THAT DAY

I'm reading Havelock Ellis's "The World of Dreams." For a famous sexologist he's amazingly dull. And wrong: he claims color is rare in dreams and lucid dreams are impossible--all those reports are just mistaken. Yeah, right.

Skeptical of Freud's elaborate dream-theories, Ellis looks for simple things: indigestion, cold feet. But he also thinks puns and idea-associations shape a dream's structure, and the bewildered dreamer then strains to put a normal face on these chimeras. Example: Hell Hall. Yet the hell/hall pun doesn't explain that dream's mood or theme or point. His other examples seem reductionist too; I keep thinking "Come on, that dream's a clever staging of an idea with a real message for the dreamer; why do you dismiss it as mechanical?"

Well, now I know what Ellis thinks of dreams, and what I think of what Ellis thinks of dreams. But what do my dreams think?

THAT NIGHT...

1: Frost can Cut

I'm in my mom's neighborhood, but the house is different. My dad's alive again, here with my mom. I get up early morning to find frost edging the leaves in white, and a light snow is falling. My dad warns "Careful if you have to work outside; those edges can be so sharp they'll cut your hands."

• Caution, hands: I'm wiring security lights tomorrow--120 volts can kill.
• My father, hands: A Havelock Ellis pun! Pa says careful or you'll wound your paw! Sound strained? Read on! My other dreams tonight crawl with Havelockian wordplay. One has a wounded lion, another a wounded foot--the fable of Androcles and the lion! This giveth me paws.
• ACTION: Caution! Wear gloves.

2: Gilt re-wounds my Sole

Need to pee. Get up and head for the bathroom. Feel my way in the dark--no need for light. I've lived here a long time in this maze of little rooms with wood-panel walls. My bedroom's on the ground floor. I'm not even sure there is an upper floor, though most houses here have two or more, and a six-floor apartment towers looms just southeast.

Pee, then slip into the kitchen (south end of the hall), drink a cup of water, head back toward bed.

Near my door, someone calls my name down a long hall to the right. My friend Mike's voice. Oh, right, he & his wife Nic live here too. I don't answer. I just want to sleep. Deal with whatever it is in the morning...

Slip into my room. My bed's just a pad on the carpeted floor. Leaning on my pillow is a big brown paper bag from my housemate Lily, full of Christmas ornaments. I'm annoyed because it's dusty--been in the garage for years--and the shag rug is already hard on my allergies. I need a real bed, I think, not a pad on the rug.

Lift the bag off the bed... and it spills! Tiny shiny ornaments swarm over my bed. No, they're beads on my bed really--they lack holes or hooks--just perfect spheres a centimeter wide, in lurid metallic colors. Even smaller gilt stars and glitter. Sharp. Ow! Stepped on one.

Clean up, grumbling. Foot surprisingly sore. Those stars aren't needle-sharp, what's wrong? I sit and check my sole. The ball of my foot has a healing scabbed-over wound--but the gilt star tore a third of the scab loose! Still bloody and raw beneath. Damn. If it hadn't torn, in a day or two it'd just be a scar. Now, who know's how long? A setback for my sole.

• Bed/bead, sole/soul, gilt/guilt, star/scar: again my dreams try on Havelock Ellis's theory of word-association to see how it feels! Playful. Though it plays a bit rough. Ow! Gilt in my sole!
• Ornaments: their brilliant colors mock Ellis's claim that dreams always lack color.
• Lily: a real housemate of mine who can be a bit invasive--once I dreamed Lily was a lioness invading my bedroom. And notice what my next dream is, below!
• Healing scar reopened: I just got some vaccines. They triggered nightsweats and headaches--an old recurring fever.
• Sole = soul: I think this dream argues my illness is from soul-trauma--probably from breaking up with Emily and Cheryl. But the dream also says I'm slowly HEALING--it's not progressive or chronic. This pain's just a setback.
• Star, glitter: Raven, my last girlfriend before Emily and Cheryl, loved glitter and stars. The dream's confirming the wound is around love and sex--guilt, shyness or just feeling I'm unlovable
• ACTION: 1: cheer up--my emotional scars are healing! Just a setback. 2: Clean and dust, it'll help.

3: Lioness Eats Drumstick!

There's a lioness in my bedroom. Not my waking-world bedroom, nor the previous bedroom--now it's a big living room with a long sofa. She's friendly and relaxed, but I'm unsure if the lioness is wild or tame, so I'm cautious about petting her.

The lioness has a strange urge to eat a drumstick. No, not the kind you think, the kind that'd make sense--the musical kind, a round stick nearly half a meter long and over a centimeter thick.

The strange thing about this pun is that I'm deaf to it in the dream, because I think of the thing--despite its size and knob--as a CHOPstick!

The lioness gnaws and gnaws and finally swallows it. Bad idea. Soon clearly feels distress. Moans. And her fur looks wrong--dry and scruffy, as if she has longer-standing problems. Bad diet? Vitamin A shortage, not enough fat?

I pet her, barely touching her fur, and "I'm sorry." But I can't call the vet, it's 3 AM. And the truth is, I may lock her out of my bedroom so I feel safe and get some sleep, so I can take her to the vet in the morning--if she lives that long. I can't pull out that chopstick.

I mean drumstick.

• Lioness:
  1. I saw both Emily and Cheryl as very feline, so the lioness evokes my romantic entanglement with them.
  2. The last dream-pioneer I read, Anna Kingsford, often dreamt of lions: one blocked a difficult path she wanted to follow (med school); one was a reincarnated sage; and a sorceror who spell-bound a woman he wanted ("Thought bamboozling Intuition" was Anna's interpretation) fathered a pride of lions with human eyes.
• Ate, sick: I got multiple inoculations (predisposing me to inflammation) and then ate a late dinner (bad for me), Together they provoked this flare-up.
• Drumstick: again my dreams play with Havelock Ellis's ideas of word-association. But they use it for my dreaming's native goals--here, diagnosis of health and relationships. Cheryl had a slow-growing throat obstruction. The dream hints she caused that health problem for reasons unknown.
• Dry fur, long-standing fat shortage? Not true of Cheryl or Emily, but true of me--I have dry skin & brittle hair--trouble absorbing fats.
• Can't fix the problem, want to lock her out to protect myself: I dread the farewell dinner Cheryl proposed. Her temper's uncertain; she snaps.
• ACTION: Either say no, or if I'm well enough to go, be prepared to leave if her claws come out. I'm in no condition for a fight.

So anxious I wake! A little sweaty, puffy, hot, achy: an attack of my mystery virus (or whatever it is). Just lie there sick a while, hoping I'll fall back asleep. 3:30 AM. I give up, get up, get water, aspirin. Write dreams. Hours before I can get back to sleep...

4: Bus Crash--Not!

Some kind of bus accident outside? I hear yelling and when I look out, a bus is skewed across the mouth of our street, blocking our driveway, nosed up against the stop sign. Yet there's no evidence any vehicles collided. Must have swerved to miss someone, and hit the sign.

Two guys are yelling and wrestling--whatever happened, a lotta blame goin' on! Smaller trucks have stopped--and an earthmover or backhoe. A big mess blocking traffic...

• Bus skewed to a halt blocking our driveway, nosed into stopsign: when I get up to write my dreams, I open my blinds and find it's true. A bus IS stalled outside in that position, plus a Muni car and two small Muni trucks. It's not quite as bad as my dream--the guys are arguing pretty hotly, but not fistfighting; and there's no construction equipment. But still...
• At first I figure I must have picked up what was happening subliminally; but my soundproofed windows block even loud noise--and I'm 25' up, and my bed's way back from the street. So I ask my housemate Christopher "What happened with that bus?" assuming a loud collision or argument happened earlier while I was still dreaming. He says "what bus?" Though he lives downstairs right by the crash and sleeps right by his window, even he never heard or saw a thing! And even if I heard them yelling, how'd I see that bus, skewed at that weird angle?
• ESP? not unusual in my dreams. I think the point is simple: "remember you sense real stuff, so take the warnings in the other dreams seriously."
• ACTION 1: Take it easy. Prone to inflammation. Don't overdo it and lengthen this relapse.
• ACTION 2: Don't let Havelock Ellis bullshit me into thinking dreams are stupid, colorless, reflexive, mere indigestion...

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