I am dead. I see the sky awhirl with dust, like the cone of air in a movie theater cut by the projector's beam. Several luminous, milky white globes are aligned in the far reaches of the sky. A long metallic stem grows out of each globe and one of them pierces all the way through my chest without my feeling anything but a great sense of euphoria.

I advance toward the globes of light, slowly sliding along the length of the stem, ascending its gentle incline. In each hand I grasp those nearest me among a chain of other men who are also climbing toward the sky, each following the rail that skewers him. The only noise to be heard is the faint squeal of steel through the flesh of our chests.

One of my immediate neighbors is Max Jacob (who, for the past year and a half or so, has been giving me poetry lessons in my waking life).

EDITOR'S NOTE

Leiris published a similar dream account in La Révolution Surréaliste #2, Jan. 1925:

My body is traversed by a cluster of invisible lines which link each point of intersection to the center of the sun. I move about unharmed among all these threads which pierce me, and every point in space breathes a new soul into me.

I'm not sure. Leiris's journal is full of dreams recurring with variations, in series months long. These two accounts fit that pattern, so I suspect they're twin dreams (or two of many) exploring interconnection. The men he's linked to may well be the Surrealist circle he'd recently entered. But that's just a guess.

SOURCE: Nights as Day, Days as Night by Michel Leiris (1961; 1987 translation by Richard Sieburth), p. 6 (steel) & XI (thread). I added title and sketch.

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