The Dream (Complete)
This is the collection of 4 posts I previously made (The Dream, parts 1, 2, 3, 4). After finishing them, I sent them to David Kanaga. He composed a collection of short musical loops to go with the stories, which are posted on his blog here (scroll down to the bottom of the page, my loops are labeled “The Dream 1-4”). I’m re-posting these stories in this format so that HE can link his loops to it without having to send people to 4 different posts. SOOO enjoy this story again, and the awesome loops by Mr. Kanaga.
The Dream
(1)
I had the same dream again last night. I was stuck at sea on a lifeboat—well, maybe I wasn’t stuck out there; maybe it was a fishing boat or something, the details are all kind of fuzzy. All I know is I was out at sea. I couldn’t see any land, so I must’ve been pretty far out… then again, I could’ve been within reach of shore; I could only see about a hundred feet in each direction due to a heavy fog. I felt encapsulated in a large, dark room of fog and sea, with no apparent exit.
All of a sudden, SOMETHING emerged from the water. “All of a sudden” may not be the best phrase—I don’t want you to think this thing rose quickly; it didn’t, at least not at first. But it wasn’t something I only casually noticed. The instant it broke the surface, I ALL OF A SUDDEN became aware of and completely absorbed by its presence, like it had some sort of… tractor beam lock on my consciousness or something. I felt exhilarated initially, but soon became frightened, and as it continued to manifest out of the sea a sense of dread knotted up inside me.
This being—or beast… I can’t describe it, really. And that’s not because it was a dream and I can’t remember the details. I mean, IN THE DREAM I knew I couldn’t describe it… I could hardly perceive it, even. I couldn’t tell you if it was a monster, a whale, shark, or squid. All I could discern was its presence, and a sense of darkness (or just bleakness?) emerging. I watched it rise, accelerating as it went. I don’t know how long I gaped at it… at least minutes, possibly hours. I kept trying to process its features, to understand it I guess. But every place I tried to examine closer seemed to evaporate back into the mist… I could see it best when I didn’t focus on any one aspect of its hellish anatomy, letting its languid totality pour out of the ocean and into my perception.
Watching this mass ascend to improbable heights, I was strangely less afraid, though more desolate. At first I’d assumed it must be some sea monster come to devour me, or maybe some bastion of demonic architecture that desired to collapse its whole mass on my tiny vessel. But it just rose, Rose, ROSE! I then understood, or considered, that this thing wasn’t concerned with me at all. I had chanced to be there at this happening, merely an irrelevant witness to its climb. As its top, rushing by this time at ridiculous speeds, neared the limits of my vision I felt all things simultaneously—joy, exhilaration, ennui, hatred, contentment… but mostly sorrow and… if not fear, isolation. And a surging expectancy, born in my stomach, tried to follow the flowing beast to the heavens, until the moment before it left my vision, when—
I woke up, alone in a dark room and disappointed that I’d lost the conclusion forever.
(2)
I was a fox, which I didn’t really understand in the dream itself. I mean, I could sense some… otherness about me, some fundamental difference in my manner of perception, but I couldn’t name it FOX till I woke up. I guess a fox couldn’t really articulate its own foxness, so I shouldn’t be too surprised.
Anyway, I was in a bright, colorful meadow, which was a little shocking… you know, I usually dream of very bleak landscapes, or even of just kind of… I don’t know, ETHEROUS settings, just floating around in space. But here… so many colors! Maybe I was only amazed by them because I was adjusting to the fox’s sensorium, but they were dazzling, nonetheless. Yellows greens Grass blues Skys reds PURPLES pinks Flowers… that’s kind of how I processed them: largely without a sense of structure or distinct objects, just with a SHARP awareness of the color currently occupying my sight. And patterns! The grass and flowers and clouds all flickered with incandescent linings that leapt off of their solid beings to collide in midair, forming a fluid transparent geometry—hexagons, dodecahedrons, pyramids—all dissipating the moment I perceived them. It looked like some kind of a drug trip… maybe I was Dr. Leary incarnated as a fox! Ha!
I suddenly realized I was, and had been, running. I don’t know how long I watched the dance of colors in pure bliss… the laser reverie was so full of experience, yet must’ve been contained only in the first dream-milliseconds. The colors had danced because I’d been running, pursuing something… a hare! I’d felt impelled towards it almost effortlessly, so I could just sit back in my consciousness and enjoy the psychedelic ride… but once I became aware of my quarry, a fierce sheen came over my vision and demeanor. The bright colors which before seemed to spring merrily out of my own consciousness were now malevolent sepia hindrances, and I became desperately angry, like an infant from which whose mother withholds milk. The hare, whose triangular haunches propelled his rhomboid body in front of me, blended seamlessly into the dance of grass, flowers, clouds, light and shape. My wonderful field had betrayed me, now concealing my foe. No flower understood me now—I had to suffer the separation of my present from my destiny, and for that reason I chased it psychotically. I had a dull sense of inflamed lungs and aching legs, but my gravitational desire pushed my body beyond these pains.
In the same instant that I leapt for my prey, it halted. I delighted as I fell on it with open jaws, ready to tear it limb from pentagonal limb. But I landed on nothing! as soon as the hare stopped, its geometry dissipated into the pervasive background of the grass dance. Frantically, I snapped my teeth all about, thinking I’d merely lost sight of it, that it had just blended into the scenery… after all, foxes might only be able to detect movement or something like that, I don’t know. But it had altogether evaporated! AHHH! I ran in circles, rolled on the ground, snapped my teeth at every nearby flower out of frustration. My foe, my dinner, my raison d’etre, my gravity was GONE! Or, it was as if gravity still impelled me, though the mass I was falling towards had dissipated. I didn’t know what to do, nor could I really do anything—this force still compelled me to run around willy-nilly, until a thorn pierced my shin.
I howled in despair as hot squares of pain cascaded up my leg. Looking at the thorn, I saw it was alive with light and movement, like everything else. Staring deep into its minute details, I began to see… RABBITS. Millions of the tiniest glowing geometrical hares flickered across it surface, and began to jump off and encircle me. The impulse to move left me, as I’d in a way attained my goal, but it was replaced by heavy dread that sat on my shoulders and forced me to the ground. The light-rabbits, grass, flowers, and trees became menacing, closing in upon me and glowing ever more, until I was completely encompassed by a terrible, piercing cage of light that shone like a blue giant desiring to burn me up. I whimpered helplessly, slowly dissociating myself from the fox, and emerged back into waking consciousness. The morning sun lay over my eyes, and incoherent shapes still fractured my vision.
(3)
I’ve been disturbed all day. My dream last night… I mean, it wasn’t BAD really, wasn’t a nightmare; it didn’t have anything scary or sad or… there was nothing WRONG with it, except for the mood. I… I can’t really clarify that further, I just mean… it was like there was some unpleasant atmosphere, or maybe it was just my PERSONAL dream-mood that was unpleasant. Yeah, I’ll tell you the details…
It was… GOD, I don’t really know where it was. I’ve told you I often dream in a kind of ether, a netherworld; I don’t know, some featureless plane I look over that appears more grey than opaque. This dream was kind of like that, except there were millions of… maybe even BILLIONS of… little bubbles. Actually they weren’t that little, probably the size of a small bathroom. I was inside one of them, just kind of levitating in the center, looking out in all directions. I wasn’t alone. Inside each and every of 70 billion bubbles was a person just like me. Well, not JUST like me, these were no clones—there were men and women of all ages, races… and farther off there were some… non-human beings. I mean, some looked kind of human, with just some funny ears or foreheads or legs… but there were some beings that looked more akin to animals—horses, wolves, walruses even—but infinitely more strange. And all of us were united by the same level of sentience. How did I know they were all sentient? Well, I said they were just like me because I could…sense, or…identify with, or…just BE with all of them. I still knew who and where I was, but I had a vague insight into all the perceptions of all these bubble people. And I could sense a similar self-awareness from all the beings, including the merely humanoid and the grossly alien.
The bubbles were strange. I had the same kind of perception of my own bubble as I did of all the other people—I sensed acutely the space it encompassed, all the way through the outer edge of its membrane—and I was exponentially more aware of this area than I was of the peoples’ consciousnesses. It’s almost as if the space in the bubble WAS me, which was odd, as my bubble (along with the rest) was slowly but constantly undulating in size and shape. They all morphed, as if compressed and expanded by shifting air pressure, into tiny ovules with extreme foci to giant, perfectly formed spheres. And my consciousness was always at one with whatever shape and size the bubble was. How could this be? How could my sense of self be constantly shifting and yet maintain coherence? This was puzzling in the dream, but not troubling, as the perplexity of the conundrum was offset by the calming nature of heightened connectivity to the surroundings.
Once I’d processed my surroundings, I realized that something was happening. The bubbles were bursting! This perhaps is where I began to feel disturbed. I first noticed the phenomena at the periphery of my sensorium (by which I mean the spheres of both my sight—which was almost omnipresent—and my emotional sensitivity, which formed a sort of mental “perceptual map” by which I could pinpoint my companions), but I soon realized bubbles were bursting close to me as well. As soon as a bubble burst, the person within it would disappear. Well, let’s see. Not disappear so much as they became much harder for me to process and understand. Their corporeal bodies completely disintegrated before my eyes, but what happened to my perceptual connection with them was slightly different. As I’ve said, I had a sort of…emotional map in my head, a kind of spatial diagram of where all these different thoughts were coming from, relative to me. Now, when a bubble burst, I would lose track of that person’s… Being, I guess… I lost the flow of thought from that location, but in its place was not NOTHING. No, it was like… well, I can hardly describe it. Where before I’d had a clear sense of individual perception, I now just had a sense of Being (as in the verb, not the noun) that wasn’t limited to a discrete location. That is, each bubble that burst produced a sort of connection on my map every other bubble burst, so that they all together created one whole that I couldn’t plot. It was almost as if this Being-ness BECAME the substrata of the dreamworld… became the surroundings and environment…and all the remaining bubbles were interfering with my perception of this totality, which radiated more and more joy and tranquility with each subsequent burst.
Though I could sense this joy, feel that it was occurring, I wasn’t privy to it. On the contrary, each burst robbed me of a comrade and constricted my universe, while the invisible Beingness kept expanding. I took solace in the thought that my bubble would eventually burst, and I would be released into this nether-ness of Peace, but my “pop” never came. I watched and felt literally billions of my companions evaporating before me, and grew sadder and sadder as my universe shrank, until it was just me in my bubble, surrounded by a wasteland of Peace. I don’t know how long I sat in this miserable state. It felt like an eternity. But waking from THIS dream was no comfort, as I’ve lost even the connectivity I’d had to the space within my bubble. I can’t shake my agitation, and I feel cut off from everything, except for the meager space inside this puny, fleshy, misshapen bubble.
(4)
No… no. I don’t… I can’t… I don’t know when I’m awake anymore. I don’t think I’m awake, I’m still dream. No? But I can see them still. I can see them just like in the eyesclosed. So how could I be awake? Huh? … What do I see? What DID I see? I still see… A… a… uh… I see everything. I mean everything looks like something… NO. No, you look like yourself. I look like myself, everything that Looks looks like itself but… I mean, I can see EVERYTHING!, like… like… Like! The word! It’s a bright blue swirl in the air! Say “Like”! A black ocean of night before my eyes and a sparkling swirl cascades into the dark! Exciting… The blue is Exciting.
Excitement is a mountain! A fiery mountain at sunrise or sunset, engulfed in the blazing alpine glow. Yes, I’m excited, I know because I can see it; the mountain—PINK GOLD Silver white… WHY? Because of the blue. Excitement because Like,…
Your Voice is a stunning Roman fountain. Haha, fountain MOUNTAIN! Yes. Yes I can see the top when you Speak, low gurgles of timbre flutter out while excess vowels, schwas and diphthongs overflow… Overflow your throat your lips and my ears and I SEE IT THE MOUNTAIN.
I… I just started seeing things like this last night. There, there… in the dark with the eyes shut. Dreaming? Dreaming. Dreaming… brown clouds. Dreams are opaque brown clouds… comfortable and deceptive… sweet. The sweet brown chocolate clouds… I see them all Now, all the clouds around the mountain…
I floated over Peace in the eyesclosed, I still am. Floated over the lavender sea of Peace, Anger the occasional whitecap on a mirrorlike lavender sea of Peace. I saw. Didn’t I? Yes I saw myself in the ocean, reflected… but not ME! How could it. I wasn’t THERE I was floating it wasn’t me it was a reflection, I wasn’t Peace. I wasn’t Peace AM NOT Peace I floated but toward the mountain. And I saw Joy as seagulls past by me hunt their aqueous prey. Diving into that mirror dodging the crests CATCHING the fish. The fish were fish. Not anythings… like pain or… I don’t know the fish were just fish. Fish flashing fuchsia. Fuchsia like blue like Like.
I landed on the mountain, resplendent. I am still landing there, I see it in your fluid voice. I land there and am hunted. I know I’m hunted but by what? What? What… wha. Hope. Hope the hunter. Hope the chaser, I flee up the Excitement. I flee but I’m playing, the whole hunt just play, ceremony before joyous sacrifice. The lion. I the lamb, Hope the lion. We run up the mountain, we play.
The lions are joyous, I glowing as I run, I run, I ran through fields up the slope, sloped fields on the pink mountain full of effervescent flowers made of Love. Flowers of Love. In all colors. All the flowers were all the colors, but never at the same time, never the same, never the usual colors. Never blue purple red green yellow, always the colors we don’t name because they glow too brightly and captivate us too much that we can’t name those brilliant magenta-violets, those rich cerulean-greens, that deep yellow-umber. And they fizz, they effervesce their Love colors through the field’s lightly-moving air and I run through, I smell all of them.
But then water. Then stones and water. No more meadows trees fields, just steep stones loose and deluge. The play is tarnished, the water Perplexion. I contemplate the water, the water, what her WHY HER? Water, flowing down, striped. Green stripes, neon flow down as the Hope pursues me up the mountain, I sweat. But no more play, just desperate, fierce desperate hunger no more play in the neon stripes. The water, is it eroding the mountain? Mud flows boulders tumble but I remember the mountain is still glowing, still pink with Wonder, still feeling the warmth of the Joy of the mountain of Excitement. But the water. It’s in your voice. Spiny, prickly green-striped water that flushes down the mountain, soaking me, soaking the lions and the fish back in the sea. It WILL soak them when it reaches them, the gulls will eat soaked FISH!
But we’re running, I’m running NOW. There’s no difference, Now, Then, eyesclosed still all doing! And now running up the mountain in the soaking wet. I reach the top. Did I?, Have I?; still reaching it, but there, looking back. The… the… the lions. The Lions. The lions are drowned they drowned, choked on the The stripes, bloated and motionless and… ITS HAPPENING NOW, THIS IS NO MEMORY! Memories are turquoise vipers, biting and writhing up my limbs… This isn’t vipers. It’s Now. It’s always. Time, time… Time is a sphere, a dull silver mirror sphere, you just stick to the endless equator but I go crosswise, travelling from pole to pole North to South while East to West. But Now the lions are drowned and I am alone. At the mountaintop the pink is gone the lions are dead Like blue fuchsia, and your fountain gurgles. And the water, stripes stop. No more water… no more no moving lions dead but me, stuck on the dark mountain, and not even some water to carry a my lifeless corpse to the sea.
