I am in the old house. There is a horse there. It is a friend, and it is an enemy. It is in love, and it is insane. He chases me across the yard, across the corridor, across the room. I lock myself in a metal cabinet, and I am trapped. He menaces me through the holes in its walls.
I am walking, walking through the old neighbourhood. I can feel the presence of the horse, but he does not come after me here. I make my way to the Cavern of Death, though I shall fear no evil, for my friends are with me, their presence and their comfort a soft source of peace.
The close walls of the cavern are grey, the low roof is grey, the steps leading downward into its very bowels are grey. Death walks deferentially behind me. I never thought of it before as being polite. I am to be locked in a chamber, a cavity, a cell, with no food and no water, no companionship or stimulation. It is penitence and atonement. I must dwell on what I have done.
After some while, I am brought a platter of food, of creamed potatoes and cooked meats and corn without the cob. I am brought a cup of sour sop punch. I have paid my penance. I am free to leave and to live. Death will not leave its cavern for me. It will not follow me wherever I go.
I feel the encouragement and support of my friends, the well-wishes of those whom I love, leaving that place with me. I make my way back to the neighbourhood, wending through its myriad, multitudinous roads. A little dog named Sally is at my heels and by my side. Presently, happily I return to the old house.
The horse is there, laying in waiting for me. This time he cannot touch me, he cannot menace my soul, and I feel no fear. This time I am the one who chases him, for I am strength and he is fear, my will is stronger, and without worry. He runs and he leaves, scattering throughout the neighborhood about us, for I am no longer a place in which he can hide.
Sally stays on his heels to keep him going. No one shall look for him there. And he shall have no friends in the Cavern of Death, where he now goes. His penitence shall be long, and so too shall his suffering. There will be no platter or cup to signal the end.
I awake.
Monday, August 31, 2009
Of a horse and a dog and the Cavern of Death
Thursday, August 27, 2009
The boy Logan (Seek and Ye Will Never Find)
I am in the old house. I am a tiny, electromagnetic human computer, programmed to seek and ye shall find. Rivenis is my brother. He too is a tiny humanoid machine. We are looking for the boy Logan. I do not know what he is, or what he is programmed to do, but it smells of love, and is written in feeling and reeks of the unrequited.
Two men arrive to take me away. They shut me down and turn me off that I may be unconscious. There is a place, a person, a light far away, and we are moving farther from it. Our orders come from there. It sends Rivenis with us. He is assigned to protect me and to inform me of my own assignment. There is something I must do. Find the boy Logan. I drift. I accept. I submit. I give in.
The two men drive us down the Spring Garden highway to Bridgetown. One is driving. The other is receiving orders from The Light. My feet are in Rivenis’ lap. He has his orders too. The man in the passenger seat presently takes note of my hairy android legs, and unable to help himself, proceeds to start scenting my feet and kissing my toes and biting my heels; he is plucking the hair of my legs with his teeth. I drift.
Now he climbs into the backseat, and in positions impossible in that slightest of spaces, proceeds to take me. It does not feel like rape, because this is all from his perspective, and so it feels like pleasure. It is neither my pain nor my perspective, and so it feels like love. Like I have no will for it to be against. Rivenis does not protect me. I feel revulsion, for this is not my assignment, and he has failed his own. Find the boy Logan. I accept it.
When it is over and finished and done, we stop at the traffic lights at the Esso gas station at the bottom of the highway, at the beginning of town, and we take the left. The Dreaming lurches and I suddenly find myself thrown into a pool with African Maidens. A lone warrior is there. I know him not though he is reminiscent of my father. I must place the soggy, dilapidated sandals of the maidens onto their feet beneath the facade and the movement of the waters. It is a ritual. I submit.
There is fire and darkness in some distant part of the Dreaming. Perhaps the car we were driving crashed. Perhaps the gas station at the bottom and the beginning of the road, blew up. I am sad for I did not find the boy Logan. I did not seek and find. Now I am surrounded by waters, above and below, within and without, around and away. There is a bar. Alcohol is the blood and sweat and tears of the Morningstar. Do not touch. Do not give in.
Surrounded by African Maidens and a lone warrior, I step out of a television, for I no longer desire to participate in the Ritual of Sandals. They are disappointed. They wanted me to stay, and to want to stay. I however, depart. There are several tapes of several African movies my father has left behind him in his wake to return. Several more he has taken with him wherever he now wanders. I pack a suitcase. My mother cries alcohol. Now I can give in. Now I can give into it.
The Dreaming dies to reality and I return.
Travelling Nightmares, Faerietale Dreams
I am travelling through worlds ... through forests, through mountains, across oceans. I settle on an island waiting for you to find me, waiting for you to love me ... forever. Now I am being pursued, into an alley, into a dead end, He has been chasing me. He is not you. Desperate I phase through the solid grey brick of the wall to my left and find myself through air, and wood and stone to the other side, to the inner side of a crimson castle. You are waiting there, Dream. You are kind. You care. You love, and you are lovely. You give me protection … sanctuary … hope. You are generous. You are considerate. You are compassionate. All the things he is not, everything I am no longer. He phases past the crimson curtain, those blood red drapes that veil the portal into your kingdom. He phases through air and wood and stone to land by our side mere inches between us. But he is clumsy in his transcendence and smashes the wood and stone in his passage. He is here, a snarling menace beyond ready to attack, to crush us with his dark and wicked will. But he cannot harm us here, not me, least of all you. You take my hand, my soul, my spirit and you guide it, leading me down into the dark of the corridor to a time and a place and a home and a how, where he cannot follow. And I am safe. And I am loved. You love me. The Dreaming comes to a close.
Dark Doll
I am in a strange bedroom, it is unfamiliar and foreign to me, but at the same time it is also vaguely reminiscent of my room in Augusta and my room in the old house. My parents are there, somewhere, in another room. I cannot see them but I can hear them and feel their presence upon the Dreaming. I am readying myself for bed. I am preparing the room for the coming of the night time wolf. I make sure all the doors are locked, all the windows are shut, the covers are pulled up tight.
He is here. He cannot get in through the doors or the windows. I pull the covers down and tread softly to the door. I open it. There is no wolf. Instead there is a doll. It is male. It is soft and plushy, neither hard nor plastic. He has long, stringy, damp looking hair. He has dark circles beneath his eyes. He is dressed like a gothic prince, and reminds me of the artist, quiet and refined, like Keanu Reeves, Neil Gaiman, or Johnny Depp. The smile on his face is both sickly and sick.
Stonehead and the Giant Snake
(I found this picture when I was pillaging the internet for art, and it was instantly reminiscent of the Stonehead in this following dream.)
I am in a black American chattel house with women who remind me of my friend Mandy and her mother. We are a house full of small animals, cats and dogs and rabbits. One of the animals darts away and out into the street. He is a small, black dog who reminds me of my small black cat, Lola le Fey. He is about to be struck down by the traffic, but at the last moment I manage to seize control of The Dreaming and slow down the oncoming slaughter so that he barely manages to escape to the other side of the street unharmed.
This is alternate dreaming reality number one.
Now I am in a black American red brick building, used for school, church and business. It is a compound for small kids and their adult caretakers. It is surrounded by woods and forests. In the back there is a quarry with cables suspended in the air over it that are transporting cargo freights. Then a man appears beside me. He is raw masculinity, pure, organic male. A natural fighter. A trained soldier. A perfect warrior. In the cargo freights suspended high about the air on the cables over the quarry we train for battle fighting imaginary obstacles and enemies together.
This is the alternate dreaming reality number two.
The warrior and I take a walk through the woods surrounding the compound. Beyond those woods is an open field on which a giant stone face sits with its mouth gaping open, and leading to the dome forming its head - mammoth and moss-covered. We make our way on the winding path of dirt and gravel towards its wide-opened throat, and we enter. To our left is a wall on the other side of which is a recessed pit falling down far below the ground level at the bottom of which is a pool of deep, dark, toxic green water in which reptiles of the same colour splash just beneath the surface, where I cannot see them, though I know what they are.
Further up the tunnel of throat, into the dome of head we walk, and we hear the murmurings of slaves, some near, others far off in the distance. They are gathering foods to cook, they are laboring on the open field, they are speaking in hushed undertones. We pass them and them us, but they do not see us. Now there is a rumbling. The earth is shaking. The stone head starts to crumble, but it does not collapse. Something is moving deep within it, deep beneath it, in the bowels of its brain, in the bowels of the earth. Suddenly there are huge, insurmountable boulders rolling down the winding path towards us.
The warrior and I leap into action, putting our training in the cabled cargo freights over the quarry to the test, scaling the wall and hanging upside down on the ceilings, using our chakra to defy gravity. The boulders pass but left in their wake is an evil aura, a menacing, murderous intent. Something has awoken. Something knows we are there. Something is coming and it is coming straight for us. I urgently tell the warrior that we have to get out of there while we still had the chance. We turn to run down the tunnel towards the open field.
The moment we near the forest surrounding the compound the earth outside the stone head explodes. From under the metropolis of domes enspiralled with winding paths and stairways and tunnels surrounding the Stonehead, a giant skeletal snake, made of stones and bones bursts forth from the earth, a raging roar blasting from its mouth. We have angered it, infuriated it. We have trespassed, and now it seeks our blood and death as the price, the boon to sooth it back to slumber and rest.
It pursues us through the forest. Our concern is for the children and their caretakers back at the compound. We arrive there at the same time as the snake. Everyone is frozen in fear by the share magnitude of it, its huge stone head opening, gaping, wide emitting another blast of a roar. My partner and I run around back to the quarry, hoping to hide inside of the cabled freights high in the air. But whether through smell, heat vision or whatever else, the large skeleton snake, a snake of bones and stones finds us always.
It pursues us from freight to freight, so giant that its head is inline with the freights despite their height in the air on the cables over the depth of the quarry. We run through our training regime, our obstacle course, this time fighting a real obstacle, a real enemy. We reach the last freight, the giant skeletal snake of stones and of bones bearing down upon us, when we are suddenly hurled without warning into alternate dreaming reality number one. On the same street as the near accident with the little black dog who looks like my little black cat Lola le Fey, as the black American chattel house, filled with women who remind me of my friend Mandy and her mother and small animals like cats and dogs and rabbits.
We are safe it seems for now, for the snake does not or perhaps cannot chase us in this world within The Dreaming, and so it ends.
The Red Girl and the Dark Panther
I am the Red Girl. I am red because I am wearing a red hooded coat, and so the Red Girl is what I am called. I am a waitress in a tavern, the walls are made of red clay brick and the interior is duskily lit from the lanterns’ lights’ muted glow, creating a cozy, bronzed atmosphere, almost as if we were in an underground cavern, deep within the earthen bowels.
I serve a tray of food to a man and his woman seated on the far right of the cavernous tavern, beneath a lantern light’s muted glow. On the tray is a dirty baby turtle. He is alive and wading in stew. He is adorable. To my horror the man plucks him out of the sauce and pops him into his mouth, commenting as he chews with his mouth full how delicious and succulent live, baby turtles happen to be.
Then he plucks the baby turtle out of his mouth, seemingly unharmed and still alive and offers me a taste. Naturally I couldn’t bear to eat anything alive, least of all something so cute, so I pop it into my mouth, with a sigh of relish and a rub of my tummy and a nod in thanks and walk back to the kitchen in the black back of the building before I remove it from my mouth and place it gently on the kitchen floor.
To the far left of the tavernous cavern, lit by the light of the lanterns’ glow throughout the room is a thick, heavy wooden door, held to the wall by a thick, heavy, corded rope. Releasing the knot that kept the door shut, I slipped outside of the tavern into the shadows of the beyond night. Here it is like a junk yard but without the junk, just mounds and piles and heaps and stacks of rock and rubble and stone intermittently peopling an otherwise empty space.
It is here, to the far left, in the deepest shadows, I espy a silhouette of a large, cat, a dark cat … The Dark Panther. He has sighted me. He is now slowly, slowly, slowly coming. I run back to the thick, heavy wooden door, yank it open and make to retie the rope. But the rope is no longer there. There is now a string, thin, light, weak string, that couldn’t possibly hold the weight of the door closed to the wall.
I try valiantly to bind the door closed with the flimsy, fragile twine, knowing that with each passing moment the dark panther, made of shadows, made of menace, was nearing the door, nearing my doom. The door keeps slipping open as the corded string keeps slipping loose. He is here. He is behind the door. His intent is overwhelming. I can feel his breathe through the cracks of the wood. His strength is my weakness.
Suddenly he rears up and what was a mere moment ago an animal is now a man, yet retaining his bestial being, his primal, instinctive essence. Now I am on the outside, on the other side of the door. Now he is slamming me against the thick, heavy, wooden wall of it, just as he slams his tongue into the depths of my open mouth. I feel plunged into, I feel wrench away from myself to float in the mindless, sense-full, rapture of the moment. His eyes echo eternity as they behold me and I am flung without ceremony from The Dreaming.
