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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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