World Dream Bank: Sorb Truce

World Dream Bank home - add a dream - newest - art gallery - sampler - dreams by title, subject, author, date, places, names Thumbnail sketch of a dream figure by Wayan; humanoid with pointed ears, slanting brows, greenish hair, yellow slit eyes, and a small radar dish on a stalk growing from the forehead.

Thumbnail sketch of a dream figure by Wayan; humanoid with pointed ears, slanting brows, greenish hair, yellow slit eyes, and a small radar dish on a stalk growing from the forehead.

Sorb Truce

dreamed 2008/9/1 by Wayan.

Deep violet sky. A dry-grass plain.
A few scattered walkers, each alone--
or so they seem.
But these folk can absorb your mind,
sip your skills and turn your I
to their own.
So each lone figure on the prairie
rules a humanoid bestiary
caged in bone.
Their power's in an organ called a sorb
rising on a stalk above the brow, like
a crab's eye-orb
but tipped with Venus-trap or anglerfish-lure.
If it aims at you, dear fly, beware!
Best keep far.
A Sorb girl nears me. I yell "I'm foreign!
Not here to fight!" She smiles in scorn,
aims her organ.
I lack a dish but somehow counterpush--
will my will block hers? And to my shock
I can--with pain.
I just want to bind her assault on me,
yet can I stay back if she sorbs Sorbs?
It is their way.
If I blunted her claws, would she be safe?
Won't other Sorbs see her as prey if she's
lost her juice?
And you can't be half-free! I gulp and say:
"I'll unbind you fully. Let's just
agree on truce!
Leave my mind alone, and I'll leave yours!"
Walk side by side, no mental leash? To her,
a mad mystery.
Among the rocks, more Sorbs. I cry my truce
in the simplest slogan I can frame:
"Freedom, not mastery."
For I just want to wander in gold sun.
Hike red crags and canyons, shouting
peace at each one.
I make some inroads, too: slowly truce becomes
understood if rare; people now (alert, aware)
convene for fun!
No choice before, but now they know that war
could be forgone. I think "Not full peace, but
I did some good!
A ceasefire in sorb hell." I wake up proud.
Hard shamanic work (some pay would help):
the best I could.

Head with pointed ears, slanting brows, greenish hair, yellow slit eyes, and a small radar dish on a stalk growing from the forehead. Dream sketch by Wayan; click to enlarge.

NOTES

Sorbs: from A Voyage To Arcturus by David Lindsay, a very Blakean book of a pilgrim in a bizarre world, changing his body with each new day, trying on ways of life like clothes. Harold Bloom's Flight to Lucifer is a Lindsay rip-off (oh, sorry, an uncredited tribute.)
Desert, possession, cruelty, rebellion not just Lindsay's book! I also reread William Blake's poem "The Mental Traveler" today--a bizarre symbolic parable set in a desert where enslaved kids grow up to enslave their enslavers. I've never been sure if it's about the evolution of a psyche ruled by a different force at each stage, or of a soul through multiple lifetimes, or of personality-types shaped by societies in different stages of development. But it always felt circular, tormented--tearing at the chains of the past but never really breaking free. My dream rebelled against Blake's pessimism!
Freedom, not mastery: the first aliens David Lindsay introduces us to are sort of Buddhist/Hindu/Gandhians: a carefully harmless people. Hippies! Lindsay dismisses them as moral children unaware they serve the devil; he says even the dog-eat-dog sorbs know more. My dream disagrees: sees capitalists (oh, sorry, sorbs) as so stuck in predation's tar-pit they can't crawl out on their own.
Who are the Sorbs?
1. Exploitive parts of me? Or at least cynical parts of me--as a kid, I was shunned and beaten up in school, so I do assume lots of people are mean. The dream could be trying to heal those scars. But... many of my symbolic-looking dreams later manifest literally, so I'm slow to assume these Sorbs are only symbols of psychological or social forces a la Blake or Lindsay...
2. What if it's literal? Maybe I really was just a shaman doing volunteer work, saving lives on a dry world with a little gold sun.
3. Old World people under grim regimes? Sorb societies fill the news. Non-democracies full of sectarian war and oppression. Was it Adam Smith who called it "the war of all against all"? Or what if the Sorbs are...
4. The ids of the Bush Administration, acting out their lovely neocon vision... Nah, no way! The desert of their dreams has oil.
This is Dreamverse #20. Every day, a dream-poem--usually. But a few nights back I had SIX vivid dreams in one night. Whew! This is the third and last one I'll present as a Dreamverse (the others are #18, Mare-Kin Graveyard, and #19, Time-Bubble). Too busy for my own good! From now on it's one a week.

LISTS AND LINKS: other worlds - aliens - loners - cannibalism - multiple personalities - repression - freedom and slavery - deserts and oases - pacifism - politics - compassion, helping and giving - an even more effective do-gooder: Clairity in Easter Healing - I wasn't joking about psychic dreams - shamanism - responsibility - dream poems in general - pencil dream-art - portraits - William Blake - the same night: Ancient Mare-Kin Graveyard and Time-Bubble - Dreamverses project - the next Dreamverse, Incest Improv

World Dream Bank homepage - Art gallery - New stuff - Introductory sampler, best dreams, best art - On dreamwork - Books
Indexes: Subject - Author - Date - Names - Places - Art media/styles
Titles: A - B - C - D - E - F - G - H - IJ - KL - M - NO - PQ - R - Sa-Sk - Sl-Sz - T - UV - WXYZ
Email: wdreamb@yahoo.com - Catalog of art, books, CDs - Behind the Curtain: FAQs, bio, site map - Kindred sites