more dreams of travelling

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

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

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

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)

vanishing point

....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

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

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

early dream of flying..

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

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)

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

in circles

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

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

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

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)

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 ....

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

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...

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

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

.. 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

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.