snapshots from a dream

Dreams bringing other worlds and many versions of this world. Look for the bus station to catch that bus to Aylesbury, while a planet, or is it the moon, furiously glows and roils in the dark sky. Go past a house that whispers secrets and memories, forgotten as soon as I hear them, leaving only a puzzle and a longing. The bus sets out and I have to stand for the long journey. This time I haven't forgotten anything, haven't left my guitar home, or my phone -although phones are useless here. And, how do I know that? It's getting near dark and the cones of light from the headlamps probe the dark road ahead, moving further into this reality, maybe making it possible for it to  exist. 

manifold

Lots of dreams of travelling, but always with some big glitch. The most common one is forgetting to bring something important, or leaving something at a train station (if that's what it is, it's sometimes not clear at all what I've been travelling on, or I'm aware of the dream as I have arrived to the place). Also, once I'm there, staying in places where I have to share with many strangers, odd bathroom arrangements where there are several sets of multiple cubicles but most are broken or all are busy.

Having been reading novels set in a manifold universe may have to do with the fact that I keep dreaming alternative versions of the same story (except I have been having those dreams since long before I started reading any of those books..), with different outcomes or different settings -of course, I have always had the 'theme' dreams, where there are different versions of a similar narrative, most notably the Evil dream, where I have to fight this entity which will, I know this from the start, win in the end. I will appear to have won at some point and sometimes in the dream I even believe it, even though I know what will happen next, but in the end the thing or entity always destroys me. Curiously, sometimes I am detached from myself and see F (that is, me) hiding in the ruins of his old house in Caracas, or fighting back and almost winning. Sometimes, even, I am in part the evil entity itself as well as the tiny human being fighting it. 

There are other strands of many-alternative-narratives, like the having lived somewhere else in Europe all these years, a place that wasn't England. Sometimes these tie in with the recurrent theme of having gone back to Caracas and some crisis prevents me from coming back here, where all the bits of my life (and my stuff, my computers and guitars, my books and my pupils) are.

iterations

21/08/2014 12:40

It begins with a theatre play. Well, no, it doesn't; there was a lot before but it has been erased. So now I'm sitting on the second row, while the boys on stage are being punished for something, their behaviour to the their girlfriends, and a huge Santa-like character bangs them over the head with a big styrofoam truncheon while his assistant rifles their pockets and loose change, wallets, bits of paper and fluff fall on the stage. I look back and I see her. Both of them, in different points in the hall, both look at me and smile in different ways.

This is going to be a residential event and I'm going to be here for a whole week; now I'm cuddling with her in a corner, wondering what happens next, while she (is it another instance of her? what is this?) watches me down from a mezzanina. She with me stirs and sits in front of me crossing her legs and holding my hands. I don't really understand how this all works and begin to say so but she puts a finger on her lips. Maybe it must not be said. She up there is making like she isn't looking down at us. I get the feeling that she can see me but she can't see her because ti is herself... I don't know why. It is all a mystery. 

At the end of the week it is the play again. I sit on the front row and the play begins and this time it is clear what is being represented as I've seen it unfold during the week, but at the same time none of it has happened and it's all here for the first time. And half way through the play I realise that I should have been on stage performing, but I don't know my part. I get up and make as if trying to go back to my seat from the stage but something, an invisible wall stops me and I bounce off it and fall on the stage. Except the wall is at the same time something I'm making up onstage and something real. I cannot go back. I look for her in the audience (who look at me with puzzlement) but neither of her is present....

diversions

Got lost and went past my stop. I asked the person next to me where I was. they looked at me with supreme disdain and something like distrust. I had to guess that we had gone past the Magallanes hospital and were sort of near Gramovén. Got off the bus trying to get my bearings. It was complicated, this going back home thing, as I was pretty sure none of us would be living in our old house any longer, how could I justify staying there? But then I thought my granddad would still be there. Wasn't he dead, though? I was convinced he would be there. This was some distance away, though; I was in the wrong place and didn't know exactly where I was or how to get back. The steep street died in the middle of nowhere and I had to get through traversing houses and gardens -or rather overgrown front yards full of junk, wire, pieces of plastic. I found myself in a house where the girls of the family asked me whether I needed any help. I said I needed to find my way to Magallanes. They looked at one another with some concern. Won't be very easy and it is not very safe out there. And you're carrying that, one said. Yes, I was carrying my best concert guitar in a shiny case and also two guitars without any kind of cover, which would make my progress both awkward and more risky, as the local thugs would spot prey very quickly. I thanked the older of the girls for their help, she said have my card -there was a little pigeonhole box on the wall with tiny visit cards, apparently each of the girls had their own set. I picked it up -there was just an email address in it, no phone number. I said it might be helpful to have her number in case I got lost or something (but would my phone work here? I thought) and she said 'yes of course it would' and smiled but didn't give me her number. The father appeared and thanked me for the visit and showed me out saying it was a pity I had to go so soon... while steering me out of the house. Outside, dirt lanes mixed with complicated architecture. I came to the end of that particular lane, a stream of people coming the other way -and completely stopped; they needed to get past me, I needed to carry on. But then I realised they were coming from a sheer wall with a sort of scaffolding ladder. I would not be able to descend on that laden with three guitars.. I moved aside and yes, I found another, much longer way. It was going to be a long way, indeed.

key

You/she had told me to go to your/her house and collect a house key from you so we could do a lesson. It was quite late in the evening but I was let in, made to wait in a reception room while various members of the family went to and fro; I had to explain to several of them why I was there at that time of day, she knows you are here? then please wait. I waited. At some point a little girl came in, said "hello, my name is Shanti, who are you?" I explained to her that F had asked me to come to collect a key and she perhaps should be made aware that I was in the house. "ok, I'll go fetch her", she said and disappeared. The house was getting busier with more and more people, family members and staff of some sort or another, going up and down the stairs and casting long glances at me. A young man in a suit with a tag on a lanyard asked me, like so many of them before, whether he could help, I repeated my story and he bid me to come upstairs with him to the next level -but he couldn't take me to the top floor, where F should be, as that wasn't allowed. I'd have to stay there. I said perhaps I should phone her; he said it might not be a good idea, I should not bother F and just wait to be called ... I completed the sentence, "... because it is nearly midnight". I still took out my phone but the screen was smudged and sliding my finger to open it didn't work. I tried to clean it but now the screen had gone white, the 'slide to open' words still waving across but not responding. I thought of restarting it but it would take too long and the young man seemed to be getting impatient. I started explaining to him in more detail but then stopped, what, none of it made any sense and I needed to wake up....

dream with tiger

Woke up, she’d left the room. I felt a stab of the old loneliness, I knew she wasn’t going to come back. The tiger had come into the room. Came and lied next to me, nuzzling its head into my hand as if it were a kitten. But it was not a kitten, it was a monster three times as heavy as I was, who could kill me with barely noticing it. It made affectionate cuddling movements with its head and finally fell asleep. I, as quietly as I could, got up and slowly and quietly left the room. Didn’t close the door to avoid waking it up -that door, in any event, wouldn’t have lasted that animal a second. Out in the corridor, rain was seeping through the roof everywhere. There were bits of broken masonry everywhere. I needed the loo but the bathroom was destroyed. I was alone in a wrecked house with a tiger. I felt desperately, desperately lonely.

returns

I had to sleep in my granddad's room. I hadn't lived in the house for a long time but much of my old stuff was still there. I was trying to figure out the tv set, which had archaic looking connectors I'd never seen, so I couldn't connect my laptop to it. There were several TV sets in the room, all old glass CRTs. Also, there was something odd about the stations they were tuned to. I tried to scan the channels, it had a sort of dual band thing like the old UHF-VHF and some of the channels came up on several of the frequencies -but none was clear, they all had a heavy snow of static or the pixelling break-down of more recent, digital equipment. I had to sleep on that bed? There was a lot of stuff in there, on and by the side of it. A blanket that smelled rather funny. Pick it up (rather gingerly) and put it to that side over there. A sort of wooden bucket. Various other bits and pieces that I couldn't identify what they were or their purpose. Then I had the thought -nobody'd told me what'd happened to my granddad. I had the absolutely certain thought that he was in hospital in a bad way with something very serious. Went downstairs to ask my dad, even though I knew he and the granddad (my mum's father) weren't in speaking terms. Why didn't he tell me. He didn't seem to be in the house, a group of men were. The tenants, I thought. They were renting half the house, the door was open and they seemed to have a party of sorts. My friend Sam (who never has been to Caracas in the real world) was with them, I asked her and she said my dad had been and gone out, he'd taken my granddad to hospital. Did she know where he went? She shrugged. No idea. The day was drawing to an end, there were yellow lights outside in the fog...

behind the curtain of dreams

Had again, after a long time, The Dream last night, in a very minor version. The immeasurably big evil (if that's the word) entity was about to arrive for the final battle and mop up and I was with a group of people that seemed to think dancing naked outside would generate some energy that would counteract the evil force. It arrived and both had a shape and hadn't. A black storm came before him or it, sweeping some of dancers up into the air and tossing them into the void. The others were starting to flee but it was too late. Then I somehow knew something. Went into a sort of bunker and I knew that the Entity had a corporeal form in there, amongst us. I think I told Joseph about this and he set about stabbing it/him. I told him that wouldn't work because it was only assuming a body but killing the body wouldn't kill it. He said he knew it would, at least for a while. The problem was different but he thought he had the solution. It was kind of part of us or us of it, so it could read our mind and anticipate intention but he thought he could not think about what he was about to do until the moment of doing it. I didn't say what I thought -it couldn't possibly work... I could see 'him' or it approaching and made for an exit, as I knew he would read in my mind what was going on. But then, just as I went through the threshold of the door into the blinding light of outside I knew that 'he' knew and knew all along... the only escape would be to wake up.