Gee, I wonder what provoked this one?
I stood at the podium under the stage lighting looking out into a dark expanse, probably filled with faces, but I couldn't make them out. The next time I looked up from my paper shuffling, the auditorium was a bar or cafe, with railroad-style rooms, two or three of them, maybe like the Ear Inn. I shuffled some more, made some humming, hawing remarks to smattered laughter. I found what I thought was
Down Spooky, a dark-covered thin book, and opened it, flipping through to find a poem with which to begin. But it turned out to be an anthology I wasn't in. I stopped on a page containing a poem by _______ (an exciting find, if puzzling in the context, though now I can't remember whose it was). More shuffling. Finally I found
For Girls and thought, well that's fine, I'll start with those. But I opened to the first poem and the letters swam around on the page. I attempted to recite from memory and made it through the first three poems
pretending to read, concealing my trouble with the swimming pages, but by the fourth poem couldn't go on. I looked up to address a confession to the audience, which I spoke aloud. It woke us both, but I'd already forgotten it. I lay awake for 2 hours or so.
Labels: dreams
When anxiety attacks
I knew something was wrong when I opened the door. The guy in the UPS uniform was somebody I used to know, somebody I didn't particularly like. He didn't seem to recognize me back though, handed me the fat clipboard and stylus to sign, turned, walked back to the truck by the curb.
I looked down at the box on the porch. I can't remember if I brought it inside or opened it right there.
They looked fine, at first. Then I picked one up and opened it.
My vision swam. Or I just couldn't read for a second. Too nervous? No. The book was full of INCOMPREHENSIBLE POEMS BY SOME OTHER POET!
Then I woke up.
Labels: dreams
Dream animals
Are all of creatures, or of creatures who turn into and out of people.
One night I opened closet after closet, all with cats inside, sleeping on the shelves. Almost identical, mostly black. The game was to indentify the real cat. When he looked at me, I always knew.
Near the end, a cat-furred goatlike creature, but lambsized. Creamy white, with a tannish head and pink stripes along his ears and a pink band around his belly. He made a sound I cannot transcribe.
Last night: bears. Or rather, one black bear.
At first a very fat robin (seen lots of these in waking days recently, orangey-red chests and very round) sat on a fence chirruping. A small bear, to robin-scale, popped in beside him dancing around. Then he got big and ate the bird. Then he stalked the yard and grabbed a man through a plate glass window. I had just said to the man, be careful he's behind you out the window.
I knew the man, but haven't spoken to him in years, since he was mostly a boy.
Luckily, a bear would not actually crash through a plate glass window to eat a man. Nor would he bother to eat a fat robin.
What a relief.
Labels: dreams
