The Dreams That Dream Me

2012-01-06T07:50:00.001Z

Long confused dreams in which I'm in a long complicated, fruitless quest to recover something I'd lost that I could never find.A long long train journey going through amazing landscapes and during which strange things happen on the train itself, but on arrival the destination is a wasteland, a deserted place of ruins and dust devils.I wake up alone, trying still to get hold of the dream, but it's gone, as is the fate of most dreams; only a longing and a sense of loss remain and I already know that even those will slowly fade and disappear -and it is no comfort to know that.

iterations

2011-11-08T07:10:00.001Z

08/11/2011 07:05
Time runs backwards on this Tube platform; the next train will arrive in six minutes, the one after that in two minutes' time. It is way, way too early. There's a weird smell of something organic burning...

Had been waking up all night, constantly falling asleep to a shallow sleep of restless dreams, constantly waking up to a sort of void outside of time and space, a grey interregnum between sleep and the waking world, maybe between worlds.

Who was the other person in my dream? The dream that lasted for hours, seemingly all the way through the night, with rallies and festivals and parties and music making. The two of them were friends of mine of many years, there had been a guitar and perhaps a political connection. And they'd exchanged food and jokes at some gathering in the previous dream. Now one of them was ranting against the other, saying at some point that if ever he came to meet the guy... and I retorted that they had in fact met and got on famously. That made him even angrier... how could I have done that to him. I mumbled something about all of us being human... that didn't appease him. Some young pupils of mine were witnessing this heated discussion in Spanish, one or two of them looking at the other ones wi some bewilderment. Another smiled at me and said in very broken Spanish: "Yo comprende".

I woke up as I realised that the two enemies friends of mine were in fact he same person in the real world... it all drifts back to me as I now stand on a Tube platform, the dot matrix indicators having gone haywire and me punch-drunk with lack of sleep....

House of mirrors

2011-09-26T11:05:00.001+01:00

We were coming back from a guitar summer course, which had itself been a long complicated dream but now it was gone. Now we had taken only the first of several legs of the journey and had to stop at R's h house to pick the rest of our things and then catch a bus (or was it a train) to finally get home.We walked in from the rain and the gloom outside. I said to R we only just had time. I remembered that I had some more things there, a bag full of clothes (which I think were all my clothes in the world) plus of course I was carrying a rucksack and my guitar. I was wondering how I would manage to carry all that and started pouring contents of some bags into others, trying to reduce the number of items I would carry to a more reasonable number. Then R said he had to do a couple of things in the house and would come back in a whileI could if I wanted wander around the apartment. I was a bit concerned about missing the train, or was it a bus, but he said there would be another one soon, it didn't matter. And so he disappeared into the bowels of the flat. I waited for a while, taking in the enormous number of things in that room, what looked like objects d'art, sculptures, vases and the like. I decided I needed to go to the loo so I went to the next room, which was even more impressive. Predominantly free green and sort of velvety, with indirect lights, deep green sofas, paintings on the walls, the air of a museum or somewhere where very rich people lived in a house with so many rooms they seldom would visit them all. Maybe round that corner there would be a loo. There wasn't, only another room as impressive as this. An austere looking lady was standing there, looking at me reprovingly. I asked her where the loo would be. She said "ah, the .. visitor's washroom. This way". There were a series of extremely narrow doors along a wall, each talked by various things, like squares of leather hammered onto the strip of wall between doors. It was impossible that any of those was a loo door or any sort of real door, they were too narrow and there were so many of them. And I went dizzy as I couldn't count the doors, or something. I apologised to the lady but she'd gone. Ah, that is the door -that is a loo. But the room is way too narrow, I do not fit in there. And I do need to go to the loo. There, at the end. There is a loo there but it si open with a sort of division that doesn't separate it from the room and anyone could see you. I tried to close the plastic screen but to no avail, it wouldn't impede anyone from seeing me. And the toilet bowl was full and unflushed. Disgusting, I thought, and in such grand surroundings. No, I would look for a better one. So I looked around and left the room but by then the layout of the flat was so complex I was beginning to get lost.By chance I got back to the first room. Or was it the second. Ok, try again. And R is getting late, too. Maybe if I go this way, that smaller door might be a … no, it isn't,, instead it is a bedroom. What about around this corner. mHere there was a sort of music room and there were people in it. It felt more and more like a museum. There are string instruments and pianos, although on closer look it seemed to me like they either were art pieces rather than real instruments, or electronic instruments. The cellos -there were several of these- didn't have bows or eal strings, the strings were not whole but at the point where the bow would touch the strings there was a round metal plate with a couple of buttons. A couple of people were walking around or sitting looking at the display with a sort of reverence. Then this girl started to sing The Byrds' 'The Weight' and, for some reason, I joined along singing the vocal harmony. Could not remember the words so I was just humming and doing 'la, la' while she sang the words which I sometimes tried to follow too late. I could sing the exact notes of the descant, though, even though I hadn't heard that song for so many years. Then she finished and.. I didn't know what to say to her so I left the room. I started getting a little nervous about R being late and us missing the train. I wandered around the flat, immense and, now I could see, a duplex flat -there were some stairs that led from some upstairs level from which a couple of young people in formal dress were coming down. This corridor led sort of outside. Here there was a storeroom and a kind of auditorium with, again, velvety green seats, about tow hundred of them. And by the side of the house on a lower bank, there was the train line and a train just going past. Well, that 's it then, I'll just miss that train. I went in again but just couldn't find the first room...

vortex

2011-09-21T06:02:00.000+01:00

What was it. It made so much sense in the dream. And I could choose to dream of it again, I was saying to myself, “I liked that, I want to dream of that again”. And I did. And it made all sense and it had colours and explained many things about the world and about myself. Oh, I want to dream of it again. And I did, again. And then I woke up and I could remember only vaguely. And you have to get up and brush teeth and shave and have coffee and then think of it again and it’s gone. Not only does it no longer make sense but you cannot remember what it was at all, even less why it explained so much or how it fit in the engine of the universe.

21-09-11

as they drove it away

2011-09-10T15:20:00.000+01:00

We were turning round the corner around Plaza Catia when they caught up with us, handgun showing. Pull over. Leave that iPod there, mister. Just leave the car quietly and nobody gets hurt. So we did … as I was getting out of the car the very old Oriental gentleman made a ‘sshh’ sign and I handed him the iPad I was carrying, without the hijackers realising. Shame about my guitar in the boot. And the long long walk home. Where were my companions now? The car was speeding away round the corner of Plaza Catia, without me. I started to walk, down those streets whose names and shapes I had so long forgotten. Up Calle El Cristo towards Calle Bolivar; puddles on the pavement, old cars parked by the kerb, furtive people scuttling by. It was dark, the middle of the night, not the best time to arrive at a house when you had no keys and you didn’t know who would be there. Walk across people who move away from me or give way on the pavement. I thought I probably looked scared, but didn’t think I looked scary. Still, a stranger in the middle of the night in the streets of Catia…

Then it dawned on me. I had nowhere to go. It was well over twenty five years since I’d sold my house in Catia. I would only find strangers there, not refuge. Nowhere to go but to hope that it was a dream and try and force myself to wake up..

Nightfall in Kentish Town

2011-08-21T21:06:00.001+01:00

Nightfall in Kentish Town, a photo by flaviomatani on Flickr.

two of them, so much alike

2011-06-06T12:30:00.000+01:00

A bit difficult to remember, this one. What was it. There was the long trek to the fancy house where I was due to do a short, half an hour only, lesson for some bratty kid. Hardly worth the while. And looking for a place to park amidst the streets lined with trees, parking spaces difficult to make out as they were raised, part of the pavement and hidden beyond the next clump of trees.

Then I was in the house but it wasn't a lesson any more and my sister was there; she gave me some warning not to go to the door, but it was impossible as we were in an open space, the front door was wide open or absent. She said 'there'll be shooting there across the road', don't put yourself in the cross-fire'. Perhaps she meant they were going to shoot at me if I got any closer or stuck out, I thought. There had to be a way out of there. My sister was gone. I slunk and slid very low and suddenly I was on the street, sneaking by the parked cars with my head low. There wasn’t any shooting, at least. Then I was on a bus. I needed to go to my house and that wasn't very far. I should have checked the bus number. Wait, buses in Caracas don't have numbers, just the origin and designation as the name of the line. We're going the right way, though, trundling along Calle El Lago.

Can't remember getting to the house, although I know every detail of the bus stop, the two corner shops, one with political graffiti on the wall in changing forms but always the same since the '60s. My house has changed so much but it feels the same. My room has grown. B' was there. There were two of them, one as she is now and a younger one, more like the one I'd known back then in the mist of time, when she would never have considered falling in love with me. Except neither of them looked very much like her. And both wanted to stay. It was time to go to bed and each of them in turned said something about that. I had a problem. Each of them was showing the most bitter jealousy towards the other. I thought there'd been a large double-sized bed in my room but there were only two narrow single beds. Even more of a problem…. how was I going to sort this out without scenes and shouts. I tried to put the beds together but they were so heavy. The two 'B''s were standing there, arms folded. Maybe I should decide it was a dream and I should wake up soon, couldn't see any other way out of this.

not ice cream

2011-05-14T10:56:00.002+01:00

Not sure why I was there again, with those loud men I was a little bit afraid of, in their shop and therefore in their territory.. Or why I then asked whether they still made that famous ice-cream, which, they said they still did. A waiter brought a tub which I opened. The contents were certainly not ice-cream, but what looked like food left-over, bits of kebab meat and potato salad. "You ordered it and now you have to eat it all, or we would be offended. You know, rules of the house", said the middle age man in the white shirt and shades. The table was now surrounded by their staff, all standing in hieratic poses. In the distance, the clouds were gathering and darkening and the sky was turning purple and red. The storm was coming. I looked at the disgusting mess in the ice-cream tub and looked around. Hostile faces, no gaps to run through them. The only way out would be to wake up...

The Enemy

2011-04-11T08:53:00.000+01:00

A little brush with the most terrifying dream in the world.

I woke up in shivers, my head under the blanket -and didn't dare open my eyes or move. I knew 'it' or he, whatever it is, was in the room. I knew what was happening: about to unfold, the final encounter between me, another iteration of me who also was in the room but who I couldn't see or sense, just knew he -or me, was there, and the Enemy, so inconceivably bigger and also smaller, so difficult to imagine even, without a face although 'he' could choose to appear with any face he wanted. Perhaps a Demon, or the very master of the demons, whatever they truly were… 'demon' is only a word, has a lot of connotations of theism and religion. What I was dealing with was similar but different -if it was indeed different, as I couldn't get to know what it truly was; a being that was the sum total of terror and evil, larger and smaller than anything in the world and the world itself. In my dreams I've recurrently brushed with the story many many times. I can never remember the whole story once awake, it is a little bit as if something inside my mind was trying to protect me from remembering too much about it. I know I have, purposefully or unintendedly, challenged this being, who sometimes I battle with and defeat momentarily, sometimes at the cost of the destruction of my old house in Catia or my whole home city, but it is a temporary respite; we escape or hide but we know it is going to happen again and in the end of time we will lose. That is what I know about the story, of which I get glimpses, different iterations with different developments, each time I dream. More often we're on the run trying to escape from it, or hiding in what remains of my old house, or there is a temporary respite when I have found a way to conceal my hiding place or my presence from the Evil Being. This, alas, can be done only for a little while.

The Enemy has just half-woken me up, a brush of cold void to make me wake up in terror, just for fun perhaps or maybe with some purpose that is beyond what I can comprehend. It is not 'me', this iteration of me that he is about to fight and, given the overwhelming odds, probably defeat and destroy today. But all the same I know it is me in a deeper sense who is out there and unaware of me under the blankets not daring to open my eyes. Tension and terror rise and I finally wake up in cold sweat, my cat pounding the mattress next to my face and making little noises indicating she's completely spooked. I daren't open my eyes: I know I'm still dreaming and there may be many more layers of dream to get through before I truly wake up -my poor little kitty has been dead for many years.

in red

2011-04-10T11:50:00.000+01:00

You float downstream into the red channels, something sloshes near. You know you're not really there but it is more real than reality. In some sense you really are there, but you need to get out. At some point, along the maze of canals and tunnels criss-crossing in front of you, you saw a point of white light in the distance, surely daylight and the real world -you headed for that point of light but quickly lost your way again in the labyrinth of tunnels, the red pulsating light in them making the views dim and indistinct. There are distant noises, apart from the liquid noises and the pulse that envelopes you; there are whooshing and scraping noises that you can just about make out in the distance. Ah, there's the point of white light. There, it's lost again…

And at some point I'll have to wake up, without having found my way, which means I'll find myself in this maze again, or a similar one, when I next fall asleep and dream. It assumes many forms… there is the maze on Floor 10, where I have to find my uncle's apartment but the lifts and stairs don't take you there, you have to find your way through a series of lifts that take you part of the way, then find the horizontal lift, whatever that means, then the stairs that take you there, to that apartment in shade, full of long-leaved plants in pots, ancient portraits on the wall which I can never quite make out in the semi-darkness, the series of bathrooms, one of which is assigned to me but I can never find so I have to use the other ones but they're almost all of them broken, the radio that will bring me news from outside, an ancient radio from the '30s with names of cities on the dial, 'London', 'Paris', 'Moscow…' but it is mostly static and suddenly a crackled, broken voice in a foreign language I cannot make out…

And then I'm again in the red tunnels, on a craft of some sort, being taken down the canals at speed, trying to steer towards where I think there is that white point of light...

drifting through the halls of mirrors 1

2011-03-10T17:03:00.000Z

I was in a hall and there was a concert in progress. It was supposed to be Neubauten, playing a acoustic set un-amplified. People had been waiting for this concert for ages but now that it was happening they were bored. The band was almost drowned by the voices of people in the audience. Nobody was heckling as such but people were calling out as they left the hall, calling at each other "going to the pub, you coming along?”, “Get me a pint” and similar.

So the band stopped and people hardly noticed as there was almost no-one left in the hall and those remaining were talking so loudly. I went over to the stage area and was surprised to see that they had packed up already, in only a couple of minutes. Ok, so perhaps it wasn't Neubauten; on the stage there was a young very tall man in a suit. Expensive suit, I thought. Expensive but a little bit tacky. . I congratulated them and expressed surprise at the fact that they could pack their stuff away so quickly.

One turn and I am at the gym, on top of that contraption they call a 'cross-trainer'. I hate those places and for a moment I'm not quite really there. And my eyes are closed. What difference is there, I'm walking down the empty corridors in the last Battlestar ship as it hurtles downm towards the sun, or in a desert beginning the ascent as the unseen hecklers throw stones at me and call me by the name Mercer, which is not my name but it doesn't matter. Nothing does now...

morning

2011-03-10T08:33:00.000Z

Getting up and leaving the house early is still so difficult for me. Maybe

At least it is day-light when I leave the house even if it is that preternatural misty white light of doom that makes you feel like you're in a mystery movie, or exploring some alien hostile world. Ok, perhaps I exaggerate slightly. Although you do see hostile looking beings with their pasty white faces, scuttling past clutching their umbrellas..

Spring is coming ok, but winter still not giving in.

taking over

2010-12-06T09:13:00.001Z

I think it was my childhood friend E, although at times he looked like B., my German high school mate, who I had met and invited to my house. I was waking up that . They were cleaning the house, one room at a time, but with every room they cleaned there appeared two or three sisters or brothers of my friend's who would take over the room. Nobody could tell me where my granddad or my mum were and I was concerned as they had been poorly. There were girls and boys of all ages coming in and out of those rooms and milling all around the house now. I caught a glimpse of a boy sitting on a bed in one of the rooms, clumsily trying to play one of my guitars.

I went to my room and my book case and bed-side table (and their contents) weren't there; instead there were some buckets and mops. So I went to my friend and loudly complained and he started to speak before I'd finished, me in loud voices, he in soft tones. Where were my books and the contents of my bed-side table? My laptop was there and all my books and music, where were they. 'Calma', he replied; nothing's lost, we're just cleaning them and pruning the things you don't need. What? shouted I, 'you're not to decide what I need or don't need! I want my stuff back now!'. He looked to me with a smile, the sort of smile that you would direct towards somebody who is ill and perhaps a little mad and doesn't quite make sense. Then I saw the two twelve year old girls carrying bundles of my books out to the yard. I told myself I had to be dreaming, this just could not be happening. And he said, as if he'd been able to hear me 'of course it is not happening to you there where you are, but there are many of you in the universe and this is happening for real to some of you and the pain will resonate in you, I hope…'

That's when I woke up, covered in sweat and breathing noisily, the silence in my room like an overstretched bow string..

2010-12-01T10:37:00.000Z

There was a celebration. It was a sort of very small pub/restaurant. It was the 200th anniversary of the place and they would be giving away food that was supposed to be fantastic. I'd driven a long way to get there… there was a crowd and people were clutching their passports. Many had pints of beer which one was supposed to be able to order from the bar. I went over to the bar and the girl behind the counter gave me some mumbling explanation about why she couldn't give me a beer and that her colleague would -at which point she left, but there was no-one else behind the counter.

I thought that it was a little pointless to stay at the bar, clutching my passport like the rest, when it could be hours before the food was served or given out. So I went in the other room and sat down. I was very thirsty and there was no-one at the bar. I think I was beginning to say this to the girl sitting next to me but she was pointedly looking away so I stopped talking and reclined on the kind of sofa. This guy from the Dev in London walked past and said hello. Well, I think he was from the Dev. Anyway, I said hello back. It was getting very warm and I took the outer one of the two t-shirts I was wearing but then I realised that the inner one had some ridiculous design and drawings on and I was a little embarrassed so swapped the two -and thought I better leave the other one and my bag in the boot of the car. Came out and pressed the car remote but -it was the wrong car. It was over there, past the street with trees and to the left, perhaps a mile or so. So there I headed..

.. couldn't find it. Ended up taking a mini-bus but this was going the wrong way, up the hill into a barrio and I was getting more and more nervous as I had no idea where I was. At some point I saw a tube station sign, the blue and red London Underground roundel, so I asked the driver to stop and paid -with a ten bolivar note, the driver gave me another ten bolivar note back, albeit a more crumpled one. I walked towards the station and saw that… it was only a tube sign but there was no station. How could there be, this was not London. So I stood there looking down to the valley and the mountains in the distance wondering how I would get out of that place..

Downstairs again and again

2010-08-24T21:18:00.003+01:00

We went downstairs when we heard the noise of the train arriving. It was my old house in Catia, this was just not possible. There was a train line running through it and a platform In the corridor. We knew what was to happen next, all of this had happened before. The Nazis and their demon masters would get off the train and round up the people in the lower floor of the house and take them away. We would not be caught, or at least we never had been caught in al, the innumerable times this had happened before, but you never knew whether a small kink in the fabric of reality, if reality this was indeed, would change this. What could be worse, to be forever trapped in this absurd cycle or to break it to find ourselves in the hands of our enemies?

There were shouts downstairs, doors being kicked in. I went upstairs trying to keep a low profile, whispered to B to keep her head down and not make any noise. She didn't seem to be aware or remember the many times we'd been through this, or perhaps it was all just weariness...

Closer boot steps. Maybe this time they would come upstairs. Where to to, there was the roof but that offered no protection. There would surely soon be helicopters above us. I looked at her, she was looking at me biting her lip, anxious. An alarm siren broke out somewhere....

morning fog

2010-07-17T10:10:00.000+01:00

flavio se levantó finalmente, eventualmente, despues que la alarma habia sonado cinco veces y cinco veces habia apretado el botón de snooze -que ahora es solo un botón virtual en la pantalla del teléfono móvil asi que uno tantea sin abrir los ojos pero tambien sin encontrar el botón por un buen rato hasta darse por vencido y abrir los ojos para poder ganarse esa tregua de ocho minutos durante la cual sueña y todo, con la interfaz del iphone que se convierte en enormes cubos de algo asi como espuma de anime o styrofoam con la que uno tiene que luchar y abrirse paso a través de ella para lograr que el mundo se ajuste un poquitico a lo que uno, pero apenas aquello se resuelve suena la alarma otra vez y tantea uno esperando encontrar el fulano botón virtual pintado en la pantalla del fulano teléfono pero uno sabe que solo le está haciendo cosquillas virtuales en la nariz a una Mora virtual de dieciocho años,el fantasma de su amor lejano que abre los ojos cada vez que la pantalla se enciende. Y no consigue apagar la alarma. Ok, es un juguete demasiado caro para estrellarlo contra la pared, asi que no hay vuelta: hay que abrir los ojos -ah, el botón está justo encima de la nariz. Otros ocho minutos de tregua durante la cual uno flota corriente abajo y se encuentra caminando por una playa rocosa y gris, con olas estrellándose contra las piedras en apoteosis de espuma, y de pronto se encuentra uno un juego de ajedrez en la playa. Huy, esto no me gusta, quizá es hora de levantarme....

in the car

2010-07-13T11:29:00.000+01:00

I was driving through from Plaza Catia towards La Cortada, there was to be this party at my sister's friend's -after all these years. People looked at me as I drove by. Couldn't remember the address. This place has changed a lot since I last was here, all those years ago. I no longer know my way around.

Now I'm walking towards the house and I realise I've left my expensive mobile phone on the dashboard of the car. Bad move -anywhere, but especially in an area like this. I must find the car. I left it back there that way.. I think. I have to walk through a group of young men who look at me with suspicion and derision. I mumble 'con permiso...' as I make my way through them. One gives way and I get through. Phew. I don't recognise these streets, this is not where I should be..

Ah, there's my sister waving at me and beckoning. That is the house, then; not at all where I remembered it. She goes in and I go after her. There's no party yet. Going to shower and change for the party.. then I remember I've left that expensive fancy phone in the car. I look out the door just in case the car was in sight -find myself locked out. I'm in my underwear. What to do. I decide to look for the car. Now people do look at me. The car was along this row.. oh, ok, maybe it wasn't. Only then I realise the precariousness of my situation. I no longer know how to get back to the house or back home, don't know where my car is, am standing in the middle of the street with only my underwear on, with no ID documents or means to prove who I am.

Mercifully, then I hear the pips of the BBC Radio announcing it is 6:00 am....

departures

2010-02-17T10:49:00.000Z

I was due to take the boat. I told her I had to go; I would be late otherwise and stuck here, I needed to be back.

I dreaded having to go through the customs bit, I always got stopped and sometimes would miss the boat because of this. I looked for my watch but I didn't have any. It was nice where I was, though, at the top of the hill. It had changed. On the way down on the old dry brook bank, there were now stairways, water features, escalators going down in different directions and the walk down the hill towards the port became a sort of shopping centre with artisan's workshops and many nooks and crannies. You had to go through many of these on your way down. It felt like it could be very easy to get lost but somehow I managed to make it down to the port. I queued for ages, looking at the dark green water in the lock where the boat was held, its open upper deck, the people milling around and getting on board. People were still coming out from the underground connection tunnel, which also led to the dilapidated alleys at the back of the bottom of the shopping centre down the mountain. Nice trees in them, lots of litter around and the feeling that something (or, rather, something) lurked behind the corners. Go back to the port, which is not really such but just a dock with the one ship in it, enclosed for now in a dock, frothing brown waters rocking it, people in uniform walking on the deck with clipboards, noises of machinery coming from unseen places. Where is my passport, where are my keys… I steel myself and walk towards the starkly lit complex of perspex cabins...

dials

2010-02-06T20:24:00.000Z

As soon as you wake up. You were thinking -it must have been the intervention of so and so, it is so clear. But one second after you don't remember what the intervention was about or on which or which was the agent of that intervention that was so necessary. You drift back into sleep and look for the answer, which you can find if you find the right tuning in the sleek black machine like a bedside clock or a cd player, with a blue led display, the numbers in which have clearly a significance but you do not know how to read, but twiddle the dials, see the numbers change and hope they will come up with the right answer.

In the meantime, there is also the drip-drip from the hole in the ceiling. Or indeed the roof; there is no ceiling in this room. This is supposed to be my room, I'm coming back to it after many years and it is at the same time familiar and strange. My things are all here but I don't recognise them. Is this thing with blue led dials supposed to be my computer? Where is my guitar? But I know my guitar is back in London, can it exist in two places at the same time? I know it is supposed to be here somewhere.

The rain outside, washing down leaves that end up blocking the drain. Splashes of brown and green and wet. Splash, splash, green, wet.

more on vanishing dreams

2010-01-18T09:02:00.002Z

I wake up, reach the alarm clock and put the noise out. This time I'm happy, the dream was positive. It wasn't a twisted reflection of my distant past, my dysfunctional family or my crumbling house in Catia, the raving lunatic asylum that was my secondary school or any of the other ghosts from the past that often come out to play their distorted games in the still of the night. It was a dream about future and hope and confidence. And I still..

No, I don't. In the time it took me to think or, rather, to feel that, the dream has vanished like mist in a sunny morning. I can no longer remember anything about it except that positive feeling. So I sigh, stretch, struggle a bit to get up and get on with my waking life, hoping maybe tomorrow I may get a glimpse of what it was about.

Kaleidoscopes

2009-12-08T09:16:00.000Z

I think it was Daniella's house and I was waiting in the upper reception bit for her to turn up for her lesson, but she was, I was told, otherwise engaged somewhere else in the house. The light was not very good and things had a sort of veiled and mysterious hue to them. I wondered whether they would be in the lower reception -you could see a bit of it through down the steps. The candelabra (which I had never noticed before) were all lit and there was something grand but slightly odd about the room, as if the devil were going to hold his great dinner feast there that night and this were the moment just before the guests started to arrive. There were no guests as yet, though. I was aware, somehow, that I was seeing a scene from the past and maybe not even from a 'real' past, not one that was real for me. How did I get here? Had I driven? Had I taken the por-puesto that left you at the corner of 3a Transversal? I couldn't remember. There were hushed voices coming from somewhere upstairs. I shouldn't be here. I shouldn't be here. There must be some kind of way out of here..

You wake up thinking of death, have to get up to have a drink of water and a wee, stagger to the bathroom in the semi-darkness thinking of the fragility and transience of human life. Then remember the house, the upper reception room, the feeling that there was a party of some sort just about to begin and that you didn't want to be part of it, whatever it was. You stagger back to bed, various led lights blinking in the room. Maybe four hours' sleep, if I manage to fall asleep soon. What is that? A market stall. Hey, it's good to see you. She hasn't seen me, though, or does not recognise me..

So many dreams go forgotten, most of them as soon as we wake up. What are they? I suppose there are many answers and many possible readings to this, just as is the case with almost any human activity. Dreams are part of the web of our lives. You can say they are not real, they are only what our brains, largely below the surface of consciousness, make of what we experience of the world and of ourselves, rather than the reality of that world -but then every thing we experience of the world does go through that sieve of perception and of what we are made of, with all the biases resulting from that and which we cannot escape.

dream of the end being nigh...

2009-11-17T13:48:00.004Z

The sun beams through the window. I get blinded in the glare while my pupil plays his Brazilian piece

The dream was very long and, as is often the case, the beginning was lost in the haze between coming back to bed in the darkness after the increasingly more frequent semi-sonambulic nocturnal excursions to the loo. I didn't know I had to get up in three hours' time.

By the end of it I was with these group of friends whose face has now been erased by the morning soap and coffee. We were waiting for the bombs to drop. We were gathered in what could have been a large school or community sports centre, lots of very large glass windows, functional pine furniture, a stack of wooden frames at one end of the large hall. The person in charge, a young man neatly dressed, if quite out of fashion, in a suit and tie, kept saying that the end was imminent but we weren't to switch on the TV sets or the radio. This was forbidden as it would be a transgression of some sort and would impair our judgment by the higher powers, or something like that. Also there was something about the news being made to hide what was happening so as not to alarm people although our fate was decided. That made me suspicious. Why would he not want us to hear news about what was going on. A girl had a mobile phone and was talking (surreptitiously, I don't think she was supposed to be able to do that) to someone outside. "You're still there -the bombs haven't dropped yet, then". She's covering her mouth and the phone with her hand and talking in a soft but anxious voice. I look out the window: nothing stirs in the landscape. No sign of the flying bombs. He is on the podium again, telling people to be brave. Death will not defeat us, the ever after awaits us. The enemies shall not prevail. What am I doing here, I think to myself. Who is this guy, did I at some point believe all that claptrap? There must be some kind of way out. Maybe the bombs are really on their way but I am not better off here than anywhere else.

the keys

2009-08-31T09:28:00.001+01:00

I closed the door behind me and found myself on the drizzly street, dazzled by the brightness nonetheless as it had been so dark indoors. That's when I realised I didn't have my keys or my wallet. Or my phone. How did this happen. I must have left them in the car, but how do I get back to the car, I remember where I left it but not sure how to get back where it is. And once there, of course, how do I open it, start it if the keys are not there. I am reasonably confident I left it somewhere safe and it hasn't got nicked, remember the parking lot clearly but not at all where that is located.

I'm not familiar with this part of the city; I walk down the road looking for something that will help. Weren't there local maps on lampposts? Maybe I'm thinking of Oxford Street in London and not here. I think it was that way. Or was it that way? If I had my phone I could find my way, with the built in GPS. Where could I have left it? Must be in the car, if it still is there. It would be a hassle if it got stolen.

I think of asking passers by, but for some reason I never get to be close to any of them; there are plenty across the road, some come my way but suddenly they take to the street to cross to the other side.

Something pricks my foot and only then I realise that I am also barefoot. My feet are dirty and calloused. Then I get a moment of doubt and horror: maybe there is no car, no keys and no fancy touch-phone? Maybe I'm confused and living on the street, that doorway I came out of was where I was sleeping and that is why I was dazzled by the scant sunlight on a day like this.

But not a dream

2009-07-21T11:04:00.001+01:00

The drone of the bus engine under me, the low ceiling of shredded white cloud , the dour expressions in the faces of the people around. Yes. this is London.

She had smiled and aid we'd meet again, but I knew better. I would wake up and find myself in rhis world of white sky and grim faces. It's only for a while, she said. Isn't everything, I said. I could already see the corner of light getting through the curtain that I've never managed to fit properly, the world of real getting through and poisoning my dream with news of war, suffering, our brief and impossible stance in this vast and unknowable world.

silvery and shiny against the blue sky

2009-07-19T12:47:00.000+01:00

I looked up to where they were pointing : there was this massive structure in the sky, over Mariperez or Barrio Ajuro. I couldn’t tell what its means of staying afloat and propulsion were, there were all sorts of shiny metallic bits protruding from the structure of the ship. “They’re just the rich having a bit of fun. It could go very wrong for them if they landed there in Barrio Ajuro. Or if their machine failed”. At that point the ship started to glide in our direction, shiny and gleaming in the sun. “The bloody rich”, said my companion, “has the world got better for them, what about the rest”. I shrugged my shoulders and went in.

The concert was about to begin, it was a bit embarrassing as I had to walk across the front of the stage to get to my seat. Were they starting or was this a sort of dry run or sound check? Some string players were playing but I couldn’t hear their instruments; on a podium a little child of about two or three was reciting something in a language I didn’t understand. Can’t be reading, surely; too young. How can a little one like that memorise such a long speech, or poem, or whatever it is? A bald man with glasses and a middle aged woman were busy with the other children who were waiting for their turn to go up and say their speech of poem, one little girl was filling a page with yellow blobs.

That’s when I heard the noise and turned around. Outside, something was coming out of the ground nearby with a roar: a missile of some sort, again silver and shining reflecting the sun, breaking out in what seemed from there to be the middle of the neighbourhood, making the earth shake... I wasn’t sure whether it was that that was making the earth shake, the whole building was rattling, one of the arches was collapsing and there was glass and masonry flying everywhere. I threw myself to the floor by a large column that seemed to be withstanding. The sound I was hearing was no longer the rocket launching so near, it clearly was explosions. I tried to make myself very small, to make myself wake up. Out of the corner of my eye, in the blue, blue sky I could see more missiles coming out of the ground into the air..

streams

2009-06-25T14:52:00.001+01:00

Let it all come out, slowly drifting up towards the surface; it is not real, it is not real but it is not unreal either, however it feels; we slowly wade through it all, towards the changing flat on the tenth floor, we look out into the atrium filled with moss, with decaying dead flowers and dead water. But then we're not there. The sudden changes, the kaleidoscopes and the running clouds, the waters smashing against the flood defences, the watery graves, the grave brown landscapes in which we crawl and hope for a better future that won't be ours, maybe we are not what we are, we project, we project and see what's not there, we invent significance, we make up as we go and invent god and our fellow man, we drag ourselves across the plains, in search of what is not there and we know not, we see the possible enemy, the possible dinner, the possible brothersister enemy and we bristle and hiss, attack is the best defence, yesterday we were one, today we are two, tomorrow we are none and many.

The light glare dazzles, we hide in the cool dark place, we ask again but there is no answer. The path has been hidden and we no longer know. The beads fall one by one. We know not, we know but on we go. In the glade there is a house where my uncle lives in dreams and I sometimes visit. A room is waiting, or another room. I walk across the house whispering names of long gone people, there is an old black and white television with news of the Carupano uprising, a picture of a priest holding a dying soldier. Outside the window there is a path that leads up into the clouds to Los Nevados. It is calling me, it is calling me but the moment is not here yet. Lie down, play cards, whisper names of long gone people, stare outside towards the unseen distant sea down there in the mist. Glow in the dark, sunset moth, be away. The apartment on the tenth floor after the four-dimensional lift is still there, is still waiting.

Walk a little closer, see the fairground set up on the motorway, the mountains in the distance speckled with forest fires, the tall buildings in the city down below still burning. There are freaks and invisible men and meeting yourself as an old man and fierce animals being tamed and a woman with two heads, one of which is yours, all come in, all come in. But I walk away, not wanting to find myself as an old man just yet. I walk stumbling on the broken tarmac and stand on the hard shoulder looking down at the still smouldering buildings, the smoke rising in the distance. When is the end of the world? Have the gods given us any notice of it coming?

I do not exist, she said

2009-06-22T13:37:00.004+01:00

Frances, she said her name was. Twenty five, perhaps twenty six; I didn't know anyone so young with that name. She came in the room, she had something to say to the person who was with me. We were all lying on the enormous couch and she snuggled against me. 'We have met', I said. Possibly. Her lips seemed to form the words 'However, I do not exist'. I asked, had she said something? No, she hadn't. She was now wrapped in discussion with my friend, but still snuck against me, my arm around her shoulder, never looking at me but letting me know she was aware of my presence and contact. And then suddenly she had to leave. I stood up and walked to the wall, where a paper was stuck with an email address, 'frances-something-at-me.com'. The 'something' was just a couple of letters and numbers.

I woke up. It was a hot sweaty night, I was uncomfortable and restless, worrying about the situation of my trying to buy a flat, which seemed to be getting nowhere in ever more intrincate, coruscated ways. Then her image struck me. No, I hadn't given her the face of someone I knew, or had seen on the streets. She was as real as life, except she wasn't.

And at some point I found myself in the large room again, on the same enormous couch, sorting out bits of paper, when she turned up. "Hello. I'm back", she said, and lay next to me, looking at the bits of paper that I was dealing with and which I eventually gathered in one bundle and put aside, turned to her to see her clear eyes fixed on mine. I knew it wasn't real, she was not there and I wasn't either, but such is the nature of existence anyway. Our small story is brief, a flash of lightning between two infinite voids, and while we are here we ask questions so much bigger than ourselves, do things good and bad and then.. it's over. I was in that room knowing it did not exist and I was not there and I would be thrown back in my dingy North London room soon enough. I touched her hair, she felt real enough. "I'm only dreaming of you", she said... "but it doesn't matter".

At some deep, deep level, way beneath the surface, in the darkness the tide was beginning to change and rise and the current to fill the channels with tireless dark waves. But that was quickly receding as the world was becoming less indistinct, the fact that I'd left the radio on, the world service and the grey light of dawn slowly forcing themselves on to me. I called out, "Frances? Where are you? Who, what, are you?" but the light was coming through the window and the radio whispering news of the war in Afghanistan and the urge to empty my bladder were beginning to take over.

dreamt of you

2009-06-01T08:51:00.000+01:00

I dreamt of you
Again

I dreamt of you
And you were as real as life,
as fresh as the morning
as real as life

you were there in front of me
you spoke with the wisdom of another place
another time,
another life

you looked at me with the love
and understanding
of those who've seen beyond
And I could but cry....

I dreamt of you
again

you were as real as life
itself.

coat

2009-04-27T21:40:00.000+01:00

As usual, not much remains of the previous bits, where I was talking to people about some energy initiatives by the President, who was not Obama but an old man with a certain air like Clement Freud and who I kept referring to as President Adar.

Then I was at the cabinet meeting, which, strangely, was in President Adar’s bedroom. He was sitting at the bed, wearing a heavy coat but no trousers, surrounded by the discomfited looking men in suits with briefcases, all of them standing while I was just crouching on the floor. It was cold and somewhat dark in the room and he was saying that this was it, they had to conserve electricity and heating and give the example. And he didn’t want to wear out his good clothes unnecessarily so he was wearing no trousers and just this old coat, which was warm so the heating was not needed, we had to conserve energy. The men in suits looked concerned.

I had to go out -it clearly was not my place to be. But outside the two police officers stopped me, asked me for my identity and said there was a ‘complaint’ about me. Then I noticed the children in suits, looking at me with a fierce expression; one of them said “yeah, that’s him, the bastard; he killed me mum, he did”. I protested that I hadn’t killed anyone. The boy went on: I would get my due, they would see to that. I turned to ask the police officers for help but they weren’t there. There was a little commotion and I escaped, but again like so many times I was left wondering where I’d left my guitar and my suitcase. I needed to get back home and I didn’t know this place. Conveniently, it was now an airplane. One could see out the window into the starry night, the white noise of the engines was quite calming. A couple of the boys I’d run into earlier walked past the aisle but did not seem to see me. There was hatred in their eyes. I thought it couldn’t be a very good thing to be enclosed in such a small space with them. At that point the plane tumbled. I didn’t hear a thing, just felt the G forces play with me and the thought that the plane was falling out of the sky. This was the end. I could now see the ground getting closer and closer, the stars in the inky black sky above...

under the silver moonlight

2009-04-02T14:30:00.003+01:00

Come out silently, all the doors to the other rooms in the house closed. Come out to the terrace under the stars, lit in silver moon light. Dance naked under the moon, while behind his bedroom door my grandad celebrates his eighty years of age making love to a twenty-eight year old beauty. In the distance, the outline of the mountains, black as ink against the deep dark blue, blue sky. And the sirends and gunshots in the distance.

VI

2009-03-16T16:53:00.000Z

Woke up. It was a bright day with blazing sunshine. A most beautiful day. In the distance, three enormous shopping bags promised a plenty, an abundant, balanced and nutritious diet. Rubbed his legs and antennae and eyes, set out, full of joy, for his morning stroll. That was when they stamped on him.

Overseers

2008-12-12T12:23:00.000Z

I wasn’t sure what it was, exactly, whether we were guests, or what. Many things were happening, I was not really taking in many of them. Then it happened: one of my friends complained. One of the overseers slapped him across the face. There wasn’t a word but then we knew. This was some sort of prison camp. My friend had been marked as an insubordinate and his fate was sealed. He knew, too. Some of our people started avoiding him. Long corridors at the end of the space we were at, we could see the atrium down below. I imagined that the people we were seeing down there were a mix of free people and overseers, but I didn’t really know. If it was a prison camp, it was a very clean one. We had clean clothes, I wasn’t hungry or sleep-deprived. All the same there was an overpowering heavy sense of evil and of being watched and played cat-and-mouse with.

Then I woke up. I reached for the iphone to check the time. 7:56. No need to get up early today, could sleep a little more. What was that I was dreaming about?

Or was it a dream? Now I was back there with the others, from my room. I was dressed in pure white, in a sort of cotton pyjamas. I also had my friend’s big leather, wide brimmed hat and I thought it was such a bad idea, to make myself so conspicuous and precisely in such a way that would antagonise the overseers, but couldn’t offend my friend either, by hiding or throwing away his hat. I knew I stood out a lot, was very uncomfortable but there was nothing to it but get on with it. I needed to know what was going on here. I tried to ‘forget’ the hat, putting it casually on a ledge on the wall -then saw my friends eyes locked on the hat. Like doggy eyes, the eyes of a dog that has been beaten into submission. Then I saw the scene down in the atrium. There were lots of people on both sides of a sort of barrier like the ones that delimit queues in banks or cinemas. On one side, a rather large man burst in what looked like relieved laughter and called out a name, waving something that looked like bank notes in his hand, starting to move towards somebody on the other side. Then this even much larger female guard stopped him. He argued and she barked: “No, you’re not speaking to him. You’re on this side. It doesn’t matter whether what you say it’s true or not, now you’re here and you’re fucked”; he still tried to push past her and she just pushed him back with what looked like a flick of the hand.

I woke up very cold and shivering. It was 8:01. Is that possible? Such a long story in just six minutes or less? But I still don’t have to get up, maybe if I..

Maybe if I just take it casually. Don’t look nervous. I’d been told we would be allowed out, in the yard on our level -not downstairs in the indoor atrium. I still was dressed in those damn white pyjamas that stood out a mile.. ok, I moved towards the exit, together with the couple of others that would be allowed out. The female guard searched me, whatever she was doing was very ticklish and I said so. She looked at me -no, she looked through me with ice-cold eyes and didn’t say anything. I saw the yard outside. Out of doors, under a brown-grey sky. You couldn’t see much. Just a few more guards and one or two people, surely not ‘prisoners’ if that’s what we were, maybe overseers. Then it occurred to me: maybe we weren’t being ‘allowed’ out, but separated from the group and taken out to meet whatever fate awaited us. I tried to wake up, but it was too late.

awake

2008-11-11T11:45:00.002Z

What a different day. The sun shines, pupils are turning up to their lessons and a few of them had even practised. So different to the doomsday weather of yesterday, the deluge, the grey, murky heavens collapsing and coming down on to the Earth as water..

Last night, however, I couldn't sleep much. I think the combination of doomsday weather, the concern about the economic -no, _my_ economic situation, and perhaps a residual bit of the sometimes harrowing book by a friend and the extremely gloomy (but exceedingly well done, esp. for an American series) Galactica, which is perhaps only incidentally sci-fi, touching on all sorts of issues of politics and philosophy, our mortality and what it is that means being human -all of these things and more have been going round my head and giving me interesting dreams of which I wake up in a sweat, with the feeling of impending doom or that my heart has stopped, or that the world is just about to end.... and shivering cold. After a while, I reflect on the dream and it is all ok, it wasn't so bad, there wasn't any evil presence in it, just the immense questions and the immense void of space that encompasses us as well, but for the moment I'm alive and ok. I just cannot go back to sleep...

the naughty bits and other dreams

2008-10-11T10:53:00.000+01:00

It is very rare that I have a dream with ‘naughty bits’. I had one last night, or this morning. Unfortunately the only parts of the dream I remember are precisely the norty bits and those are not really very interesting to relate. I was away in some course -perhaps a guitar course, I think, but guitars didn’t make any appearance in this.

There was another dream -or perhaps the same? where I was meeting some friends for some sort of fest at the big labyrinthical building, which was mostly blue this time. They wanted to go to a different place, for which we had to take a complicated series of underground trains, some of which went apparently through water, outside the windows you could see something like sea weeds swaying as the train passed. All the while I was worried about having left my car in that place, at the Labyrinth Building, and that I would never be able to trace my way back. How was I going to recover my car? It was in the train that I ran into the girl. She didn’t seem particularly friendly and she didn’t make advances of any kind. We crossed paths a few times and on the third time or so she pulled me along to a bathroom on the side. It was rather clean and shiny but the toilet hadn’t been flushed. She just pulled her skirt up and bent over. The contents of the toilet bowl, bright yellow, swayed with the movement of the train. The tiles were shiny, the window blinds closed. I knew what she expected me to do, but hesitated -then I woke up to the radio whispering the voice of John Humphrys interviewing some pundit about financial crises and collapsing governments. I rolled over to switch the radio off, thinking ‘this should be the dream...’ but, curiously, still concerned about how could I have retrieved my car in the dream.

There is a house that belongs to my uncle, my mother’s brother. He’s been dead for a few years now, but here he’s still alive. I seem to be sharing the house with him. It is far away in Venezuela, in some place that ‘feels’ to be on the coast near Caracas, with a long garden or a glade, although I’ve never seen it in the daytime. I always have some difficulty getting there, the route is not clear in my head. My room is untidy, full of things I don’t always recognise. Some are like ancient versions of things I have here in my rooms in London: video recorders, electronic musical instruments, a couple of computers that seem to be Apple IIGS rather than Macs or PCs. It is a place where hardly anyone ever goes apart from me; even my uncle I’ve never seen in the house although I ‘know’ he lives there. It is a quiet place, though, and I can work there. I also can waste a lot of time: the video recorders and the black and white television seem to have an inexhaustible supply of very old movies. It can be a little bit scary on my own there, when I realise it is the middle of the night, I’m in the middle of nowhere and I see a flickering light outside, as of a torch. Then I turn the television/monitor off and listen, holding my breath -and wake up.

There would seem to be many worlds in those dreams, that interconnect by subterranean passages unavailable to me..

The Evil, swift return

2008-09-02T11:52:00.000+01:00

It was outside. It was as big as the world or bigger, but we could sense it, it spoke to us and its voice froze the blood in our veins. I was in my old house in Catia, exploring some rooms I’d never seen before for some reason. A friend was with me, a female friend dressed in rather little, not provocatively in that she was not attired like that to tease me, it was just the way it was. It still was arousing but there was nothing to it. In the room there was rotten furniture, bits of wood would flake off the large desk as we touched it. There were drawers full of yellowing, curling papers and small ordinary things; paper clips, staples, bits of ribbon, old odd looking plastic credit cards, the flotsam of past lives. There was a book which I picked up -raising a cloud of dust- when my friend stopped me. “Leave that where it is”, she said. “It is not meant to be seen by you”. Her voice was changing as she said this and I could see that she was part of It now. It was too late, picking the book seemed to have been enough, now I ‘knew’. I made for the door, she called out my name but her voice had changed and I knew she no longer was there, it was something else. It’d become night outside, the yellow moon climbing over the Avila mountain, black clouds with silver rims running across the sky. But I knew this was not real, it was an illusion to prevent me from seeing what really was there. I ran downstairs, the earth shook, the voice -it wasn’t a voice, it wasn’t sound waves breaking through the air, but I could clearly hear it, whatever it was- called out again, filling the whole space. I had some idea that I could fight it but was very afraid. I knew instantly that all over the city people were hiding in basements, everybody had heard it as clearly as I had. I could also ‘see’, across the city, people being picked from their hiding places and disappearing screaming, up into nothingness. But that was not my fate. I knew I was of the same nature as It, although infinitely less powerful. I was afraid and trying unsuccessfully to wake up. There were things to do and I did not know what. Please, let me wake up, let me wake up...

with blue and red blotches of paint

2008-07-15T09:15:00.000+01:00

It was my house but it no longer was my house. I was sitting at the azotea terrace together with them. It seemed to me like Jaqui owned the house but someone else, an old man, seemed to be in charge. We were sitting, looking at the traffic. There appeared this little wizened old man, who sat at the furthest end, in the shadow. “That’s X”, the old man who seemed to be in charge of the house said, “you may have seen him around. You don’t know this but he lives in this house, in little nooks and crannies, his room is just a little space between walls. You wouldn’t believe it”. I knew it was true. The man gruffed and stirred in his seat, apparently uncomfortable.

I stood up and looked into the distance, at the mountain, barely visible in the dark. “I wish I could buy back this house. There’s too much of me seeped into the walls of this place. Of my history, of that of my folk. Then again, selling it was something that needed to be done at the time and that’s pretty much that”. I stared at the brim of the short wall, covered in small blotches of paint in blue and red. Looked deliberate and like it would have taken a lot of work to do. I didn’t like it much, though. I was tired and wanted to be back in my room but I didn’t even know which one was my room -or, indeed, and I only thought of it then, whether I had a room at all in the house. In the distance, a big round yellow moon was beginning to appear from behind the mountains. This was indeed my house, had always been. But now it was no longer my house and I couldn’t make it so. Maybe I was dreaming and I just needed to wake up. At this point I knew this was what was happening but it only made me sadder, because I was seeing my house as it had been so many years ago (apart from the paint work and the strange occupants) and it no longer was that and I no longer had anything to do with it and I wasn’t there but thousands of miles away, living a different life...

a dress of green

2008-06-21T00:52:00.000+01:00

Of course I can't remember the dream
I woke up worried about bills and bank things and envelopes with red writing on them. I couldn't possibly remember anything as flimsy and insubstantial as a dream. There was so much to do today, so little time. Dreams don't get much of a look in.

I couldn't remember anything about the dream but something in it was still nagging me, I couldn't think of the dream without becoming a little disturbed and uneasy, even though I couldn't really remember anything at all about the plot of the dream itself or any characters in it.

It took me quite a while to wake up enough to gather some resolve and finally get up. Of course, lessons at the school were suspended today as it was exam week so I didn't have to get up at six in the morning. I looked at the watch but it returned an opaque face in which I couldn't make out the hands. I reached for the iPod touch and clicked. 8:17 am. It's quite early really, I don't know that I want to get up just yet. I'll be busy enough later on, there's a whole pile of things that need doing. I think I can afford ten minutes' sleep more, though.

I woke up startled, with my heart in my mouth as they say back home. I gulped a large lungful of air and tried to think what that was about. Slowly my breathing and my pulse rate started to go back to normal. I could only think of the many errands, the uncomfortable visit to the bank that awaited me, the many phone calls to make, the near vicinity of total financial disaster. What was it? Something I'd dreamt, probably. Something ....

That was it. Just thinking about it was the scariest thing, it would send my skin up in goose-bumps. It was the woman in the dream, tall and slim and inviting. And deadly. Who was she?

I just couldn't bear to think about the dream. At the same time, though, it kept tugging at me, calling for my attention whenever my attention was wandering somewhere else. I looked at myself in the bathroom mirror. My hair is finally going grey. It had to happen one day. Well, that day is here. Boo. I breathed in deeply, running the razor across my chin, thinking I'd forgotten to change the blade. Again. Scrape, scrape. I really have to make that phone call today. then, for a fraction of a second, I saw her in the mirror. It was like a blow across my face, I was physically hurting when I opened my eyes again a few seconds later and dared look in the mirror. It was only me there, looking older, looking startled and, curiously, looking scared.

There was such a long queue at the bank. It'd take the whole morning. Then the phone rang I took it out of my pocket but the call was missed, no number registered. 'New text message'. I open it. 'It was lovely making love to you last night. Do not forget me or you'll regret it'. What is this? No sender's number. 'Sir, the queue', said the man behind me. The queue had kept moving forward while I stood there, dumbstruck,

The interview with the bank people was pretty much a disaster. I was in trouble and they appreciated my custom of twenty years but could do nothing to help me, so very sorry sir. Come again when you have money. I woke back home, thinking of what course of action was left. Not a lot. This really would be the end, the next step a cardboard box under Waterloo Bridge. I coughed again, that heavy deep cough that had woken me up several times in the night but not during that.. no, don't think about that, put that thought away.

What was that that triggered the panic again? A display in the local Turkish café, just some prepared dished sitting on an ornamental bed of lettuce.. Why lettuce? It sent me in a wild terror. I'll have to do something about this and go to a shrink or something. It is not normal at all to freak out because of a vegetable...

When I came back home thre was a soft knock on the door. I ran downstairs, opened the door. For a fraction of a second.. but no, it was her, all was well. She looked at me in a puzzled way "Are you alright?", "yes, Im ok"

But I wasn't entirely ok..

last before waking up

2008-06-09T00:51:00.000+01:00

Lots of things had happened but I couldn't remember any of them, even though it'd been only minutes before. Then we went in the church. I asked why we had to go in there but there was no answer and Marianella was not there with me anymore, although there were a couple of other people I knew; these went to different ends of the dark church, only dimly lit by the scant light coming through the stained glass ogival windows.

That's when I saw them. From behind a pew, a silvery transparent figure sat up straight and extended its arms sideways and then laid back straight, disappearing behind the back of the pew. Another figure did the same, and a third one. They would open up their mouths, spread their arms, then fall back. Then I noticed the people who were sitting on those pews. I looked at the sweet little old lady and something prompted me to exclaim "But , you're dead, too!" and she looked at me and said "Really? That's frightfully inconvenient, my dear. Yes, I suppose I am dead..." she said, wistfully..

Behind her, the silver translucent figures kept doing their strange dance, sitting up with their hollow eyes and mouth very open, spreading their arms wide and falling back. A thunder cracked in the distance..

the cycles of time

2008-04-21T00:09:00.002+01:00

The last descendant of what once had been Man, this thing without a body that we could recognise, perhaps a pure intelligence entity, faces the final collapse of the universe. He too must go with it, he wants his rest, but he now realises that he will wake up all will begin again and, in the end, after the final dark, there was the light. He set in motion the cosmic alarm clock of creation and then he welcomed the oblivion, the brief sleep of the eons...

dreams

2008-02-20T19:32:00.003Z

I find frustrating waking up from what I know was a beautiful significant or disturbing dream and not be able to recall more than the sensation it leaves you with, none of the plot and hardly any of the imagery, as it were.

There are recurrent themes and features in my dreams, although I don't have recurrent dreams in the sense of exactly the same dream appearing repeatedly. Some can be so very obviously 'interpreted' that it bores me extraordinarily to do so. The fact that my old house in Catia in Caracas keeps growing new rooms which I have to explore, the problems with the toilets and the stairs in that house are a reflection of both the problems that we had with that house slowly crumbling away and of any present difficulties of those and other kinds, but it is boring for me to think of that in those terms. The new rooms always have both promise and danger and some element of disgustedness (sorry about the neologism), if I can cal it that. I often look over the azotea to see my current car, the Peugeot, parked in front of the laundry shop of the Sicilian family with the brother and sister standing wobbling looking at the street, he rocking from side to side, she turning her head sideways continuously in a tic that I used to find perturbing. They ended up being vastly more successful than I was, they seemed to despise us for being sort of poor (or so I perceived it, but have learnt since how bad a judge of those things I am) and we thought they were sort of naff. It all often is a night scene, with the yellow moon surging from above the Avila mountains, making the sky deep, deep blue and the mountains deep, deep black. In the distance, the 'super blocks' two miles away on the hills of 23 de Enero, twinkled with the thousands of lights of the flats. I, in the meantime, would have to struggle with my room having become a patchwork of overflowing toilets on platforms at different levels, the floor flooded in clear blue water in which you could see shoals of small golden fish darting by, while I swore and swore..

I was thinking about those Caracas skies of my dreams (and my memories, although these are never as vivid as the dreams) yesterday evening as I was walking back home. It was a beautiful evening here, with deep deep blue sky above, bright orange at the horizon. And freezing.

I often dream of getting lost while travelling. Most often it is about something wrong having taken place while travelling. For quite a few years after I came here, it would be going back to Caracas for a few months and then finding myself unable to come back here, which would make me lose my flat, my guitar (which would have stayed here), my computer and my pupils. I had, in return, a nice little '40s or '50s house -like a cottage, in some place that wasn't Los Magallanes but was a bit like it before it became a slum. Light green paint, a front garden with a gate of wooden slats. But that doesn't happen often. It is most often my old house, gone good or gone wrong.

I lost my car last night. I had parked it in a street with recessed parking spaces, with trees and cute shops and restaurants, somewhere like perhaps some bits of Chelsea. It wasn't the Peugeot this time, it was my old Chevrolet Malibu. Of course, after a whole night's dreams that I can't remember I went back to that street and the car wasn't there. I kind of knew I was dreaming but didn't want to wake up to having lost my car.

There's nothing so boring as somebody else's dreams, I know.

2007-11-30T12:20:00.000Z

My hair was falling down in big clumps, mostly from the right side of my head. No, the left side of my head, only the right as I looked in the mirror. It was strange and ominous, I would pass my hand to comb my hair in the old man's tradition of trying to cover the bald bits, but my hair -black and shiny, far more so than it is in 'real life'- would come off in my hands. Big clumps of it. Outside, a world of doom and grey awaited. I leaned on the washbasin towards the mirror, I was so, so very tired and I knew this wasn't real, it couldn't be. I touch a bit of what was left of my hair on that half of my head and another, almost final clump of black lustrous hair came off in my hand. But my skin was looking healthy and my wrinkles and lines had disappeared. I felt very ill: the world was going wrong very quickly, as I looked at that image in the mirror that was me and yet wasn't, that younger and healthier but at the same time fatally wounded self, mortally ill me. I needed to put my head down and sleep, even if I knew that what was left of my hair would be left in the pillow.

Outside, in the distance, explosions and police sirens criss-crossed the city in stereo Doppler effect.. there was smell of something like gun-powder in the air, but the window gave me only a calm urban night vista. I knew, though, that he world was about to end.

melismas and horses

2007-11-08T16:41:00.000Z

There were horses. Indoors. There was hay on the floor on the carpets. Some of the rooms had cement floors, like I had not seen since the days of my childhood in Catia in West Caracas so many years ago. I had to pick up my things from behind the back of where one of this enormous horses was. I was afraid it would kick back when it sensed the proximity of a stranger behind. He raised a foot, carefully tapping against my leg. I said something in very low woice, almost whispering, trying to calm it. Grabbed my bag and went to the next room, where there was a sort of party. This room gave to a garden that was deep in darkness and very little could be made of it. There were a few people sitting, walking and milling around. Then I knew (although I never saw them) that the choir were behind me and I started to sing a Venezuelan song from the Llanos, with the choir accompanying me with a spine tingling boca chiusa intrincate set of vocal harmonies. I didn't know the song but I somehow knew what I had to sing. It was the most fantastic, beautiful music. The people around, fat men in suits with loosened ties and blonde-dyed women in red dresses with gold jewelry, ignored the music and just chatted in a louder voice. I finished. There wasn't a sign of acknowledgment from the audience. I then told myself.. I have to wake up now...

distant dream (1978)

2007-09-17T17:15:00.000+01:00

hexagons

2007-09-17T16:54:00.000+01:00

Monday; September 17, 2007 4:44 PM

...there was also my father's apartment, I think probably in the same building whose tenth floor had the strange lift arrangement and which I've visited now so many times over the years. The rooms were hexagonal, there were stairs going up and down the place and there were people in almost all the rooms. I couldn't find my father and ran into Mark 'untermensch', who would ask me what I would have with my dad, did I think he wanted to speak to me and I had to reply I didn't know but needed urgently to speak to him. The fact that I was holding a conversation in Spanish with Mark was not remarkable, I knew he'd learnt some while travelling round South America, but the fact that he was speaking on behalf of my father who I couldn't get hold of and who apparently didn't want to speak to me was more strange. He kept asking me what I wanted and I would ask back, as I did not know, where my room was, I did not know which room had been assigned to me in this labyrinth of rooms and stairs, all hexagonal and all leading in many seemingly impossible directions. And every time I walked in a room there would be people in it, engaged in different things and glaring at me for the intrusion. Obscurely, this was my house. More obscurely, I was definitely not welcome..

A dream of water

2007-06-16T16:39:00.001+01:00

Saturday; June 16, 2007 4:34 PM

a dream with water

I was on the coast, towards the East of the country.. She was with me but she wasn't, I could just make her out getting in the choppy grey waters under the murky grey skies and swim towards the West, presumably towards the City in the centre of the coast. At the same time I was her, struggling in the water to make way ahead and breath, the many miles of water ahead of me condensed into a single experience.

I was walking alongside on the coast, barely able to get an occasional glimpse of her in the water, struggling forward, while I, who had it so much easier just having to walk that many miles, was already panting and sweating... I could just about make him out there, walking near the water-line; I knew he'd be more tired than I was. The sky was gathering big grey lumps rolling together very low, the storm was coming, the water was the colour of steel, there were many, many miles of this ahead of me.

outside the classrooms

2007-03-27T10:09:00.000+01:00

Monday; March 26, 2007 9:16 PM

Why do I have these fragments of memories of Liceo Luis Espelozin bathed in electric light, at night, with me lurking in corridors, going up and down stairways. I lurk, indeed, and look for something I don't know what...

Maybe I was looking for B. I was still in love with her. She was as far away from me as a star in a distant galaxy and was just as out of my reach. And yet I still pined for her...

But some things don't match. I very, very seldom went to that place at night. It was not even the same high school. In the evenings it was Liceo Jose Gregorio Hernandez and was an adult education secondary school. with much older pupils than the daytime constituency. A couple of my friends attended it, though, as they were working in the day.

Why am I here tonight? I should be many miles away. It can't be 1970 all over again. Please tell me this isn't so. I check in my pocket for my mobile phone: these gadgets did not exist then, if it stilll is in my pocket I'll be ok. It isn't. But then I remember having left it behind when I changed clothes earlier. It is a vague memory, though. I was in a rush, somebody was speaking to me while I was fetching my things, changing my clothes. Did Ireally leave it behind? And, in any case, where is that? I think it was my room in Catia -but we sold that house over twenty years ago. Someone crosses my path in the stairs, cannot clearly see them in the shadow. "Excuse me, what year is this?" I feel compelled to ask and immediately realise the absurdity of asking such a question. "W-what? what?" is the only answer I get before the person whose face I could not see disappears downstairs.

I walk down the corridors and look in the classrooms. The rooms have the daytime class labels on the doors: "3A", "4B'. That was my class. I peer into that room, half expecting to see myself sitting there, in that odious khaki uniform. There is a class, they look pretty much like daytime students to me, rather than adults, but their uniform is different, the girls don't wear the green and white uniform of the Ezpelosin liceo but a blue and white blazer. The boys wear white shirts and blue jeans. Blue jeans, imagine.

I stand on the corridor and look into the distance, remembering the gigantic flames and the plume of fat black smoke coming up when the petrol station down in Avenida Sucre caught fire. People used to smoke even in gas station courtyards, in those days.

Walk down the second floor corridor, down some unlit stairs -there's small piles of rubbish under the stairs, chunks of granite missing from the steps, stains. I nearly trip up over a cleaner's trolley. Had forgotten about these. I can see the car park now. Is my car there? Hold on, my car would be four thousand miles away, parked in Bartholomew Road, not here in Gato Negro. But I'm seeing a dark green Peugeot 405 in the car park which can only be my current car. I strain to try and see the plate number but cannot from this angle. Why am I in this place, anyway?

Sometimes my father would drive me to school. That was pretty embarrassing as he had an old car, a bottom of the range Chevrolet Biscayne which looked far much older than its six years. Well, in those days cars changed much more from year to year. My dad wasn't very good at keeping cars spic-and-span, something that everyone who's been in my car will agree I have inherited. So the car had a collection of scrapes, scratches and grazes, the wheel lids were missing on a couple of tyres, it was quite dirty. And I would leave the car without saying thanks or pretty much anything, mortified, and join the group of my classmates even though I felt myself an outsider and so did they, me in silence while they would go about their coarse teen-age joking and bragging.

The place would have been full of people.. not so tonight. There is something ghostly about this place. But then I don't know whether I am really here or even what this place really is. Mind you, I didn't know then either, when I used to be the outsider kid who didn't quite fit in....

wong phone

2007-03-04T18:30:00.000Z

Friday; March 2, 2007 5:07 PM

Dreams continue flowing underneath the level of the waking mind, I breath in deep, change position and look at the alarm clock. I don't have to get up at six. It is 4:37. A moment ago I was struggling trying to make a phone call and realising I had taken the wrong mobile phone with me. I was in Catia and I knew my phone wouldn't work with the local telephone network but it would, curiously, work on wi-fi wireless network and that I would find a signal, but then I had realised I had brought the wrong phone by mistake and this one didn't have wi-fi or internet capabilities. I was in the old house in Catia. I had the horrible feeling I also had brought the wrong guitar. I opened my guitar case. There was no guitar in it. I head the laughter and chirpy natter of girls in the distance.

I'm always losing things. I'm in Caracas at the moment and I'm not sure how to get out and back to Britain since I seem to have lost my passport. When I look for it I only find the Venezuelan one, but it is the Italian one I will need. I've also lost my watch and can only tell the time by reading the display on my phone, but this is broken so I have to move it at certain angles and squint. I go out on the street and people seem to look at me funny. I do certainly look differently, I'm much older, with long hair and dressed in black. A zamuro flies low overhead and crows -never heard a zamuro crowing, is that possible?

Find myself lost in Casalta, in the middle of the estate, tower blocks on either side... I am more than ever an outsider, I should not be here. I now know this to be a dream, I haven't been to this part of the world since nineteen seventy-nine. The shopping centre has not yet been built so it is long before then. I must wake up I must wake up.

I'm back in the house in Catia. I'm in the upstairs room, where someone has built half a dozen toilets, several of which are now overflowing. My phone is on the floor, but it is covered in water. I run to unplug the TV and the betamax. The landline phone rings, I pick it up, a distant voice dictates something in English. This reminds me, when am I due to fly back to London? The date might already have passed.... Then I realised I've lived this occasion a million times, but in dreams. So I am still in a dream. Must wake up, must wake up...

It's misty all round, you can hardly see anything. A ray of sun breaks through the fog but doesn't reveal much more. I hear a soft distant music but I know I must not go in that direction. There is a threat that I cannot see but sense very powerfully. Also I have the feeling that I'm still in Catia but there is nowhere like this in Catia, there could not be. This must be a dream.. wake up please wake up..

time shift

2007-01-25T10:27:00.000Z

As usual, this was only the end of the dream, one long, complicated dream full of things that inevitably got washed away by the waking world as soon as my eyes opened in the darkness. This last bit remained, though, powerful and intriguing. I felt it should have been scary but it wasn't really, maybe because the protagonist is someone close to me. There were other people in the room but they didn't count. There was Ili, my cousin, standing in front of me, smiling and sort of flirting. There was also Ili, my cousin, sitting on a couch, looking disapprovingly.

I couldn't quite understand what was in front of me, so I asked Ili (standing) what was going on, how could there be two of them at the same time there. 'We're on different times, I'm on a time-shift in relation to her'. My head was swimming, trying to comprehend what she was telling me.. and failing. 'What do you mean, you can be here twice now because for you 'now' is two different time points? Something like that?' 'Something like that', she said. 'B-but... this means there could be a million of you. And which one is the real one?' 'We both are. I suppose I could say that, because I'm a later one, I'm more real..' 'Rubbish' said the other Ili 'I must be of a later time-frame, given that I can remember this happening'. 'No you can't. Or, I-you can't, since I can remember this from your view-point, therefore I'm a later one'.

They sat down close to each other but not touching -I noticed that. Ili previously-standing smiled at me, her leg touching my shin, smiling in a sort of flirty way which for some reason alarmed me. Something was wrong. This was not Ili. But then, if not, Who -or what -was she?

'I can't have this, this is dangerous. I'll have to make you wake up' she said. And wake up I did, trying to cling onto the remains of the dream, while the other Ili looked at me imploringly -and I felt kind of pity to leave her alone, even though, as her face dissolved in the mist of disappearing dream, now I knew she wasn't the real Ili either.

the train south-west

2007-01-17T21:29:00.000Z

dreaming of travelling, again. I take a train (it is nearly always a train, on some occasions a bus, never seem to drive there)to some distant place, south and west and hundreds of miles away. a couple of times it has happened that I've mislaid my guitar and I spend the rest of the dream trying to retrieve it. Not his time, though; I don't get lost either. Or forget where I was supposed to go or who I was supposed to meet. i don't have to meet anybody. I'm on my own, which is both good and bad, i need to shed my luggage so I can explore this place.

sometimes dreams have a kind of multi-dimensional texture to them. They seem to extend and overlap with other dreams and perhaps other states of consciousness, other inner worlds in ways that seem both disturbing and impossible to recall when we wake up. Now I'm walking down the street in this town far down to the south and east, with no memory of having found my hotel or dumped my luggage. Indeed, I had no idea where that hotel was, now. the intervening chunk of time and memory was full with a confusing impression of having been on a vessel, a kind of boat being swept down an enclosed canal with red walls all around and dark turbulent waters like a rapid. i can see similar figures in the distance -then I realise that I'm seeing myself through a kind of mirror, a kink in space-time, I'd say, if that weren't such a tedious cliche. but all this belongs to the murkier part of the dream, there is another part which is, if still full of danger unseen and bothersome trouble, still even so more luminous.

more dreams of travelling

2006-12-11T18:18:00.001Z

Monday; December 11, 2006 ttime

Another long convoluted dream of travelling. It nearly always involves Caracas, but it always has changed beyond recognition. I have to take a train back (presumably to London, but in dreams trains become boats become planes and finally buses, so it's ok). As always in this kind of dream, I have to struggle with things, there's a couple of slightly obnoxious kids on the bus/train/whatever, one of them is flyering me about something or other while I try to find where I left my guitar. I crumple one of the fliers and throw it but it lands in the seat in front of me and the person sitting there is rather displeased. Then I see my guitar, reach to grab it, there is another flier with the coat of arms of Venezuela and some sort of invitation. I tear it to pieces, feeling guilty (I didn't quite read it and it might be something important, official, even, given the style and the prominent official symbols of the country) but I'm fed up with the kid handing me those fliers.

My stop is approaching, I try to make it towards the door but it is so crowded, and with a couple of rucksacks and the guitar it is difficult to make way. At least I haven't lost the guitar or the luggage as often happens in those dreams...

Then I wake up, thinking of the vast black void between the stars....

The Evil

2006-10-11T11:38:00.000+01:00

TWO DREAMS
Tuesday; October 10, 2006 8:39 AM

Often enough I don't remember my dreams at all. On other occasions, perhaps more frequently, I wake up with a vivid memory of them, or at least they leave me with a vivid sensation, but the memory of the dream itself washes away very quickly as the routine for getting up and preparing to face the world takes over. Last night I had two very contrasting dreams which, to an extent, left me feeling exactly like that. The first one made me wake up in a cold sweat, with the ominous feeling of a dark menacing presence. The second one woke me up to elation, a beautiful feeling only marred by the realisation that the dream was over. And yet, I fell asleep to the same dream again.

The first one was a variant on a frequent theme. Extremely difficult to describe, as there is a kind of multi-dimensionality to it and at some points I am an observer while at others I'm caught in the action and can be one of several of the protagonists in the dream. In any case, there is an evil power which we have unleashed by the act of discovering it exists, blowing its cover in the ordinary world. Then I become one of the 'players' in this dreadful play and am a weak human facing this boundless monstrosity, or, like last night, at some point into the dream I discover that I am of the same angelic ro demonic (for want of better word) nature but of a far, perhaps infinitely far lower order and therefore incapable in almost any way of facing the larger, evil power. I can only hide but there are only few places where I can hide from such a being, while he destroys the world outside and hunts my companions one by one. I will be hidden in an attic and I already know the inevitable outcome: I will come out to face him in the end. And lose. That's when I see the man with the bowler hat and the thick glasses come in the house, speak to my companions reassuringly, the danger has passed. My companions disappear, maybe go out in the world and the man goes in the distance and then I see it. As he turns his back to me in the distance I see flames coming out of the skirts of his jacket. He is declaring himself, now he has wings, the most beautiful wings but that too is a lure, as I can't resist declaring my nature too (which is perhaps a revelation to me), show my wings and -then he grows and becomes -darkness. Infinite, all encompassing darkness. The dream doesn't end but I know what ensues. I wake up shivering, trying to brush away the evil presence which still seems to be there, just beyond the window, between the ceiling and the roof or just beyond the familiar, comforting penumbra of my bedroom. The thing about this dream is that it is a circular story. I know the outcome because it has taken place infinite times in the past and in the future -and I remember them all as I play my part in this horrible story. I know what is going to happen but can do nothing to alter the outcome, whatever I do with that intention ends up re-inforcing the fixed course of things to happen.

The second one is much more difficult to remember, it had a very strong sexual component but not expressly so. I have a young woman friend who also seems to be of some angelic nature. She comforts me, makes me laugh but there is only a friendship -there can be no more as we are of different orders, again. But that is enough. Enough indeed that although the complicated plot of the dream is lost when I wake up, I do so happy and smiling and rested, cured of the evil previous dream, at least for a while. I turn over to continue sleeping and float down to meet her again in a sunny balcony with flowers. She smiles. I smile, too.

I'm noticing that I had so much to say about the evil dream, so little about the happy one, even though they were equally powerful at the time...

--

After writing about those two dreams last night I felt dizzy and not quite there for a while, which is a bit awkward when you know you have lots of lessons to do for the following seven or eight hours, almost continuously. With a woozy head and something akin to the feeling of doom that I had when I woke up from the dream, I had to nonetheless carry on teaching for the rest of the day, I have people sitting in front of me who have paid for their lessons and expect me to impart words of wisdom about their guitar playing (and, sometimes I suspect, perhaps for me to tell them that they are marvellous and need absolutely no lessons from me, their future as rock stars assured). All this while the kids get restless and make jokes or bash away at their guitar tunes and exercises and I get this cold wind from the dark, void, hostile universe without and the nothingness beyond ..

red currents

2006-09-30T10:14:00.000+01:00

Friday; September 29, 2006 2:13 PM

It is like floating in a liquid, some sort of amniotic primordial cordial in a red semi-darkness. except you know you are in the world. There is something more of that womb-like feeling: time is elastic, every instant lasts forever, or near forever and after ages of something beginning to happen it is quite a surprise that it does finish and conclude. I remember the admonition, 'do not go towards the bright lights' and smile. There are none here, everything is diffused and soft and warm -or perhaps not exactly warm, it just has no temperature. I am not sure whether I can float, or perhaps fly is a better word -but I find it difficult to think in terms of words, in terms of representation. Things here just are themselves, not something else.

Maybe I can navigate this world. There are features, passages and ridges and turns, I could learn them and come back here. But I don't know whether this particular location (if it is a location: more on this later) is significant or important in any way. I don't know whether what I can see is all there is to this world -it could be that those passages sort of wrap around and bring myself here, to this starting point again. This is possible, I can see strange mirror effects at the end of the distant tunnels. There is only one way to get to know.

Maybe I'm wrong. The tunnels are, for one thing, far bigger than they seemed from where I started. Then I realise, at some point, that there is a shadow moving in a distant tunnel, visible through the semi translucent walls of the gallery I am in. It is only a passing fleeting impression, something familiar but terrifying, for some reason. Not sure what is the worse thing, to be alone here... or not be alone.

I can make out more of the figure in that other tunnel. If I strain my eyes I can see a figure similar to myself, similar clothing, similar build or so it would seem from here, similar long hair. But now I see another shadow, a bigger one, terrifying even though I can not clearly make it out, blocking his way. He's plucked clean out of the small boat -if boat it is, that he is in, and disappears into the larger shadow, eyes and mouth wide open in s silent distant scream. Then I see in the distance, through the walls of yet more tunnels, another, similar figure on what looks like a small boat... further on in the tunnel I can see something lying in wait...

Then I realise that I am on a kind of small boat, which flows down the current of the passage even though I'm not rowing or steering it and I can feel no current. And I think I know, as I approach a bend in the tunnel, what I will see next. And I try to scream but no sound comes out....

travelling dreams

2006-09-22T09:20:00.000+01:00

13-09-06

I was again at the port, or was it the train station, ready to set out for my mysterious journey that would take me to that place South again. Then I learnt that it was not south at all but north and that i could have flown there. But I didn't want to fly anyway. I had memories of those ghostly flights to Los Nevados in which the place would melt and disappear in the mist and we would be left to climb the steep mountain, all the while seeing the cable car wagons slide up in the sky towards where we were going, far away and up in the heart of the mountain mist.

I had some doubt as to whether it was the same place up north that had been south, the route was different, the ticket they'd given me was different -where had I put that ticket, by the way? it was not in my pocket. But I had to have it on me, I hadn't been anywhere and I hadn't lost my luggage yet.

For some reason the train carriage reminded me of my room upstairs in my old house in Catia. How could a train carriage have cement floors? And leaky ones at that, and not level. A small screen at the front of the carriage showed a toy town-like map with features in primary colours and a big orange arrow reading 'You are here' which slowly moved as we shifted and left behind large gulps of landscape. Then I noticed the woman. She was blond and had her hair tied back, she had an acute, slightly aquiline note. She wasn't beautiful but was possibly the most attractive woman I'd ever seen. But, where had I put my coat? And my guitar? And my friends? I was sure I'd been with friends a short while ago.

I looked everywhere -found my guitar and my case, in the lower deck of the carriage, but never found my coat. Got off at the station when they called out the name through the addressing system. It was desolate. Tumbleweeds, a torn poster on a billboard, the air of a place where nobody had set foot for a very long time. I couldn't see the town behind the station, there were tall board fences with more torn billboards, only half-visible through the tall grass.

There was s red building like a Roman circus, surrounded by an expanse of dirt and litter. Paint peeling, old posters with toreadors and boxers torn and barely clinging to the wall. I was alone and no longer knew what I was supposed to do in this place, who I was supposed to meet, even where it was, geographically. I had been convinced I was still in Venezuela,, but some of the posters and the street signs seemed to be in English and other languages I did not know. The afternoon was drawing in and I was wondering -If I had to spend the night in this place, where would I stay? It might be better to go back to the station and take a train back. Or a bus, anything... I had a moment of panic when I couldn't think of the way back to the station, but then it appeared there in front of me at the turn of a corner. It seemed even more deserted and derelict than when I arrived a while before. I was alone, far away, with only the faintest idea of how to get back home...

over time 2 (1985)

2006-08-30T10:37:00.000+01:00

vanishing point

2006-07-15T10:49:00.000+01:00

....try to remember the dream that was so vivid this morning. I could clearly (too clearly) remember it as I woke up, as I stumbled downstairs to brush my teeth, it was still there as I fixed myself an espresso and as I dragged my feet upstairs again, my knee hurting so much that I had to climb the steps on one leg steps.

I sat in front of the computer, thinking that I don't seem to enjoy my morning coffee as much as I used to and perhaps it'd be time to look at something else to start my morning with, when I realised -it was gone. I couldn't remember the first thing about that dream that I had discussed endlessly in my head since I'd woken up.

Then it was all in shreds, then it wasn't -as if it had never existed, only the memory of it having been there, the hole it had left remained.

of the dreams washed away 1

2006-06-26T20:32:00.000+01:00

Dreams of flooding. I think it must have been yet another of those rooms in my old house that keep sprouting anew in my dreams. There is a second floor on top of the floor upstairs which did not exist and could never have existed, but there there are a couple of rooms which I have never seen and at least one where I have been -last night, at any rate. This was the room where the walls were partly translucent blue and white plastic and they were getting waterlogged, bulging outwards, the carpet was soggy and at the end of the room the water was rising. I was trying to pick up the guitars and electronic stuff lying on the floor, disconnecting them and putting them in a safe place but there were too many of them and the water was rising quickly. I could see it sloshing about in one corner, there was a drain there but it didn't seem to be able to take the water, or else it was blocked. Then she (but who was she?) told me I had to break the blue and white pillar in front of me. I thought that would accelerate the flooding but she assured me it wouldn't , It broke beautifully in two, sparkles glinting on the broken edges. Water came out of it, which alarmed me but then it stopped and so did the flooding.

The room was already inundated, though; the greenish-grey cement floor seemed to glimmer and wave under the water at almost ankle level. I thought I'd seen a little fish, slithery and silver, sliding past under my foot. I thought of all the diseases that are water borne that you could catch from what seemed to be quite clean water but I knew couldn't be. She said 'you'll be ok'. After a pause, she spoke again 'well, i know you won't be ok in the end, none of us will, but you'll be ok for now...'. Then, for the first time, I saw her eyes. Green and aquatic. That little fish could have swum in there, I would have sworn I'd fleetingly seen it dart across the green sea behind those eyes. I looked out the window as it suddenly got darker, the fat black clouds were grazing the edge of the sun. Not sure why this became ominous. I had some memory of something worse happening in this room -which couldn't be as I had never before been here, to this part of the house. Or had I?

Downstream

2006-06-01T10:57:00.000+01:00

There is a train that takes me where I have to go. The train goes South and then East, to a land that I know well but one to which I have never been. To get to the train, though, I have to either go to the ghost bus station or to the strange underground interchange. This is what I've chosen to do today, so as I am approaching my stop I get ready, careful not to forget my guitar or my bags. The tube train is something I had not seen before, a double -decker carriage. It is a bit awkward to approach the doors with the stuff I'm carrying with all these people in the way. Now on the platform. I look for the grey escalators but they're out of action again, I'll have to walk across the platforms, under the arches, across the track to the platform for the main line trains going South and East. We actually had to walk across the track, the grey paint on the metal work, the big rivets sticking out of the metal rails, the crunchy gravel underfoot, the deadly third rail, crimson red. Then we learnt that there was a pedestrian subway.. Never mind, here comes the train. It is another double-decker but quite different, much bigger. I jump on it and feel observed. I'm not wearing any distinctive clothing, I've left my black trench-coat and boots in my case, which is this unwieldy bag. My guitar is in plain sight, though, or its case is, which does seem to attract attention in the way of furtive sideglances. I have to remember to take it with me, I must not forget. I have some vague memory that I have done this in a similar circumstance, or something like the same circumstance in another instance of this world, in another throw of the dice -can't explain it any better.

I get off the train and find myself in this which is supposed to be the bus station, not the train station. I need the train -or the bus, going North, but cannot find the right place and am not sure how to look for it. There's a bus over there, at least it is facing in the right direction. I will take that. It is a red bus, like a London bus, with numbers in yellow indicating the route. I hear my footsteps, my boots clip-clop on the cobblestones. I am very, very lost....

to be continued -possibly.

beyond the veil of dreams 2 - 1986

2006-05-11T16:14:00.000+01:00

early dream of flying..

2006-04-30T11:38:00.000+01:00

I open my eyes to the soft darkness of the room that I share, strangely, with my mother and sister. I'm slowly floating towards the ceiling; it is only this, the ceiling, that stops me. I can see my sister slowly floating up as well, even though if I look down I see her lying on her bed, sweetly asleep. For some reason I cannot see them both clearly at the same time: when I see her face on the pillow the floating figure becomes blurry. I decide to dive downwards It is an exhilarating sensation, this reversal of gravity that now softly pulls me up again towards the ceiling. I reach a corner, the same corner where I had spotted during the day a hole from which a big spider had come out, but there is no hole or spider now, I dive down again, as I see my sister doing the same at the other end of the room. My mother sighs in her sleep, down there below; a moon beam pierces through the window as I dive down again. Bliss.

gateway

2006-04-22T13:31:00.000+01:00

There is a gate between dream and reality, a very thin passage that communicates between the two. One can peek through it sometimes, but almost never can get through. Sometimes I would wake up in the night, panting and sweating, still with my heart beating almost through my mouth but also relieved to have escaped. Then I would close my eyes and see it. It was still on the chase and was still there waiting for me to fall asleep again. It was standing by the entrance it couldn't go through, shapeless but malevolent. I would open my eyes, in terror, get up with difficulty, my heart still beating hard, my breathing still laboured, and stagger to the fridge to get a glass of water, a glance through the window at the trees swaying outside, the calm of the night in this safe island in the world of awake.

I would go back to bed, look out my window again, play cards on the handheld computer, read a little and finally begin to fall asleep. To wake again in terror: it was still there, the other side of the door, it was still there waiting for me. And this time it was probing the gate, trying to find a way to get through to the world of reality. I was not going to get any sleep that night.

over time 1 (1985)

2006-04-19T17:48:00.000+01:00

This was part of a composition workshop, the graphic was supposed to be put to music in some way. 1985.

in circles

2006-04-15T18:50:00.000+01:00

I was in a large room, a sort of dance hall. I knew what it was but now I have no idea how I knew, since I had never been in any such place in my life. It was a vast place and there were people dressed in night wear, men in tails, women with pearls. They all looked so similar and I had to look for my father who was in there somewhere. i thought it would be easy as he would be the only one dressed in a normal suit and tie instead of that sort of gear. But I couldn't find him and I started to think I would never find him. Then I thought -I didn't know where the entrance to the hall was, and I could see none. And the thought arose: I couldn't remember when we had got there or how we had arrived... had no idea of where we were and and there were no people my age. That's when I noticed the faces of the people dancing. They all had acquired a pasty complexion and glassy eyes -or did they look like that all along? That's when I panicked. That was, also, when they started to slowly spin, like wind-up dolls, slowly and in synchrony, while I ran and screamed and screamed...

distant mirror of time 1

2006-04-14T09:58:00.000+01:00

While I looked around, in the silent void, and I saw... myself staring back at me, from the other side of the chasm of time and space and memory....

drawing by Flavio Matani. 1986
all contents c) flavio matani

dream cast in fog

2006-04-08T16:10:00.000+01:00

dream of Avenida Sucre, in a fog. I've come out of school but it is a sort of twilight outside; I have to find my friends at the bus stop but do not find them. it could be because the friends I'm looking for I will not meet for another twenty five years and haven't been born yet, but then how do I know, and how is it that I realise this is the case? I go past the doorstop with the red light-bulb at the top of the stairs and cast a curious and guilty glance and quickly walk away.

I'm now walking on the traffic island. There is no traffic, there are lots of people walking on the street on the Avenida. Feels like a long time has passed but there is still that dusk quality to the air. Up the hill there are the Superbloques, the tower blokcs in 23 de Enero. They don't seem to be grimy or covered in graffiti today, the mist gives them a sort of supernatural quality.

I think I can go through a short cut to my house but it is not one that I'm very familiar with. Go into the industrial estate and walk and walk.. and it all is no longer familiar, I don't know where I am. Where is the way out of here, where is the way out...

bubble

2006-03-23T05:55:00.000Z

The bubble of the dream burst just as she was about to say the word to me. I came up to the surface of the waking world in anguish, knowing I would spend the rest of my life chasing for that woman, for that word, for that insubstantial ghost of an instant holding the promise of the explanation, the meaning and the purpose..

in somnis (May 2005)

2006-03-19T18:22:00.000Z

In my old house in Catia, there was some sort of weird party which I couldn't quite figure out. Rather a ceremony than a party, people were concerned. There were glasses of champagne and formal evening wear in between the walls with crackled peeling paint of my old house. I can't remember who proposed bringing the entity, whose name I didn't hear but I knew well what it, or he, was about. Or perhaps didn't even know, but the foreboding and the chill in my spine told me something reason wasn't quite getting. I turned to Rosalexia, my companion, and said to her we better be near the front door where we could escape.

Then the hearse arrived, with a sort of garish pink plastic box with what looked like fairy lights. But I knew it was the entity they had summoned that lay in there. There was a small hostile crowd gathering outside and someone threw a can of beer at me. We went the other way, to the grocers' at the top corner. it was busy there, with Mrs Gloria back behind the counter -how many years since I had seen her. I turned around and commented on this to Sam, my companion (funny, 'dI thought it was Rosalexia just a short while before). We bought some drinks and sweets, under the unfriendly gaze of the other customers and the Andino man that had the newstand outside.

We made our way to the house somehow. We had to look. And yet, we knew our place was not there and it was dangerous...

an old dream of Catia ....

2006-03-16T21:13:00.000Z

The streets were familiar but , all the same, I didn't know exactly where I was. It must have been Catia but not my old neighbourhood, rather the bits of La Cortada or Gramoven or Pro-Patria where we weren't allowed to go as children, because they were 'dangerous' (i now believe this really meant 'lower class than us' or something of this sort).

There were several parts to this dream; in the first I seemed to be wandering in Casalta, making my way back from somewhere. I saw Bill Clinton being led into a house, a very small crowd of onlookers outside at a certain distance, mostly children, commenting -they didn't seem to be aware of who he was, only the fact that he looked foreign and 'gringo' and, perhaps, important, with an entourage of body-guards and people in suits. I went into the house unchallenged and spoke to him, while his minders seemed to get restless and I was thinking of that poor Brazilian guy shot by the police in the London Underground..

After a short while I left and wandered towards Calle Colombia, skirting around the block where Jose's 'Pre-Universitarian Institute' was,and around the Shopping Centre which seemed somehow to be undone,or perhaps not yet built, but somehow never got there. I got lost and couldn't figure out where I was; it was an even poorer neighbourhood and I was confronted by a group of young men, who asked me where I was going. I told them I was on my way back from a gig and looking for a friend in that neighbourhood and needed to retrieve my violin from him (and thinking at the same time that it was a very, very stupid lie -I can't play violin for toffee and could very easily be found out -these guys wouldn't take kindly to having the mickey taken off them). They pointed me in the direction of a house on the steep street ahead, a house that seem to be built like a staircase, in different levels that ended up at each end on the street above and below.

This is where I met her. She opened the door and let me in, seemed to recognise me even though I was sure I'd never seen her before -she thought I was a friend of her brother's. She gave me food and we talked for a very long time. I liked her, I liked her a lot but I knew she was out of my reach. With a pang in the heart I explained to her that I needed to move on. I asked her again where I was. I was not in Pro Patria as I sort of imagined: she showed me a map in which I recognised nothing of the Catia I had lived in for so many years. She pointed at the extreme left of the map, near the sea. That's where we were. I had no idea, I don't think there were buildings anywhere as near the coast when I lived there. And this was many miles upon miles of dangerous slums away. How do I get to where I need to be, then? She pointed at a place that seemed to be in the middle of the map. This is where you want to go. There is no easy way at this time of night for you to get there. How about a taxi, I said. A taxi? Here? was the answer. My urge to leave was growing in the same proportion as the attraction for this woman with a soft voice and almond eyes. I needed to get out of here....

She went to get something and ask her brother how I could possibly leave the neighbourhood. That gave me the opportunity. I calmly grabbed my things while she was in there in those rooms, put my shoes on (why had i been bare-footed in a stranger's house?) and shouted a thanks and good-bye as I went out and closed the door behind me. There were two taxis outside, with fiery letters on the side and illuminated signs on top. But I hesitated, as I didn't know whether I had enough money, and they both left. There I stood, in the middle of this place, without any clue of how to get out and knowing full well that it was an extremely dangerous place, for anyone, but in particular for someone with long hair dressed in a foreign fashion. The street was empty. I started to walk on the high pavement, not knowing where I was or where I was going.....

(August 2005)

so far away

2006-03-16T05:53:00.000Z

It was an indoor market, with a maze of stairs and escalators. I was in Venezuela only for two days, would leave the following day. The girl at the hippie stall selling pendants and necklaces and new age stuff smiled, I smiled back but was a bit shy to talk. Suddenly I find myself telling her I live in London and am only here for a couple of days, finding everything strange -the country has forgotten me, I have forgotten the country, its smell, its flow and ways. Time was beginning to ebb more quickly, I would need to pack, do stuff. But the girl smiled. London was so very far away...

truth, justice and the American way...

2006-03-11T21:44:00.000Z

Watching those old episodes of George Reeves' 50's television Superman gave me an intense longing for something that I wasn't sure what it was.

I don't think I ever thought I was Superman. I was too weak, too aware of the many ways in which I couldn't fly, I wasn't as powerful as a locomotive and couldn't leap tall buildings in a single bound, I was shy and slow and very afraid of standing out. But it was part of my dream. One evening my dad came in to tell me that Superman was dead. He seemed to relish the news and find it very funny. I said, how could Superman be dead? Bullets bounce off his chest, he can walk through walls and change the course of mighty rivers. He killed himself, my dad said. Then I was confronted perhaps with the first intimation of .. perhaps not mortality, which normally would not exist in any meaningful sense in the mind of a six year old, but of the world being wrong. Of our heroes being fallible people, as full of weaknesses and contradictions as ourselves. Of the world itself being made wrong, unfair, based on the dialectic of the survival of the fittest, of my own dysfunctional family in the periphery of the Western world, what 'truth and justice and the American way' really meant for us out there in the wider world... all that would be in the future, but perhaps the first tear of the curtain may have been that night when I was 6, with my dad reading out an evening paper headline about some b-movie actor in California killing himself.

down the wash-basin

2006-03-07T07:06:00.000Z

difficult to get up so early, tear away from the beautiful dream that still calls you as you put a heavy, clumsy, blind hand on the alarm clock, sit with your face in your hands and tentatively look for things in the dark, do i really have to do this and go and face the world at such a time of day....

no dreams

2006-03-06T00:20:00.000Z

.. just floating downstream towards the darkness. The day now gone takes time to shred into pieces and dissolve away, I still half wake up to the thought of things I should have done today.

Now I am walking around the dark streets at the back of Avenida Sucre in Catia, which I hadn't seen for many years. It feels dangerous, I can make out dark shapes moving in the dark, in alleys and doorsteps. I don't know why I'm here; I'm going back home, I tell myself. And then it dawns on me. That house I grew up in was sold many years ago. This is no longer home, home is far, far away, on an island in a distant sea. I walk towards Avenida Sucre, see a 214 bus go past, shiny and gliding like a whale but red and lit inside. I won't be able to catch it.. How do I get back home?

first awakening

2006-03-04T17:34:00.000Z

Stopping for a few minutes after a busy, busy day... the last pupil, one of the very, very few that I wish sometimes didn't turn up, didn't. Mixed blessing: I need the money. I love this guitar teaching thing, it is only very occasionally that I dread a lesson. This was one. Tired. Then I remember the chains of dreams that I was having last night, in which I was, again, back in Venezuela, trapped in different (and in a couple of cases, interesting) ways, unable to come back to the UK and my 'normal' life.

A building of glass and metal and red clay, in which I start by looking for my friends and then realise I'm lost and cannot find my way out. Will miss my flight back to London. It is, on the other hand, a beautiful, almost infinitely complex building (how can one dream of something and see it and make it up as enormously complex?).

Waves from my now distant land break against the waterline on the edge of my waking life, perhaps I long for that land more than I'm aware. If it is so, it is a waste of time, of course: the time I lived in Venezuela is gone. Much of it was sad, miserable and wasted as I searched more or less in the dark to try and find myself, build myself from scratch from the intense, creative but also scared, shy, ignorant kid that I used to be.