Two Planes
Dreamed c. 1977 by Ed Emshwiller
Several years ago I had this dream. It impressed me enough at the time for me to still have a strong sense about it. It was an "ah ha! so that's what it's all about!" kind of dream.
I am in a kind of limbo. Before/below me at a distance of a few feet is a perfectly smooth, transparent plane extending off in all directions infinitely. It is covered with a rich texture of crisp black calligraphy on the order of a Mark Tobey painting, but with characters somewhat more like pictographs or an unknown alphabet.I can see through that plane in the spaces between the marks. Behind it at an unknown distance is another plane parallel to the first. This second plane may be just a few feet beyond or it may be miles away. I cannot tell. The surface is not definite. It is a mottled brown-grey with subtle shadings of other colors randomly shifting. I am uncertain whether it is liquid, gaseous, or what. But I know it is deep, heavy. It moves past from my lower left to upper right, a vast oceanic river. It is awesome, enormous, unstoppable. It has the scale that calls for a rumbling roar, a Niagara. It is silent.
I understand what I see. The transparent plane with markings is logical, intellectual, verbal thought. The vast moving background is the unconscious. The two planes are the contents of the two hemispheres of the brain.
I understand now.
And I know I am dreaming.
SOURCE: Dreamworks: an Interdisciplinary Quarterly (v.1, no.1, spring 1980, p.69)
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