in one, i was in some house in a colder climate (i could see the mountains outside covered in pines, and an expansive but cold sky). the house i was in was neglected... there were these- not exactly roaches, but more like these sort of bugs that invaded my aquaponics system, these wet roly-poly bugs- crawling all over the place on the wooden floors. and kate, one of my fellow teachers, kept discovering reasons for the infestation; like she found this bunch of uneaten food down one of the drains or something...
...
in another more disturbing dream...
my car, the blue bomber, was in some canal, with other cars. i suppose there was some flood or something. i needed papers from it. i suppose i had realized that i was taking courses over at williams, on wednesdays or tuesdays or something, but in my business, they had become lesser priorities and as a result, i had completely neglected them; there were finals coming up that i had to check on and study for. my papers, or i hoped, some of them, were in the car. only trouble was was the car was in the middle of this canal of water. so i leapt from the sidewalk onto my car (there was a bit of an audience)... i realized that if i opened up anything (my door) that the water would flood into the car (it was halfway up the side of the car). so i crawled around the car like a monkey... the car, disturbed by my presence on it, began to drift... there were deeper holes in the ground that threatened to pull the car under, and i didn't want that to happen... i avoided them, but suddenly the car tumbled down this ledge, and fell on its back side... and then tumbled until it was right side up again... somehow that dream faded into the next one, which also looked at things from the perspective of water...
...
i was like 007 or something in this large mansion of death. there were zombies everywhere, red with blood, their faces unrecognizable, some of them spewing out their guts... the white marble of the mansion was red with gore and blood. there was a sort of venetian moat travelling through the center of the mansion. somehow my view of everything was from this moat, which was occupied by some monstrous crocodile... the crocodile was being fed by the body parts raining down from above... when i found myself again, i was on the underside of a bridge, one of the very few places that were still somewhat clean. i was clinging onto it for dear life... there was some control panel on the underside of the bridge which i seemed to be messing with... however, i was discovered by some zombie...
...
i was in the mansion itself. there was still the sense of death, or at least, that i was doomed, a prisoner. but there were no zombies visible. only different agents of some cruel man. these agents looked swarthy, like from some south asian country, malaysia, singapore, vietnam... i wasn't sure. but they had these smiles that communicated that they would very much like to kill me... i can't remember the details, but somehow i made my escape, ran as fast as i could down a corridor outside... and i could see their smiles, relaxed and assured as though they knew my escape was entirely impossible...
i somehow got into the streets, where there were more people. there were prostitutes, unattractive, malnourished, waiting around some structure like a bus stop... i was caught, and as i was being dragged on the ground by the agents, i saw a band of mendicant monks dressed in yellow (although it was clear that they had abandoned their religiosity long ago). there was a midget monk with a japanese face. he said "kiru" (cut) and wielded an ugly little knife. i spoke to him: "nihonjin?" (japanese?) and he nodded yes, before i continued to be dragged away...
...
my perspective seemed to shift, and i was no longer the person being dragged. instead, i was a young spritely girl jumping over the crowds, on structures and statues that lined the orange-lighted streets... at one point, it seemed that i was on some sort of pyramid like structure, with stairs going up into the night sky. a woman and her child beside me mentioned something about jesus christ in korean, about how that would save me, but even in the dream, i kind of scoffed at that, and simply made my way up and beyond... i kept doing this and doing this, until...
i was in the alcove of some museum of history. there were various historical structures lining both sides of the entrance alcove. i had been clamboring on top of the structures, gradually making my way to the entrance. there was a girl beside me. i realized that something was off in the order of the statues, off in the sense that it was different from when i had passed this way before (apparently, i had gone on this before). i had remembered there was a structure (with a bird head) that was particularly unstable. there had been an order at the end of the sequence, something like: western western eastern... and it was different now.
- i also had the insight- not sure if it was when i was in the museum or before- that some civilizations just had too much "culture." the statues were so ornate as to be unrecognizable and- messy. and i wondered if some cultures were like people, who wearied of the accumulation of ideas and things- most of them useless and meaningless- and if cultures ever wanted to just forget and begin again, clean of the past...
anyway, i had a debate with the girl and the curator of the museum who showed up... they doubted whether anything was wrong with the sequence. but the curator started talking about how they wanted to sequence the pieces by "the human heart." and she started speaking with a dramatic flourish (in french), something about the progression of "liberte!" and i countered that it should simply be ordered by history...
and that was it. that was all i could remember...
*****
i am still having a hard time writing. i think the part of the dream about weary cultures is related to me, to my weariness of writing this useless avalanche of a story in my head. why can't i just write little pieces, to match my short asthmatic breath?
*****
i've had a kind of epiphany. i really have been trying to work out the "plot" of this convoluted story i'd started to write called "kappa noodle." i had considered using a strategy of writing different plot points on notecards, and "connecting" them on a corkboard (similar to what detectives always do when they are trying to hunt a serial killer)... the trouble was that i would start writing a notecard, and then get pulled in- i would attempt to answer a question about a character, say, motivation, and then get tangled in a thousand other questions... it really felt like - (and i just came from this) - pulling a bundle of vines that are smothering up a tree... everything wraps around everything else...
when i look at the dream, at least some parts of it... i think that the structures represent the plot points. the girl jumping over them is the prospective reader (or maybe the writer, planning things out). the comment about ditching the accumulation of culture is perhaps a part of myself, that is tired of trying to work out this gordian knot, and would just like a clean break from it all... and the discussion with the museum curator represents a kind of debate within me; on the one hand, of maintaining "historicity" (which in this context relates to logical sequencing), versus the progression of the "human heart" (which in this context means following the significance, the feeling, the drama - or, alternatively, of just going by feel, not by logic). the exclamation of "liberte" represents the feeling of freedom promised by that perspective...
at least, that's what i THINK is being said.
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