My friends, Shari, Nicole, Kevin and I are at the Barbados Community College to see a concert headlined by Maxx and Mandy. During the concert, when Maxx is onstage, there is a group of Bajan white girls swooning over the sound of his voice. This one girl in the group said she was so willing to give him what was left of her virginity if he would have her.
I seem to be stage managing the event. I watch them fawn over Maxx from behind the curtains of the wings of stage right, and then I go further backstage to help prepare Mandy for her set. She is holding the microphone and is stingy when it comes to allowing me to hold it, just for a second, as though afraid I’ll steal her light and thunder.
Now the concert is over and Shari, Nicole, Kevin and I are under a wooden and cement tent structure, but with a bunch of other people none of us know, other students from BCC presumably. Suddenly the earth starts to shake and quake. Shari, Nicole and Kevin run directly from under the tent, but I run around it, in search of Maxx and Mandy.
Not seeing them, I rejoin the others on the far side of the tent. I then proceed to jump from one point to another within The Dreaming. First I am on the road of the hill below my Aunt’s house in the country. Then I am in the backyard of the old house, with a white Rastafarian poodle dog and a little calico kitten.
They are my charges. I am being pursued now, but I cannot see and do not know what my pursuers are. I round the corner of the enclosed garage and walk tentatively across the unenclosed driveway towards the road. In the house next to the old house, through the track, through the lane, I see a band of Voodoo Priests, dressed in fine garbs, in dapper robes and regalia of deep golden yellows, contrasting strikingly against their onyx and obsidian skins.
I take my two charges along with my mother, who is forever peering fearfully out at the backyard and later over my shoulder and later behind her back. We walk quietly down the road hoping to slip past the Priests, who are the pursuers, and would have made it had the last Priest, a tall, ebony woman bedecked and adorned in golden garb had not spotted and exposed us to the others.
We have been seen. We run down the road as fast as we can, me with the white Rasta dog and baby cat in my oversized jacket, my mother trailing behind, watching ever fearfully. As we run to the end of the gap, the Voodoo Priests are transformed into Macbethean witches … crusty, mangy, and old. They shrink in size, and grow, and swell and spread in width. Their clothing changes from gold to sickly, sour, sewage green and black and deep purple.
They chase us with intent. Their crooked and bent silhouettes shriek as they float and glide down the road behind us. We turn the corner to the right and run up the road adjacent and identical to the one we just left. As we run up this twin street, I begin to lift, to fly, to soar. My charges are in my coat. My mother is behind me, but whether she is just holding onto my ankle or she is flying too, I cannot tell from my angle.
The witches fall behind us. The time is dusk, and the evening sun is before us now, flaring and shimmering as if made from faerie dust. It is a Faerie sun. I reach out and grab hold of it, and as I grasp it, and as it blazes within my enclosed fist, The Dreaming dims and fades away and I depart from the dream.
Wednesday, July 29, 2009
Concerts, Quakes and Voodoo Priests
Spirit and Dirt
I am in an unfamiliar bed, in an unfamiliar room in an unfamiliar place. Above me a spirit floats. I believe it is female but I an uncertain. Malevolent pressure is pushing down upon me, but I know not what it wants or what it means.
I run from my room into the room of my father and stepmother, which is down the hall. Again the room in not known to me, and neither is the place. I crawl into bed between them as a small child would. The spirit follows me and enters the room, but does not express or manifest itself as a floating woman again.
This time it is merely a Presence, and then the room is filled with earth and dirt as though an invisible excavator entered the room as an unseen force. We all run out into the hallway of that strange hotel. From the outside and through the floor-length curtains we could see the level of dirt rising higher in equal proportions as though the dirty were being poured into the room like water into a cup, except rising from the ground rather than being poured from the ceiling.
The sea of dirt is disturbed by the occasional tuff of grassy turf. Behind the glass wall and curtain panel it seems as a sea without ebb or flow … Without undulation. The Dreaming ends.
Of Old Schools and Faerielands
I am walking down the road to my old school. The road is now a river; artificially constructed, it is raised above the level of the ground, and flanked on either side by a sunken river bank. I am walking along the river bank of the river to my old school. They are people, neighbours and school children, people I know, all along the river length.
When I get there the school has become an underwater facility, part swimming pool, part aquarium, all partially submerged. I enter the building and am given a small, brown, baby seal to care for. But soon I am chased by people from the facility, whose task is to take the seal from me. I run through the ice blue water facility with the seal in my hand, hiding in pool filled rooms and air conditioning vents until I manage to escape to the outside world by the river bank.
Now I am no longer on the river road to my old school. Now I am no longer standing before my old school, the underwater facility. Now the river bank is an enrailed moat. Now the underwater facility is an ancient castle, standing behind me. As I turn to face the school-turned-castle, surrounded by the enrailed moat that was once a river and its bank, I find myself in an old world, a new realm, a magickal sphere into which I am gazing.
In this Faerieland there are two species of being - the Wise Ones and the New People. The Wise Ones are of magickal blood. They are the faeries and the centaurs, the phoenixes and the beings that are both animals and human at the same time. The New People are descendants of the Wise Ones. The magick in their blood is thin and thinning, and they want to be exorcised of it completely. They are human, but not yet human.
The Wise Ones are holding a council meeting. They want to stop the efforts of the New People before all magick is gone from their descendants forever. They want to make life as it were before the blood began to grow thin. They want to keep their own wisdom and magick, which has been fading fast thanks to the efforts of the New People to exorcise all ancient power from that realm, and to rid the Faerielands of the olden ways.
A group of magicians, explorers and I are deployed by the council of the Wise Ones to find a way to stop the New People. My friend Georgi-Ann is with us. We sail to a parallel shore. The land is surrounded by a river or maybe a sea. There is a railing between the land and the water. Getting off the boat and onto the land, we walk into a garden.
It is evening in the garden. The plants here are pond plants. Tall, yellow grasses, rushes and reeds in violet, peach and rose and the pale green of the willow trees surround a water-lilied pond, over the surface of which is stretched a bamboo bridge. The bridge is on the same level of the water, and so it seems that we are walking on the water itself. Scattered across the land flanking either side of the pond are the stone statues of old gods. The light of the setting sun is softened by the low-lying and undulating mists of that place.
Beyond the bridge is a tunnel flanked on either side by the sheer drop of tall crags and cliff faces, leading to a deeper, darker, cooler place, the jungle interior of those lands. Here the colours are brighter and darker than the paler, lighter colours of the waterside garden. Deep, jade, jungly greens are complimented by the burgundy and purples of the plants which are in turn contrasted to the tawny golden yellow of the suspension bridge stretch across the space of that clearing. The plants here also seem moister and mossier than those of the garden. They grow upon the faces of the walls of rock that diverged from each other at the end of the tunnel, at the entrance to the clearing to encircle it.
Georgi says she prefers that jungle to the garden, but I like the garden best. We proceed past the clearing to the end of the bridge to a place I cannot see very clearly and do not know. I only see our return back through the jungle, back through the garden, back to the boat. It is also unclear whether or not we found the way, but I intuit and believe we do. I awake from the Dreaming.
Flight
I am in my old bedroom at the old house. The bunk bed I once shared with my cousins at their home in the country is now in that room. It is up against the only window in the room, the window of the far, outer wall, the window looking into the room. My bed, which would have been on the opposite wall to where the bunk is, had it been in the room, is not.
I am on the top bunk. I am gliding in slow motion from the bed to the wall straight ahead, to the wall on the left to the wall on the right, using each surface to propel myself with greater force to the next surface, building momentum as I glide until I am flying around the room. I pause periodically on the ceiling, before I descend slowly back to the top of the bed.
My mother enters the room. She watches me soar in slow motion above her head, from the top of the bunk to the surfaces of the walls and ceiling and back. She asks me what I am doing. I tell I am flying. She says she is not afraid that I can do it, but asks me how I am able to. I tell her it is because I believe in faeries and can do whatever I want. She watches me for a while.
The Tea Pot and the River Towns
I am Belle from Beauty and the Beast. I am walking down a town lane in Black Rock with my father, Maurice. He is holding Ms. Pots from the castle of the Beast in both of his hands; only she doesn’t have her face anymore and is no longer animated. Instead of china she is made of smooth, transparent crystal with gold trimming and looks like a hybrid of her former self and Aladdin’s lamp.
Ms. Pots is filled with hot water, and my father walks down the town lane in Black Rock showing all the people of the town his magick, wishing lamp. They all think he is crazy. After circling around the block we walk back up the lane again, and find ourselves on the outer wall of a reservoir. There are waterways leading to the centre of this reservoir over which floats a dark entity like an evil genie.
The Entity is being reprimanded by the human parents of little creatures for scaring their children, and after each parent rebukes it to their satisfaction they row off, sailing their small boats to the right of the reservoir and down their respective waterways. No longer Belle, but now myself, I follow a boat down the waterways, which are like suspension bridge roller coasters for boats, passing over and under each other under the reservoir.
At the end of each waterway is a small town, symbolized by one wooden beach gazebo-house, painted in bright, tropical colours. There are people living and playing in every “town” except the last one, which is empty. This was the town of the human parents of the little creature children, who were frightened by the evil genie of the reservoir. No one uses this waterway anymore. The parents have left because the children are afraid.
As I stand at the end of the water way, staring out at the sea, beside the abandoned town, the dream ends and I awaken.
Of Co-workers and Cousins, Acquaintances, Dinosaurs & Love
I am in the kitchen of a building shared by the radio station BBS and my old secondary school. I leave the studio of the radio station and go for a drink in the kitchen. From there I find myself at the beginning of the main school corridor and start to walk. Soon I find myself in another kitchen, which is really a small shop that was once a classroom. It is painted in a harsh green hue.
I order something from the shop and while there, my cousins come in to order something as well. They are also attending the school. They start to confront and condemn me about my pagan beliefs. As we leave the shop and continue down the school corridor, we make a u-turn around the block of classrooms to our left, making a left onto a paved road, passing a roundabout.
There on a wall in front of me is Winter. Irritated beyond words with my cousins I tell them that I need to spend time with him now, so they go on ahead with Winter and I walking behind. All of my acquaintances from The University of the West Indies are there. Suddenly we are walking on a peninsula of land, and as we walk, Winter and I are transformed into Indians, though I am not certain whether we are Native or South American.
The sea appears to our left. As we walk along the shore, I slip and fall on a wave, landing on the belly of a lime green snake. Suddenly another Indian woman appears, grabs and holds the head of the snake to prevent it from biting me, but her grip is too weak. The moment her grasp slips however, Winter catches the head of the snake as it swings around to bite me.
Then I fall into the sea, there is no land or seabed beyond the shore, I plummet into the dark green, murky depths of a vast ocean. Beneath the peninsula are hundred of snakes, too many to count, their heads are stuck in the under belly of the peninsula like upside down ostriches, and their bodies are hanging down into the water like beaded curtains.
Winter takes the snake I fell on, the head in one hand, the tail in the other and dives into the water behind me. He throws the snake over my head from behind me, still gripping its head and its tail in his hands, and uses its body to pull me back up to the surface and onto the land. He then drags me across the sand and behind a huge rock close to the end of peninsula.
Suddenly the body of land where the school was disintegrates and disappears into the sea. The peninsula of land we are on also starts to crumble and sink beneath the waters of that vast ocean. Under the surface of those waters the land becomes a flying dinosaur rising from the bowels and depths of the waves. It has a horse-shoe ear, like a lump on the top of its head, and it is under the arched alcove of this ear, that Winter and I, along with a little white boy sit and rest.
We start to have a low conversation about where we are going, and what we are going to do once the dinosaur lands. Of course being that we are in the ear of the dinosaur he can hear us as we speak, as well as feel us moving around, although we try to keep very still and as quiet as possible. Feeling and hearing us, he becomes annoyed and starts batting around his lump with his claw, going as far as to shove his claw in the loop of his ear to catch us, we evade his claw by running around his hoop ear until he decides to give up and settle back down to the flight. Either than or he accepts our presence, because the energy of the flight changes and is less menacing after this episode.
When we land on a new mainland the dinosaur lets us off its head and we make our way in land, wandering the new world. We find a boy there named Miles who was the only survivor other than ourselves from the school. He was flown to the mainland by a pterodactyl he reined with some rope. Everyone else on the old mainland at the school, my friends, my cousins and the staff at BBS were drowned. Thus The Dreaming ends.
School Recital
The members of an arts club called Chimera Opus are in a school hall at one of the local colleges on an island called Barbados. I am there as well. I have not been a member for a year or two. A girl called Petrina is now the President of the Club. She is doing a great job and the club is thriving despite its shaky beginnings. The club is at the college performing a recital.
There is an altercation between a figure of authority at the college and myself. Although I cannot remember the details of the altercation, I do remember stalking back to my seat arguing at the official and having a girl named Lee-Ann and a boy named Ian ask me what was wrong. After explaining the situation with them, I then decide to leave, and say goodbye to Petrina and the rest of the club.
In the corridor outside of the school hall I see other members of the club, boys by the name of Adrian and Dario, coming into the recital late. I tell them about what happened and why I’m leaving and to let Petrina know that she is doing a stellar and fantastic job running the club. They no longer need me here. There are no hard feelings and I am happy for us all. I then depart, and the Dreaming shifts …
Fred and the Faeries
There is a boy named Fred. To reach the place where we once were two other faeries and I must travel across the countryside. As we do we are transformed, becoming tinier and tinier as we fly. Soon we reach a pale yellow flower with a bright red centre and alight on its petals. This flower is at the back of a long line, and at the top of the queue is the boy named Fred.
Realm of the Past
From the portal of another world I am hurtled into the shallow waters on the shore of an ocean. From there I climb up the steps leading downward and into that sea, and at the top I see a large, freestanding brick wall before the wall of an old brick building, creating a small passage between the two. To the right of the outer wall is an old acquaintance of mine, a girl by the name of Crystal Cox, who is very bony and is carrying her grandmother, a very old, very decrepit woman on her back. The old woman is wearing layers of clothing, skirts and aprons, and has a rag on her head. Crystal is as young as when I first met her, a little more than a young girl.
I join her to the right of the outer wall. She doesn’t seem to remember me; as if I am no longer a part of that world, of that realm of the past. We walk along and passed the wall, climbing another flight of enrailed steps, the sea splashing against the foundation of the pathway on which we are walking. We round the bend of the path turning left away from the wide open ocean and onto a wide open bridge over a clear water careenage, very reminiscent of a similar overpass called the Chamberlain Bridge in a city called Bridgetown.
We walk pass the people milling around the path. Some are selling goods, while others are on their way to unknown destinations and others still are standing around talking. Crystal is still carrying Gran on her back. I look over the side of the railing, down pass the underside of the bridge into the clear water careenage below. The water is a pale teal or aquamarine. I can see the silver fish that look like miniature dolphins swimming around in the water just beneath the bridge.
There are other people also looking over the side of the bridge. They have rods and lines and are trying to catch the miniature dolphins. I stop and think about whether I should try to catch them too, when suddenly one leaps out of the water and floats before me, just above my head. He is attached to a string like a balloon and I know he is meant for me. I take the string in my hand, and walk over to where Crystal is standing looking out over the bridge into the distant blue sky. Gran is no longer on her back. Looking around I see her at the place where the railing ends, but before the wall of the building before us begins.
Here the path is craggy and unpaved, and is more like a bed of rocks piled high from the clear water careenage up to the underside of the bridge. I go and grab her, guiding her away from the bedrocks and back onto the paved pathway. Crystal then snaps out of her reverie and takes Gran’s hand and we continue along our way pass the building before us. Its outer wall is peopled with small, tiny snack shops and its interior is dark like a bus or train terminal. Standing at the first shop is a group of Wall Street stockbrokers and lawyers, all hidden in the shadows of the shop's overhanging shade except one.
The one standing in the light is the closest to me, and as Crystal, Gran and I pass by, he turns to stare into my eyes. He looks like a God. A heavy, tousled brunette mane, eyes a dark teal or aquamarine, deep and intense. Everything about his face, his bone structure, the line of his jaw and his nose are strong and perfectly sculpted; his lips full, shapely … soft. He looks like a model from GQ or a character from the cover of a romance novel. I stare into his eyes until we pass.
Now I am doing a dance. First it begins as an Irish jig, then it transitions to a hip hop routine, then I break down and start swiveling my hips like the hamster on the Blockbuster commercial. The entire dream goes silent. People on both sides of the bridge and the street, people I’ve passed, people I’m next and nearest to, even people I have yet to see have gone completely still. My mind’s eye does a sweeping, panoramic shot of The Dreaming. All have frozen. All are quiet. Back behind my own eyes, I lean over to Crystal, who once again is carrying Gran on her back and ask, “Do you guys dance in this world?” She looks at me with the strangest of expressions and asks in return, “What’s dance?”
It’s then I look around to see the countless eyes looking at me in shock and consternation, confusion and uncertainty. The Dreaming ends.
Flight and Lime
A group of people and I are flying over the ocean where the little mermaid once lived (she has since then married Prince Eric and moved to his castle by the sea in France). We are soaring, high-flying, gliding on giant bird wings, dressed in business suits. The women are wearing heels. We land on the spire of a tower in a town. Then there is a sweeping panoramic view of the crowded city, which then zooms in on a lime in a dirty street, under a table across from a stall. The lime is half-rotted and burst open from being underfoot and stepped on by the people milling about. Suddenly a heel appears by the lime. My mind’s eye travels up the leg of a woman dressed is a business suit, but whether it is one of the other women in the group of people who flew in and landed on the tower’s spire or whether it is me, I cannot tell. I cannot tell anything other than we have arrived. The Dreaming shifts …
Sunday, July 26, 2009
Suitcase Unpacked
My parents, and I, are the old house. My dad is leaving to go on a trip. It is my responsibility to pack his suitcase. He reminds me over and over, he checks and rechecks again and again, but I still haven’t done it. I never do it. On the day he is intended to travel, he asks me if I have done it as yet. When I tell him no, he packs it himself, accusing me of making him miss his flight. The Dreaming shifts …
Mandy and the Mothers
My sister spirit Mandy and I, live together in a small, white apartment on an avenue lined with trees. Her mother comes over to visit and freaks out at all the esoteric literature on our bookshelves. We try to explain ourselves, beliefs and interests as best as we can but she still leaves in a huff of fear and anger.
Next my own mother comes over to visit and she too freaks out at all the esoteric literature on our bookshelves. Once again we try to explain ourselves, our beliefs and our interests, but she too is visibly upset, hurt and disappointed.
She reaches over to pick up a book from the shelf. The cover art is of a cherubim baby boy, with wisps of brunette curls, big, deep, sparkling eyes, the fattest cheeks and a tiny, rosebud mouth. He is facing to the left so we can only see his side profile, and he is floating in midair.
Starting just above his ribcage is the stem of an apple which ends just below his ribcage, almost aligned with his navel, where it then blossoms outward into a full, ripe, luscious, blood red apple covering his entire oblique, from just before the navel all the way across his right side to the beginning of his back.
The apple ends at the top of his upper thigh, from the outside of his pubic to the start of his behind. This apple however is neither the image of an apple before the cherubim baby boy, nor is it even a tattoo of an apple on his skin. It seems to come from within his body; the skin around it is filled with veins as if his body were straining to emanate it. It can be best described as a birthmark of some kind.
Behind the cherubim baby boy is a full grown man with an identical birthmark on the exact same place as the baby. Again the skin around it is filled with veins as if his body were straining to emanate the mark. Taking the book from my mother I place it back on the shelf, telling her it was just a romance novel. The Dreaming shifts …
Run Away
I am at the old house with all my friends and family. It is morning time, and the daylight floods The Dreaming in a way I’ve never experienced before. Winter is there, and so is a boy named Haig. I run from the house. Everyone is calling after me and I know they will soon follow. I slip into the track on the far side of the house next to the old house, and run in slow motion towards the end of it. It is misty here.
There is a trap, a web of vines, in my way. I unhook the end of it looped around the top of a twig from a plant on the left side of the path and pull it aside like a webbed curtain of vines, and it loosens as I pull and I see where it is rigged on a twig from another plant on the right side of the path. I quickly step through the undone trap, and loop the end of it around the top of the plant’s twig again to slow my pursuers.
I turn and run through the fog to the end of the path. Suddenly I am running along the side of the house on the Other Side of the old house. My chasers are trapped in the web of vines in the path two houses down from where I am now. Now I am ascending the mossy stone steps at the back of the house on the Other Side of the old house. The air here is cool. The morning and the daylight do not reach here. I make a left turn at the top of the mossy stone steps in the alley way that is cool where the sun and light of the day do not reach.
Now there is another house to my right. I do not know this house. I have never been here. It is vaguely reminiscent of a house in the country where my Aunt and Uncle and cousins live, but that is all. I enter the house, but do not remember seeing the inside of it. Now I am in the backyard of this house, which is paved with concrete, rigged with clothing lines and covered with tarpaulin.
At the back of the backyard is a web of ropes, stretching across the entire length of the backyard. The man who owns the house is repairing the ropes of the webbing but when I ask, he cuts the ropes and creates another hole at the bottom of the web for me to slip through. The ones who are after me are now at the side of the house on the Other Side of the old house. The man tells me that they are coming. I can sense that they are.
I slip feet first through the web of ropes. His backyard ends on a precipice and I drop down into a sloping gully beyond it. I make my way across the gully as fast as I can, knowing that if I stop they will catch me. It is beautiful in the gully. The trees are majestic, the sunlight through the leaves shimmers like faeries. It is a mystical place. The gully ends by a side road to the main road. I run up the main road, I pass a roundabout, and I make a left into another side road, canopied and enshrouded by tall, magnificent trees.
The air here is cold. The light of day reaches this place the least. I make my way down this side road, running, running, running into its peaceful and comforting darkness, while down the road, past the roundabout, through the side road, into the gully, up the precipice and behind a web of rope, my hunters remain trapped, unable to follow, calling me back to them … calling me to return. The Dreaming shifts …
