3/6
Somehow my first dream snippet was lost. The second took place by a pond in spring. A young, naked, Barbara Eden plucked some black downy feathers and tossed them to the wind. She reappeared, lying down on her back in the moss. Black feathers and down filled in all around her until she became a great black water bird like a swan. I got very little sleep thanks to Arthur and Frankie with his wand. He locked himself in the cellar dragging it behind him.
Well, it wasn’t the corn chowder! I have loads of dreams to report. The first one took place in a lodge in the country and starred Ron. I was shopping for eggs and pushing a little buggy. The women that worked there laughed at me, and I soon discovered why. There were all kinds of eggs: big, small, brown, pink, and pale green. I tried to put the long blue egg carton in my buggy, but it wouldn’t fit.
Next, I was at a lake with a boy. He had a worm at the base of his head behind his neck which caused his spinal cord to be crossed and tied like a helix.
The soundtrack began with the third dream: Air Supply’s “Sweet Dreams”. It took place in a barn store with four kittens. They all were fluffy with long hair, Persian-like. Three of them were tortoiseshell colors and were climbing up a cord like monkeys. The fourth was red, white, and blue, amazing, like a catcake.
Dream number four took place in a splendid old house. It might’ve been a boarding house; there were a lot of young women staying there. I had given a heavy-set dark-haired girl a catalog which she was so happy about that she hugged me. I think that she was planning to start a small business. I moved to a living room where a tall blonde Canadian man in a suit that looked like something that Elton John would wear was speaking to a group of musicians, all men. His coiffure had to have been a wig, it looked like Dolly Parton’s. He said, “What a house!” He asked me if I had ever seen such a house before, referring to the decor. I told him that once I was in a house with six drummers. He was not impressed.
They just kept getting better. I have six pages of scribbly notes to go on, and the fifth dream was my favorite. It starred Theresa, and I feel as if she has really visited with me. I sent out Thomas’s birthday gift yesterday, a copy of DOC that he should’ve gotten for Christmas, lost at my brother’s, since Theresa never came to pick it up. She was really acting up, the old Theresa, I knew, before life sucked the soul from her. We were shopping in an exclusive and very expensive gift shop full of glass cases, shelves, and delicate precious things. There were miniature fairy rooms, dolls, and furniture. I was thinking about asking the price of a small wooden chicken and a tiny porcelain fairy. Theresa was at a huge old-school Halloween mask rack. She wanted the Wednesday Addams mask at the top, and said, “I have an idea.” She wanted me to climb up the rack, but when I wouldn’t she started laughing and shaking the rack.
In the final dream I was with Ron in a strange dark shopping center. It wasn’t a mall or a market, something entirely different, more like Epcot Center only less glamorous. I think that my parents were around because I had a ton of left-over fried food like chicken fingers and french fries with gravy, in the biggest doggy bag ever. It was plastic, like a bag, very colorful and printed, (there were mermaids at the top), and looked like a large suitcase. I was trying to figure out how it opened at the top. There were two flaps to tear and reinsert. There were a couple of siblings, probably in their twenties, with dark hair, maybe Spanish. They were begging, sitting at a small table set with glasses of water. I said that the boy was a motherfucker. The girl was pretty and embarrassed. I told her that she wasn’t a motherfucker. Then I walked home in the dark. I passed by a crowded, lit tavern where I was talking about Shiner, out loud, to myself, before remembering that he was dead. When I got home I expected to find Ron. Instead, my ex, Paul, came out from under the stairs wearing a black band t-shirt like he wouldn’t be caught dead in. He was working in a shop. He said, “It’s me.”
It was a record night for dreams. I had been watching Grantchester when I fell asleep, but I think these were more inspired by New Castle After Dark’s Images from 1972 starring Susannah York.
The new moon meant massive dreaming for me! First, a horror: I was lying on the couch, here, watching television. An adorable tiny white lion cub, complete with a mane, jumped up on the couch with me. Then, his father, who was also white, strutted into the room followed by a white bull African elephant who gored the father and child. I cried over the bloodied cub.
Then Ron and I moved into an enormous apartment building. I had to go shopping but didn’t know where my car was parked. Ron told me that it was on the third or fifth floor of the attached parking garage. I told him about the dream with the elephant and lions. I went to the fifth floor first; there were concrete steps. There were loads of people that I had to climb over including a teenage white girl with sandy hair who was wrapped up in a handmade afghan, reading. I could not find my car and wandered over to an old-fashioned elevator decked out in red Persian rugs. I decided not to use it and went to the fifth floor. There was a room with a small court in session that I did not disturb. I passed an old organ against the wall. In a lobby was a display of gorgeous flowering aquatic plants in a large tank of sparkling water. I took a yellow pamphlet concerning them. A small girl carrying a Wendy Lawton doll in a box stopped and asked about Frankie. She said that she had a friend in Whitaker who had told her all about him and that she was from Pittsburgh. Just then a huge black and white bob tailed cat, big as a sheepdog, jumped up and gave her a warm hug. A blonde woman came out from her apartment talking about the cat. She was wearing turquoise silk Chinese capri pants with a flouncy blouse. I followed her into her apartment. It was very messy, dirty. She stood in front of a full-length mirror and applied blue gel beneath her eyes, really rubbing it in. Suddenly her face looked like a dinosaur with stripes of yellow and green colors across her nose. I told her that I liked her pants, and she said something about everybody doing tai-chi. I left her apartment and could hear the song “Me and the Devil” playing over a speaker. I went outside down a few cement steps and into the mud where there were three little dogs; one of them was called Arthur. There was an older woman out there talking about all of the dead Indians. I went back up to our large empty apartment that was painted all white and in need of a paint job. I told Ron that the place was a dump and that I couldn’t find my car.
In my first dream I was surprised that Theresa was sitting at the table. Her hair was dark, and she wore glasses. I was so happy and astounded that I played at small talk before asking her what had happened. I was about to burst into tears when Ron and Steve came in. I was trying to make coffee, but there was an overflow with the coffee maker. Steve wore dark glasses and was sitting on a couch that does not exist in this house. It might’ve been my mother’s floral couch from the old house on Donna Avenue. I was calling Steve, Scott. A young bride and groom joined us, just married. They were on a bicycle. The bride had long dark hair and wore a purple floral maxi dress that looked like something from the early seventies. She had a little veil.
Ron and I lived in a big old empty house in the second dream. He said that something was going on, and it wasn’t good. We went outside; the sky was shocking blue. There were big metal clips in the sky. That’s what we noticed first as we walked up the road with our little robot, about the size of a lap dog, who followed along. Then we saw a massive aircraft with three warheads. We turned around and headed back to the house. We were trying to be nonchalant, but I hurried the little robot along. It was red and blue and almost looked like a bowling bag. There were aliens with orange squid heads in long blue robes walking along, and the sky was filling up fast with little aircraft. I was pretty scared. When we were back inside the house, I opened up my white plastic dollhouse. I was eating some crushed crackers and dried petals that were tucked inside the dollhouse. Ron asked if I could eat them. I was trying to make us small enough that we could hide in the dollhouse.
Dana's Dreams Three Revenge of the Dream Hog
I dreamed that I had been sick or hurt, and a certain Doctor Julian had sent me to stay in a trailer with a young mulatto woman. The place was a dump, piled high with clothes, mostly. I was a good sport about it, beggars can’t be choosers. The trailer was on the wrong side of the tracks in town. I don’t want the first dream of the book to be a cliche, because it was not. The woman was friendly enough and had friends. The first visitor was a little black man with a long opium pipe. The pipe looked ancient, dried old wood like the bottom of an old puddle. The woman brought out a big glass water bong and wanted to share, but I told her that I was sick and should not. The second guest was a smallish sort of Bigfoot, maybe more of a swamp monster with long dark hair. He didn’t stay long. The third guest was an old high yellow black woman with long grizzled white hair who reminded me of Mama Odie from The Princess & the Frog. She wasn’t blind, but she had the air of magic. She was complaining that my bunk was piled high with the girl’s wardrobe. I could see some black and white sheets and a thin mattress, but the girl said that there was no bed beneath the pile. The elder said that Dr. Julian was going to have to do something about it. The girl went out, and the front screen door kept falling off the hinges. I wanted to lock the door. There was some sort of lock. I couldn’t even keep it on the hinges. Arthur woke me early. Welcome to Dana’s Dreams Four, I suspect it’s going to be a long one.
5/23
I had a couple of strange and wonderful dreams this evening. First, my brother and I were ghost hunting with Dame Darcy. We were driving in a car when Darcy pranked Glenn into thinking that he pissed himself. It was all good fun, but Glenn was salty and sabotaged our ghost hunt afterwards saying we were frauds. This dream felt so real that I did not believe it was a dream until after I had woken up.
The second dream began in a college dormitory. I lived in a small room with a childhood friend. The left side of the room had pink and brown plush carpeting, the right was pink and white candied marble. There were some visitors down the hall, and I was supposed to go outside and smoke a cigarette with one of the strange fellows. I had a gold box of Benson and Hedges cigarettes. But, I was waylaid because the long sliding door to our room had fallen off track, and I could not get it back on. My friend Brea, from school, tried to help but couldn’t. This is when my new boyfriend, Eric, showed up. He was a handsome white guy with sandy colored hair. I was leaving with him, but somehow he had disappeared on the staircase. Only his clothes and a bag were found. I was frantically looking for him when I ran into Daddy and my old neighbors, the Keilers, in a lush green yard that was meticulously kept like a park. By now Eric had caught up with us, and I was very relieved. He told me that he had to switch clothes with Brea. Mrs. Keiler, Gerri, was telling me how she had seen Fancy’s grave, that it was marked with white chalk just as Mummy had said. Fancy was a black cocker spaniel terrier mix we got when I was in junior high. Now I was wondering where Hoagie, our childhood dog, a collie and golden retriever mix, was buried. I was very distressed that I could not remember. Was he Up Camp? At Grandma’s? Anyway, Gerri told Eric that he was very lucky to have me. Then Eric introduced me to his cat, a silver tabby named Victor, I think. A man came after Eric and arrested him. We were separated, and he took him to jail with a bunch of naked queers. The guard also had another silver tabby cat. When the two of them were alone Eric overpowered the prison guard and had him on the ground. Victor came and started sucking on the guard’s cat. The cat’s foot shrivelled up as if it had been freeze dried or mummified, all black, curled, and crisp. Victor now morphed into a tiny new kitten and wore a yellow flower around his neck. Eric took him and hid him under some brambles, and we were reunited for a spell. The prison guards were after us, shooting at us. We dove into a dark river and when we came up for air we had been transformed into two other bodies. I was Latin and Eric had become a strong black man with strange eyes. I told Eric that this wasn’t me, but he assured me that I was myself saying, “It is!”. We floated on some branches until we arrived at a complex. When we got to the black man’s home his family was terrified, knowing that it wasn’t really him but a body snatcher. Like my dorm room, they also had a Japanese sliding door. I asked Eric about Victor, and he told me that he would find us.
