Overseers

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.