game.

Starting with A, we would name diseases/ailments in alphabetical order all the way to Z(ed).

Alzheimer’s

Bunyons.

Canker sores.

But, repeating was unacceptable.

Ex. Next round:

Acne

Boss eyes

Cataracts.

He always won. I did not care.

He taught me what floaters were but could not tell me why sometimes I saw white ones, like the sprinkles of 4th of July sparklers, and sometimes I saw indigo ones.

He only saw the white ones.

⊙

But, before that,

in the same dream,

I dreamt that

the crest of your wave foams white in its churning.

My c-heeks go red.

Eyebrows arch up high as your brow furrows.

You slide softly and I run nails over your rib cage.

I kiss your nape.

⊙

But, before that,

in the same dream,

I dreamt that

I went on a walk.

My arm swung by my side like the pendulum of a grandfather clock.

Wafting leaf smoke like incense in some ceremony.

I heard two staccato strikes against strings of an amplified guitar,

in time with my heels’ clicks.

Dreamt of cold chilling

“I don’t get cold,” says the cool cat, “I just catch a chill.”

“Don’t steal my lines and then try to impress me with them,” I tease.

I point the left foot, of my crossed leg, from my seated position.

The bones structuring the top, flat part of my foot crackle themselves loose.

I make a strange, welp noise as I feel a tendon overstretch and then reassert itself back into place.

“You are so loud,” the cat moans, stepping over, circling and pawing my grounded, left foot. S/he finally lies down atop my foot.

A robust, white-tailed rabbit plods along in little plopping hops.

It has the legs of a frog.

The cat pounces at it. Claws pushing off me.

Sinking in. I do not yelp this time.

The rabbit reveals sparrow like wings and flies away.

A flying frog that mimics hares.

Reading my dreaming mind, the cat nods at me.

“This would make a a good illustrated children’s book.”

⊙

“Hey! Will you do that thing I like?” asks the cool cat.

I flip off the light switch and light a candle.

I make shadow puppets play and flit on the wall.

The cat tries to catch the intangible phantoms.

Dream of rueing.

Your name is Ruin?: I ask.

No. RueAnne: she replies.

Why did you bring me back here?: I wonder.

I didn’t mean to: I hear her say.

She does not realize that she said this.

I nod anyway.

Certain geographies don’t agree with dream me.

This place rubs me wrong.

Edgy.

RueAnne is staring into nothing.

Her energy has been summoned.

She just lost herself again: I think.

A goat ambles by.

Dream of a band

You and I went to an afterparty for a band called The Passé Posse.

It was in a place named Electri-City by an ocean.

But, there was only candlelighting.

There were water slides being used as public transportation.

Part of the city’s infrastructure.

I visited here previously.

As I took you by the hand to take you to my bed,

You said: You maybe too physical. Too physical for me.

Like the song?: I ask.

I do no know if you were kidding

because i immediately awoke.

Dream of alternative spelling

I see a man atop a mesa at sunrise.

I laugh as I have the thought: I know him.

Everything is bathed in ruddy red and sunlit pink.

I can see for miles despite being at a low elevation.

Looking back at the man, I see him hold up two configurations of stick bundles.

They form the two letters that sound like my first name.

I think: I shall climb up.

Having the thought, I immediately arrive at his side, atop the mesa.

This is a dream: I say.

The last time you met me here, you slapped me hard and kissed me harder: he said.

I feel embarrassed. I do not remember this.

Do you remember my name?: he asks.

I remember your first and middle name. I remember you refusing to tell me your last name: I say.

Guess it: he says smiling.

Keyes: I conjecture.

Closer. Keynes.: he said.

Almost like the mathematician. Like keening me up: I think.

Dreams of a strange prairie

I dreamt I was a shepherd, last night.

I care for four steer and five wolves.

The wolves try to eat the cattle if I don’t pay attention.

But, the scenery is beautiful so it is no trouble.

I have a partner. We ride horses like cattle ranchers.

His face burned off in a fire.

He does not tell me what happened.

My sense is it occurred aeons ago.

He does not appear burnt. He looks like a sheet stretched over a face.

Smooth. No orifices where nostrils, mouth, eye sockets should be.

Infinitely kind.

We drive our herd and pack along cliff sides.
Kirkcudbright feelings.

We enter a tangle of a forest.

Dark bark and leaves of the deepest green.

It was just noon. The sun does not shine here despite the canopy cover being quite sparse.

It is quiet.

The trees become grayer.

We enter a corridor demarcated by maleficently gnarled trees.

I can spy a clearing situated on the opposite side.

It contains grotesque goats.

12 hands high with spiraling horns.

Their coats are filthy. Horrendous in volume and stringiness.

They graze on the plentiful grass.

Ripping it out of the earth like lions ripping muscles from felled prey.

I feel myself instinctively raising my attention.

There is no fear.

I think: this would make a good painting.

Parçigal from between time or Circumstance

Background notes:

Parzifal is the “collective tradition of mankind…is not subject to Time or Circumstance.”

Is for those born of the ‘Heart’s Affliction.’

Researching Parzifal led me to the works of C.S. Jones who wrote The Chalice of Ecstasy “to make the points dealt with [in the drama] as comprehensive as possible to the uninitiated enquirer who is prepared to ‘wake and harken the call.’ “

The writing below is an exercise in synthesis.
All quoted text is pulled from The Chalice of Ecstasy.
All quoted text within quotation marks are quotes Jones included in his work.
He also used WOLFRAM VON ESCHENBACH’s text Parzival as his basis. He does recommend a good translation of the Libretto from R. Wagner’s Parsifal.

Parzival is “written in the keynote of ecstasy” according to Wolfram von Eschenbach and “provides a glimpse of the Eternal Reality.” A key event in the story is Parzival shooting a swan from the sky. The swan represents ecstasy. Parzival should have been condemned for this but is not because of the unique confluence of his circumstances. I like to use the allegory of Parzival which is considered a “living text” as a means of discussing sexuality and gender roles/definition. I also like the idea of the newest incarnation of Parzival being from the perspective of a feminine knight questing for love and understanding with the former.

¤

My ecstasy has indicated I was “born of the ‘Heart’s Affliction.’ “

I found my “way to that spot where they, ‘scarcely move, yet seem to run’ “.

“Having become one with The Way,” I have just come to Tao.

I “discover that the shifting scenes of the world [I] had though so real, will pass [me] by as a pageant until the Vision of the Grail itself is presented to their pure Understanding.” But howl surprised was I to see both you and I.

I fear I believe that all that is written above has occured to me again and again.

I simply continue for long enough to forget and remember it all over again.

A chALice emptied and refilled.

My heart “learned to beat in time and tune with the Soul of the World.”

Rhythm and vibrations are everything we think we know. What is rhythm but

a wave? A wavelength. An S rotated 90% and crossing an axis. Periodicity of the pendulous arm’s swings.

Rhythm is the steady crashing of waves falling.

The entire ocean is every wave.

¤

I feel my being “to be a highly strung musical instrument.”

Fret awaiting fretting. Tuned to the proper tone to be strummed and plucked upon.

A fitt “burn[s] up the veils which hide [me] from Myself.”

It reveals you. A familiar stranger.

Strum me.

“Will runs over [my] strings” and I come to know how to reveal how it is “causing complete and harmonious vibrations.” Do you choose to experience this in your own being? Show me the “unformulated but delightful melody” that is the same song Whitman sang.

The Song of Myself.

I will dance to your song simply because you choose to perform it for me.

I will conduct your currents as you emit them.

I will empty you to refill you.

I am an empty plenum. I contain everything in my nothingness.

I know not the rituals. Yet still I seek to continually “unite the mind to some pure idea by an act of will.” This is the brick wall against which I slam my head “again and again.” The wall where you found me bleeding and dizzy, next to the eggshell pieces of Humpty Dumpty. Alice remembers her name again.

I know not the “Way of Holiness.” I may not impress upon the consciousness of your onlookers.

No-One is the only one that looks upon me thusly.

I am a pure Fool, ignorant and earnest. Before that I was a dummy. I could not speak. I have always been an idiotē.

I have always been the unaffiliated Maverick roaming through the initiated herds, admiring the brands, the symbols emblazoned upon their skin.

My skin is marred by time and circumstance.

My skin is completely unmarked.

Canvas.

¤

“ “There is a Swan whose name is Ecstasy.” “

Also known as you and I.

I “ “wingeth through the blue” and at “[my] coming they push forth the green” “ because I bring spring.

I herald an easter Sunday for your tired soul.

You shot me down from the sky.

And, you did it by virtue of No-One’s weapon but your own.

A Happy Death for me. A Swan’s life born anew in you.

“ “In all the Universe [a] Swan alone in motionlessness, it seems to move as the Sun seems to move; such is the weakness of sight.” “

“ “O fool!”…”Motion is relative; there is nothing that is still.” “ Let me shoot my arrow at you this time. From your “ “ [feathered] breast poured forth blood” “ and I felt ecstatic and you discovered ichor. Now, let me ecstatically enrapture you until your veins flow with it so richly as to sustain this demiurge. You are no longer a Pure Fool because you know. The men that smote you last time will not let you pass again. But, I can sneak you through the gate. Folly is my protector. Let me use it for the protection of the soul of another.

⊙

I am ignorant of the rule and the action taken breaking the rule was kindly intended.

(says the little boy who cried ‘Wolf’)

(says the collective mind who was “just taking orders”)

⊙

Consequences occur regardless of intention.

Risk is underwritten.

In tension, intension.

Suspension of beginning an action and witnessing the resultant reaction and effects of your affect.

I have been called Artemis, Sagittarius (until the stars changed), centaur and satyr.

I read of the marriage of Christian Rosencrutz. Send them my congratulations and best wishes, please.

Where is the Castle and what of the Tower?

“ “By my word, I know you are Parzival-son of Herat’s Affliction” “-and I have recovered the weapon that you flung off after using it to pluck me down from the sky and into the blue lake.

I have discovered-upon that Might of Love which you used to render me slain. You “succeeded where all others had failed,” dear one.

You say you do “now as yet know [t]he True Name-the Word of [Ewer]-Being, though in the past [you had] been called by many names.”

You mention this: “one thing [you] desired to know and to understand. What is the Grail!”

You have already been told that “ “By no one can it be detected Who by itself is not elected.” “

And, you then did “ “Bestride the Bird of Life [because] thou wouldst know.” “

I desire to know if you came to me by slaying me because you wanted to know or because you wanted to know me. And to what end did you intend this knowledge?

The difference between a means to a desired end and being the end desired.

Dis-ingenuity. Do not be disingenuous, sorrel.

It will make it so much worse for you. Through it you turn three pounds of pleasure into three pounds of misery. Should misery please you, you will never be miserable again, if you act duplicitously or maliciously.

A knight need only be kind. Do not attempt to placate with being nice. Kindness does not impress. It empresses upon. Kindness is a way of being and not an act of valour to be selectively undertaken. Kindness can appear cruel to outsiders.

So, I also ask: are you kind?

I desire to know how you found yourself at the intersection of right now. Face to face with me.

This is the cost of admission. Tell me these things and I shall sneak you through the gate.

I just hope you are as brave as you believe yourself to be. Sometimes it will get dark. You have coronated me a Queen of Magnets. I attract all poles.

Howl I hope it is not just a ceremonial sobriquet, sweet fool.

“We are the ELLIPSE OF THE UNIVERSE.”