...a sleep & a wake...
“We are such stuff as dreams are made on; and our little life is rounded with a sleep.”
-William Shakespeare-
The energy had a purple ski mask for a head and a body of crunched rumple fit leather. Despite his motorcycle being too big to fit through the door he hovered it near the back wall of the plain beige fabric conference room. After shaking hands with all the imaginary artists I invited to perform at my mind’s music festival, I approached him. He hurt my head and fed me fear. When I asked him who he was he showed me his real form: a pulsating jellyfish light, wings flapping wavy in hovered colors I couldn’t name. His shine was a dark rhythmic uncomfortable pattern. My mind burned through my upper left skull, and with guidance from my personal counsel, a cadre of beings who once showed me a crystal castle that threw picnics once a month, I had to insist that the energy leave.
In the same dream just a week earlier I had let the ski mask and motorcycle stay and the festival cratered under piles of imaginary paperwork. An aspiring librarian, posed as a clerk, said I’d need to throw my show somewhere else and I woke up frantic. This time I asked the energy politely to go elsewhere. The ski mask and motorcycle left through a blinking portal into his own dimension and I feel a lot better for it. Not everyone needs to come to your party.
Later in that dream an abominable snowman headbanged while a naked hockey ballet skated across the ice stage built in the snow globe auditorium. A snowman piled himself from scratch and smoked a stick after smashing a carrot straight into his ice face. The crowd was tossing anarchy snowballs and blowing heavy metal blizzards, chaos but for the whispering peace of caroling bells ringing ever more distant. The daylight started me over. My eyes open and I began.
I wasn’t sure if I needed to discuss that dream anymore. An interstellar traveler has left me and I feel much better for it. But what is inside must come out, and so my concert plays on the page. For sake of rhyme I want to say that the world is a cage, not a stage. We have constructed our here and now to be here and now so that we don’t worry about there and then.
When it comes to my feelings though, time and setting don’t have much purpose. Fear in a dream is as tangible a terror as a knife slowly scaling my back in some street bar stickup. The worlds within my world are just as real as the cold fan blowing winter on my feet.
Two men open a tomb that says “Do Not Approach the Nameless One Lest Your Soul Be Withered.” The mummy in my mind wraps about ancient memories. Charlton Heston wears a disposable beard half made of glue and passes me butter I can’t spread because I am allergic to dairy. A candle on the table awaits a wind to make sleep start again. The weight of a fourth full blanket slows my breath.
Eye dream, I dream.
I dream, eye dream.
I am a house now. I rent but don’t own. All the collections collected hold at least their moment of entrance. I bought or borrowed them to tuck into shelves in corners I no longer pay attention to. There are a million stories here. The objects see and are seen. I wipe dust and dog fur off them. They are unchanged and I sneeze less because I am allergic to the mites that live in my air.
Mites are microscopic spiders. They live on everything inside my house. I will never see them. I was bitten by a reclusive spider in my bed once and he left my leg necrotic with a half dollar sized chasm of crusted blood. Despite their war with my flesh, I let all seen spiders live these days. Daddy's long legs sleep in the corners of a couple rooms because it’s not their fault a few bad relatives gave me pain. I watched a baby wolf wander up my wall. I wondered where he went.
I am a house. I stare out my windows, the cloud cries onto my thin lightly molded glass. The wet sounds better on my roof, its patter-rat-patting massaging me daydreams. The wind hits the fence near the lemon tree and the chimes hanging from the laundry line murmur off beat to the storm. There is a bird who isn’t there who chirps to me a forgotten euphony. His cheep cheep is rich. I thought you could never be seen where you aren’t, but he was here when he wasn’t. I don’t leave him seed in the winter and he flies to other houses. The mites might live inside of them as well.
I am a dream now. I dreamt I was a house and wished instead to be land. I could be river and forest and hills of rolling rock. I could be shadows sunsetting around the corners of a cave. Instead I am grass growing in a field next to an oak tree stumping seats for a flink of mud stamped and spotted cows.
The cowboy’s hat rests atop his brow. He sleeps with his boot ankles crossed on a branch. He knows the sky above him will change in slow motion clouds. He dreams the same dream I dream, except he dreams he’s a boat. He sleeps on the sea and awakes on the dock. The cows dream only of the grass. Any second they will eat me, the chaw of teeth chewing, a cradle rocking me awake.
I am a yawn now. I yawn and my tears stain the glasses that help my eyes see through blur. Light fills my dark room and I ask the TV for something I haven’t seen before. A Russian movie controls my remote. A train shakes a glass of water on a table next to a bed of sleeping family on the screen. Everything is textured sepia and dirty patience. There are no subtitles, only silence. A fan takes turns as a soundtrack. In the distance I hear a motorcycle on the streets of West Oakland. He is driving somewhere I’ll never know. He is doing something I’ll never do. He is a sound I’ll forget until I reread this moment. On the couch my dogs curl and dream about the smells left on the heels of hiking trail bushes.
I am a TV now. How many beards has Charlton Heston worn inside me? I’ll turn myself on and wake up. I’ll turn myself off and go to sleep. The stories in me want to go out but they are meant to live here. I change the channel to Bob Ross. He says “All you need to paint is a few tools, a little instruction, and a vision in your mind.” The rain patter-rat-pats. The chime chimes. My sleep sleeps.
I had the same dreams the other night. That's weird, eh?
Dreamy