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.
Wednesday, February 20, 2008
Friday, November 30, 2007
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.
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.
Thursday, November 08, 2007
melismas and horses
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...
Monday, September 17, 2007
hexagons
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..
...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..
Saturday, June 16, 2007
A dream of water
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.
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.
Tuesday, March 27, 2007
outside the classrooms
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....
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....
Sunday, March 04, 2007
wong phone
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..
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..
Thursday, January 25, 2007
time shift
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.
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.
Wednesday, January 17, 2007
the train south-west
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.
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.
Monday, December 11, 2006
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....
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....
Wednesday, October 11, 2006
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 ..
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 ..
Saturday, September 30, 2006
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....
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....
Friday, September 22, 2006
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...
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...
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