Kaleidoscopes

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...

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.