Doktor Zjivago

I was riding in a carriage with Omar Shariff.

Flying Woman Blue Sky

Dreams of flying are the coolest! When I fly, I can control speed and altitude--I can go higher by simply breathing in, or lower by breathing out. Inhale. Exhale. Inhale. Exhale.

I was flying to California with a group of other fliers. We were not very high, but no one on the ground noticed us because they were too busy to look up! I have flown over Holland, over windmills and tulip fields, over Spanish landscapes, and other foreign places! I don't often get to fly, and love it when I do.

Once I was hypnotised (is this like dreaming?) and was told to make a small hole with my finger in the fabric of the universe, and look through. What SMALL hole? I ripped that fabric down the middle like a mad woman, a hole I could fly through, and did, right out among the stars and planets and galaxies. FANTASTIC!



(Flying Woman Blue Sky, by K. Laxma Goud)

BLUE EYES

Last night I met Blue Eyes, my lost baby. Grown taller now than Linn or Lee, as tall as Chris, but older. Maybe twenty. He was blond, short-haired. Although he didn't look a lot like my other boys, there was a definite family resemblance. He was slim, small-boned like Lee. When I saw him, I knew him immediately, knew he was one of mine.
I RECOGNIZED him. I was stunned. I KNEW I had met him before. There was this feeling of ABSOLUTELY INCREDIBLE RECOGNITION. I knew him. He was mine.

I turned away and put my head into my husband's shoulder, and cried and cried. How was it possible that there had been this great gap in my life, and I did not miss it? I wanted to go back in time, to see what had happened, how we had lost him. I thought, I never gave him a Christmas present, or even a birthday card. I never even gave him a name! I cried and cried and cried. I felt this unconsolable loss, because now that I had seen him, I REMEMBERED him.

I went over to him, full of all those years I had somehow forgotten him, thinking, HOW COULD I HAVE FORGOTTEN HIM? I put my arms around him and hugged him so tight, and he hugged me back. Nothing was said, but I knew he was telling me that it was okay, there was nothing to forgive, but I wanted his forgiveness! We stood there hugging each other for a long time while I continued to cry.

Then I woke up. It was 1:47 a.m. -- I was still upset and full of tears. It was so REAL. I got up, turned some lights on and got a drink of water. I walked around for a few minutes, feeling as if I had been through something PROFOUND. When I finally went back to bed I tried to tell the dream to Marv but he was too sleepy to listen --

--as I write this it is almost four in the afternoon and I am still shedding tears over this. why?


(We lost this baby June 4, 1966. Dreamed this eleven years later.)

Peter O'Toole

Peter O'Toole was there. It was at a large school, a college I think. There had been a murder. I don't know if I, or someone else did it. The severed head (it was a woman's) was all that was left. It was hidden in a brown paper bag, but one spot of blood was left in the closet, a sort of wardrobe. I dropped a piece of toilet paper on the spot to soak it up, and I put the head, still in its paper bag, on a shelf in the closet.

There was something about a locker, and two women were talking together about how long they had waited for this chance. I don't remember how they were involved, but both of them were extremely excited and nervous, as they had waited a long, long time for the hour to be right. I watched them take a gold key to the locker and begin to open it up.

Cut to a closeup of the severed head. It had fallen off of the shelf onto the closet floor, and had rolled out of the bag. I tried to give it mouth-to-mouth resusitation. The breath was hissing in and out of her windpipe, but soon her eyelids fluttered open and she began to try to speak. Horrified, I stuffed the head back into the bag and put it back up on the shelf, but the bag kept tipping over. So I put the whole thing, bag and all, down the garbage disposal in the kitchen sink. I didn't turn it on, the whole thing was too big, too gross for that! Blood would splatter everywhere.

I went back to the closet and removed my shoes. The spot of blood was still there, soaked through the toilet paper. I saw a pair of furry white slippers, and I knew that I had worn them when the murder was committed. I was glad no blood had spattered on them, because it would never have washed out. Meanwhile, back in the kitchen, Christopher had come to wash his hair--in the sink where I had hidden the head. Again, I was horrified, seeing the sink fill up with water, but then I noticed the plug was in the drain, and I hoped that it was not clogged by the head, but would still drain...when the plug was pulled....

Bird of Prey

A hawk flies in circles, and suddenly he breaks into a swift dive toward a sparrow. He catches the sparrow, and I know that he will rip the little bird into pieces. I see the sparrow caught in the hawk's beak, I hear the sound the small bird makes, a shrill shriek, as the hawk closes his sharp beak, breaking the sparrow's neck.

I can hear it even now.


(photo by Lorika@secretfarmer)

I dream of binary stars, circling one another like dogs ready to fight. One of the stars explodes and becomes a supernova, and then a black hole, and all the bright substance of the other star is sucked and whirled into the hole like water whirling down a drain.

I always dream in color, with a wide screen and sterophonic sound. Some people say they do not dream at all. What a pity. What a waste of time, to sleep and not dream. I dream asleep or awake.


(photo: Mark Garlick - Space Art)

Elaine's Dream

27 June '85

Dear Joyce,

"In this dream I had," (to quote a favorite poet) I dreamed you had been married to T.S. Eliot for years. You didn't live together because of his sexual preferences, but you had this lovely relationship, each of you being the other's inspiration for the poetry you wrote.

I thought you would like to know what you've been up to in my dreams.

Love, Elaine


(No, Thomas wasn't gay. See how his wife laughs at the mere suggestion!? I'm not sure whether that is his first wife, Vivienne, or his second, Esme Valerie. Either way, it doesn't matter, now does it?)

BIRD LEGS

I had the most awful dream night before last: we were keeping a bird in a cage on the bathroom floor. It was cold in there, and we kept forgetting to feed or water it. From time to time I went in to check on it, and remembered it needed to eat and drink--it was really in bad shape. Finally I went in and it was just about dead. Not quite. I picked it up and one of its legs broke off. Suddenly there were little bird legs everywhere, hanging with their little claws from the door and all over the floor. Then the little bird in my hand sort of shriveled up and died.

Political Dreams

From Somewhere On The Road:

I dreamed last night I was in a concentration camp. We all had guns and were running along close to the walls. There was a door, and we all rushed in, and then just waited quietly for them to come in and get us. Then I was burying something, and an old, old man came by. He said, "How old are you, thirteen or fourteen?" I was insulted, so I did a little tap dance and said, "I'm twenty-one, and I'd vote in the next election, only I'm not registered."



And Another:

I dreamed I toured Russia. The Communists got me, and for some reason they were going to kill me! I made a heart-rending plea to this guard guy (something about how it would be never to see, or hear, or think again). He said he understood, but that he was just doing his job. Anyway, I finally managed to make an escape. Grandma was driving the get-away car. She kept wanting to stop and sight-see and visit, and I just wanted to hurry and get out before they caught up with me.



The other night after watching TV I had a wild but very interesting and coherent dream about "Gunsmoke." I played Matt Dillon! (Not political, but, what the heck.)

OLD DREAMS

1. THE GOOD SAMARITAN

In this dream I had
the generous man who died
of some appalling plague
wanted to give me his puny blood
in a mayonnaise jar
(which I did not want)

In this dream
I lay reluctantly naked
upon a white hospital bed
where he has died
declining his philanthropy
feeling guilt

that I was such a thankless
wretch refusing interlocking
clamps and splices
the tethered couplings
that would braid us
blood to blood

refusing to partake
of his mortality


2. COMING AWAKE

I dreamed of you going away
to Switzerland with a puppet lady
a little Swiss cottage

like something off a clock
stuffed with deer antlers
and hanging puppets

like naked bodies
one or the other of us
behind bars

some kind of zoo
I might have loved you
I said

then came the screaming man
with a crushed hand
I took a brown bag

of leftover potato chips
home to my husband's
children


3. OCTOPUS


Your see-through faces
have run together like watercolor
on oatmeal pages
all my lovers buried alive

I never said goodbye
never knew how
I stored you up together instead
in some cluttered attic

inside my head
in a brown box rough with dust
and tied with barbed wire
for ribbons

one bound creature
of several shadowed hearts
and many limbs
all your vanished words

your brown eyes or blue eyes
all of you locked
together
like a bunch of

mad or hunchbacked uncles
hidden away
who grind their teeth
in my sleep

Fever Dreams

1. I dream I have written a book, and I call it The Black Boy and the Preacher's Snot.

2. A whole band, crashing cymbals, timpani, tubas and trumpets and all, marches through my dreams, their golden epaulets waving and brass buttons shining. "What band is that?" I ask.
"That," someone says, "is the Kahntoum Hamish Duck Band."

3. I am a performer in a play, but I am unable to remember what the play is, or what role I am expected to do, or any of my lines. The other actors are annoyed when I try to ad lib. I run around backstage looking frantically for a script, and when I finally find one, I have forgotten how to read. My lines say: Moup krezlen per remsler diem fa borudot numlem ....

4. I sometimes write great poetry while I sleep: "There are no fragile dogs in Heaven. Marry whom you will."

I can't usually recall any of it, but this one I wrote down before it dissolved in daylight: We had but one thing for dinner,
a tooth,
and that was passed around
several times
before it was clipped down.

many great and important people
sat at either end
of the table discussing
whether it is nobler to live
or to die.

What was the question?
I forget.
What is the answer?

4. I dream I have written a child's picture book with the title "Christ Walked Among the Crucified." Inside, there is a picture of a huge tree, no leaves, but many long thorns--and upon each thorn, impaled at the middle is a man, woman, or child, doubled over in agony. The next page shows the same people, smiling, and all with little brown bandages in their middles where the thorns have been removed. The text says, "And with His touch, He healed the wounds of those who died for Him."

Baby Dreams

1. A still-life, recurring, when I was 2 or 3-years old: a small white bulldog leaping toward the backside of a boy sitting on a fence. A pen-and-ink drawing. Something from the
Katzenjammer Kids.

2. Another recurring, about the same time: I am being chased by a screaming fire engine. I try to run, and can't lift my feet.

3. There is a chicken under my pillow. (It is really a yarn dog made by my Nanny. But in daylight, I am terrified by the chickens in our yard!)

My Mind's I

I dreamed all night that I was making a dream journal, so when I woke up this morning I thought, why not? So. Why not!


ignis fatuus

in the illustrated
conceptions
that happen each night
the curtain
behind my eyes rises
fugitive people move
catbirds of life changing
skins under my closed eyelids
under my quiescent hair
on the pillow

skimming inscrutable
geographies of words
like flat stones
skipped across the grey-
green water of mind
that sprays like sea

or resident birds
that babble across
an overflowing of bells

I sleep
in ciphers
that no one explains:
mutable, exploding
at the pinions
self-propelling

and vulnerable, defenseless
as vampires