naked dreams

not last night, but
the night before
i had a complicated dream
which ended
with sex at the crossroads
it was rather explicit, except
for the characters
they seemed to be from the middle ages
and
i think they were both virgins
it seemed
kinda akward
maybe i've forgotten how

last night
well, it was complicated
there was this girl
who used to work for me
she reminded me of me
(in some ways)
and i always thought of her as my kid
(but she never wrote or called)
and recently she contacted me
(made me really happy)
so she was in this dream
and i didn't exactly work there
but i had ordered a new fixture
(to replace a damaged one)
when it came
it was damaged
and the new manager was asking me:
did you want me to have three fixtures for christmas
no, i say
because then nothing will match the schematic
this is a two

i remember putting my hands on the desk
and sliding into it
there was something sexual about it
and the restroom had swinging doors
like an old west saloon
and lavender toilet paper
(remember colored toilet paper from the 70s)
and when i came out of the bathroom
i was naked
and so was the girl
but that was strangely
or maybe not strangely
non-sexual
she looked slightly like a fairy or pixie
(well, she always did in her glitter makeup)
and we talked
and i noticed
that she was shapely
in nice ways
but i didn't notice like that

then we said goodbye
i walked out into a gymnasium-type-room
there were hallways, i went through hallways
and it was something about football
(i think)
something was being televised
(interviews maybe)
and it was chaotic
people everywhere
a really tall man
ran into me
and he said:
you might want to put on some clothes
yeah, i said, i might at that
so i headed back to where my clothes were
but as i went through the doors
there was a banner, and it said:
4 beyond eastern
3 beyond central
beyond what
i don't know
maybe it's some sort of clue
to who will win the superbowl
saints vs. colts
if so
then you heard it first here

they are still bothering me

the girl in the mirror has to be me, right
i mean that seems obvious
but she's horrifying
so does that mean
some sort of fear of aging, which, i mean, i have
and sort of suddenly, it feels like
all this mortality angst
and the childhood trauma reference
am i trying to analyse myself even while i sleep
how creepy and boring is that
and i am so over telling myself crap about childhood trauma
in any form
i have always been terrified of craziness
afraid of ending up in a mental hospital
so maybe that's what this is all about
fear that i'm really crazy

the baby thing
i could interpret different ways
i mean, what's the important part
i have always had cats
and, when my old cat died i wasn't going to get another one
but i ended up walking by the vet
and there was a cage of kittens in the window
and it's hard to resist them, if your a cat person
there were people there looking at the kitties
as i walked up to the cage
this little cat with enormous feet and ears
he ran up to me, like:
mommy mommy finally you're here
and that was an intense moment for me
it might sound silly
but i'd been more emotionally wrecked by the loss
of that cat than by anything human since i was a kid
he loved me, he would sit on my feet, and
he hadn't even started out as my cat
cats always choose you
it's one thing i like so much about cats, over dogs
a dog feels like a responsibility i would be taking on
something to walk and bathe and be responsible to
a cat claims you and you just have to work it out

and i have always kind of thought about kids that way
i never wanted to do what my parents did to me to anyone else
and when i went through my biological clock thing
around 30ish
the guy didn't want kids
but rather than just saying that
he added on: you are not emotionally mature enough to have kids
which was the one thing he could have said that, well, worked
because it played into my fears
and it redirected
don't leave him and go find someone to have children with
because you would just cripple and ruin any child
i never wanted that responsibility
but if i had ever just gotten pregnant
it would have been like a kitten
it would have just chosen me, somehow
and i would have made it work somehow

or maybe
it is really a part of myself
breaking free of something
and choosing me
and what would it mean
if i saw myself as the one who could love me best
if i knew it wouldn't be that easy
all the people who would think
i belonged to them, somehow
that my dreams are about them

so, see, maybe i'm a whole lot more screwed up
than i thought i was
maybe i've said: don't look at me
with my life
and never been my own cat
does that make any sense

anyway
it's bothering me

i had 2 dreams that kind of disturbed me

in the first
there was a mirror
in my childhood bedroom
a really large mirror
i couldn't avoid it
that was a problem
there was a demon
(ghost or something)
in the mirror
and it upset me to look at it
and the girl in the mirror would laugh:
don't look at me, don't look at me
it evidently gave her great delight that i couldn't avoid her
but it creeped me out and depressed me
and then there were people
i'm not sure who they were
but in the dream they were family
and they kept bringing up the ghost girl
just for the sake of upsetting me
and then
there was speculation about the trauma
childhood trauma
which i must be projecting
into the mirror
but it wasn't like a nightmare
i didn't wake up upset
and i'm not feeling bad about myself at all
at least i don't think i am

in the other
i was trying to get ready
i had someplace to be like school or work or somewhere
but i wasn't really all that enthusiastic
and whenever i'd try to get ready
there was always someone using the shower
so i was getting progressively later
and then
a toddler popped into my room
it was someone else's kid
but it knew me
and it liked me better than it's parents
and somehow it was a mutant or something and had
the ability to teleport or whatever
so, like a kitten will, it had adopted me
but i knew it wasn't that simple
that the mother would think i had kidnapped it
so i found myself in a quandary
and i wasn't leaving the house that day, it seemed

even if you don't read them sometimes i need to write them

i had this dream
well, really
i've had several of them
where the themes are all switched around
and i don't know what they mean
and i want to talk about them

in one
i'm in a house
and it has
across from the kitchen
another kitchen all glass walls
like a peninsula jutting out from the house
and the first bedroom i go into
the ceiling is open
and above
things are dangling
and bouncing
and moving
around
and
there are other bedrooms
and all of them are different
and all of them are spellbinding, maybe
as i walk inside it becomes a world apart
and i go to find the bathroom
and it is papered in blue and yellow silk
it has stalls like a public necessary
but they are newly pressed metal gleaming blue
i walk through and out a door on the opposite wall
into a large hotel
and then i have a hard time finding my way back
once i do i go from room to room
locking doors
trying to separate my home from the hotel

in another
i go to a movie theater
i am seeing a film
an old film
something from my past
it is quite a well known film, i guess
i am taking notes
maybe i am writing a paper about it
it's dark
so i'm having trouble seeing the paper
then the film stops
maybe there is a problem with the projector
the house lights come up just a little
enough that i can now see the paper i'm writing on
i have written partially on lines 1 and 2
then line 3 starts out normally and then
curves up to fill the space from 1 and 2
then i look at the rest of the paper
it already has writing all over it
some ballpoint pen ink
some felt tip pen heavy and bleeding through
and then there are illustrations
black and white
pen and ink
they don't look like anything i've ever done
but all of it i recognize
and it's all kind of beautiful
some of the pages are thin
like the width of a newspaper or magazine column
and i look around me
people are milling around
waiting for the film to start again
and i'm in the balcony
and i'm starting to wake up
and i know this means something
so i'm trying desperately to remember
what it is that i recognize
is it something from a journal
what was the film
i was writing about it
what did i write
something about kevin bacon
no that's gotta be a joke my mind is now telling me
something about the cinematographer
his name was janec or something like that

some of this i think i maybe get
the stuff above my head in the bed
i think that's my thoughts and memories, dreams
whatever, my imagination

the beautiful bathroom
feels like a psychological victory somehow
but i don't feel any saner

the movie theater dream
i had that saturday night
and it feels like it wants to be telling me
more that just:
change the script or overwrite it or something dumb like that
which might be a standard sort of dream analysis
i think i was telling myself something much more complex
would i have still been able to read the writing
if i had over-written
is it good that the lights came up
why was no one irritated that projection stopped
is it significant that it was in the balcony
what was up with the drawings

i just don't know

dreams lately

i haven't posted any
i have had some
it's been hard for me to remember

there was the horse
swimming across the lake

there have been
about a billion
(i'm exaggerating)
permutations
of coffee shops

last night
i dreamed
about a plate
i had made sausages
from exotic meats
with a chicken sauce
that
to be honest
didn't taste quite right
it tasted sweet somehow
but the food was only and afterthought, really

the plate
the plate was painted
i had painted it
it was the sea
at sea
whatever
and there was
a yellow butterfly
and a green snake in or on the water
and a line
the line took forever to paint
i guess it was a small brush
but the meditative quality of the thing
like the paint absorbed quickly into the plate
painting
wet on wet
wet on dry
black
like sumi ink
spilling into the butterfly
making it bolder
highlighting the S shape of the snake
and below the line
i wrote something
something that was for another
something important
but i can't remember what

but i need the plate
and it was still covered with food
the sausages in buns like hot dogs
so i washed the plate
and almost all the color washed away
now the plate was carved
mostly white
with tiny rainbow colored dashes
where the paint had permeated the ceramic
and i thought
well really
maybe it's better

and i went to a window counter
to register for a photography class
behind the counter was a young indian man
(india indian)
and he told me that his company
was the one that set up the rooms
at this particular continuing education center
and so he'd fix it where i didn't need to pay
and i wasn't sure
i was comfortable with that
but i wasn't sure what to do about it