Jun 23, 2009

Dreams and Nightmares from the Blue Journal (1975-76)

Someone in my creative writing class turned in a poem which was a perfect parody of my work - syntax, images, line breaks. In it was the name "Sabia," which is in a story I have recently completed and not taken to class yet. My teacher tried to convince me that one of his student aides must have read my previous works on the duplicating stencils and parodied them as a practical joke. I told my teacher that no one could have known the name Sabia except me, and, when I said this, I felt a spirit move up into my body from my toes, as my own spirit was pushed out the top of my head. I went over to the typewriter and began to type - there was no paper in the typewriter. My teacher calmed the class and inserted a sheet of paper and I began typing madly. The teacher asked me if I could type in a normal state, and I answered, "Yes." I tried very hard to concentrate and explain to him that something malevolent was in possession of my body, and when I concentrated so hard, the spirit left out the top of my head and my own spirit flowed back in. I wasn't shown what I had typed. Automatic writing, like those spiritualists used to do, I suppose.

I left the class to find my husband, who was at the library. I felt cleared completely of the evil presence until I started walking down the aisles. A voice inside my head told me to go over and look between two books and I would find a $5 bill. I looked, and the bill was there, so I knew the spirit had not completely left me.

I found my husband, who was reading a book on cowboy art. I told him I needed urgently to talk with him. We went outside the library. I told him of the possession, and he panicked and deserted me. He threw me the car keys, slid his books toward me on the ground, and ran off. The dream ended.
+ + + + + + +

I dream there are spiders on the floor that bite the soles of my feet as I try to get out of bed.

+ + + + + + +

I dreamed of a tiny black-and-white cat, small enough to sit on the phone dial. I dreamed my dead uncle was dying again in my hotel room, and he looked exactly like my father. I wanted to get the desk clerk to give me another room, but I was continually thwarted. My family tried to make me stay in the room where he died.

+ + + + + + +

A dream in which someone said, "The great master shared the divine truth with his followers, his dentist and his vampires. Yes, there are a lot of vampires in India."

+ + + + + + +

I dreamed of a girl who was dying of cancer. Her family and husband were fabulously wealthy. They brought her beautiful things from all over the world to make her last months better. But still she died.

All the beautiful gifts were then put into a museum they built called the Requisitory. In the dream I was touring the museum. Its outside was very Bauhaus and modern, but with a bas-relief of running wild horses on it.

I remember one painting in particular: "Montmartre." It was big, with gold leaf JOB cigarette paper emblems around the outside, like a frame; details from a gothic paintings, in collage, were in the center of the work, like a jeweled miniature.

+ + + + + + +

I dreamed I was carrying a very heavy doll that looked exactly like a baby.

+ + + + + + +

An art show. The woman's work is being exhibited. The man, her husband, tires of the event and goes away to the house of his friend, a priest. The priest is standing on the edge of a pier. He asks the man if there are any good porn houses in the area. The man is shocked, but tries not to show it and says he must leave to get something to eat.

Back at the woman's art show, things have slowed down. The woman looks at a box of stereopticon slides she has brought along. Some of them are of erotic subjects. She thinks, You start off masturbating over literature and you never know where you will end up eventually. No need to fear ending with books. Your beauty changes. You play out things you read about. The burden of Little Lord Jesus and his sweet white flesh. I traded off my Bible for a book of pornography, and I have the papers somewhere to prove it.

in in in in n n

+ + + + + + +

Said in my dream by an old man, of his run-away daughter:
"When she came home to me she was poverty-stricken, disease-ridden and a vampire."