Tag Archives: dream sequence

My Fever Dream About Fever Dreams

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My fever dream about fever dreams begins with a man rising out of the East River and approaching the shore like MacArthur’s return to the Philippines. He strides with certainty onto the island and into a hotel. He proceeds to rise up through the ceiling and crushes everything around until the space metamorphises into a ballroom.

The music blossoms – for this appears to be a music video fever dream – into a kind of Indian techno. The room is filled with spectacular light and joyous people. It pulls back to the dreamer – me – trying to embrace and share that vision with others, waking, wandering out into the night, telling others, old friends, strangers, students, even casting them, promising roles, searching out the exact location for each scene. Everyone is inspired and encouraging. This really could be something.

He – I – cannot use my phone and then pee into the front engine of a car, sure signs that this is still a dream, not as fevered, but soldier on, trying to remember all of the details of the genesis and come up through the layers, less feverish now, and awake, holding on to the key moments. This is the thing that will reach others, to you. You will understand me now. And so I write all of it down.

Pink Soda Dance

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Hands came over my face, a sharp young woman in sunglasses and nothing of a dress. She pretended it was an accident but demanded that I get out of the way so that she and her friends could post a video.

She feigned shock when I told her that she was being rude. They passed out the drinks, mostly pink soda, and danced, the last one in a blue head band, a feather tied to that, her face pressed close to a wall, near a screwed-down pipe.

I had to get a picture, especially with the ocean and trees in the distance, but was locked out of my phone and had to resort to AI.

Bequeathed Baby

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Winds came hard from the east, carrying my ex to the sands she loved and an urn, a bequeathment from her father, now chipped, his old apartment full of former students.

The water flooded up into a pool, the students playing and spitting, little to say, the phone – the phone again! – half burned in the muddy sand, unable to grip, to move back, even with the kids trying to throw rocks, thinking he might never come back, and then having to go to the bathroom, always that.

He was a baby. He wanted everything for himself and then none of it, vanishing into nothing. And not even that.

Needing to Wake

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Turning a playing card over and over, the same thing on both sides…unable to open your phone, the wrong password, wrong fingers too.

Opening the door, seeing your partner half dressed with a stranger, knowing it would be like that, feeling sick and afraid.

The climactic end to a film oozing down from the floors above, the passage getting narrower and narrower until you can’t find the right door and are on an elevator that twists sideways and stops on an impossibly high floor, everything glass all around.

The terror digs deep, and all you have to do is wake.

Brian Greene: Telling Stories as Part of Evolution

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Brian Greene’s latest book Until the End of Time searches for meaning in our universe by connecting prevalent theories on everything from atoms and astronomy to art and angst. Most interesting of all is his analysis of why we tell stories.

What evolutionary utility could arise from following the exploits of imaginary characters facing make-believe challenges in non-existent worlds? (274) Through borrowed eyes protected by the tempered glass of story, we intimately observe an abundance of exotic worlds. And it is through these simulated episodes that our intuition expands and refines, rendering it sharper and more flexible. Through story we internalize a more nuanced sense of how to respond and why, and that intrinsic knowledge guides our future behavior. (279)

Storytelling is our most powerful means of inhabiting other minds. And as a deeply social species, the ability to momentarily move into the mind of another may have been essential in our survival and our dominance. (283) The stories provide a means for experiencing the universe from a perspective that is otherwise unattainable. (284) Through narrative we explore the range of human behavior, from societal expectations to heinous transgressions. We witness the breadth of human motivation, from lofty ambition to reprehensible brutality. (285)

None of which explains my dream of my cat Popo (who died in 1999) as an evil red-eyed monster driving an open-bed truck, wreaking death and destruction while Allen (a friend who I haven’t seen since 1987) careened off in an outboard boat, almost killing sunbathers and then vanished in pile of gravel as my father (who dies in 1989) accused me of plotting to kill my mother (who died this year) because I had a number of pictures of her on my wall when I was only trying to sleep.

Beware…The Values and Beliefs Committee!

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I was in a game of cruel tag where you were stabbed with a pen. That made you it. Bryce was far too aggressive and broke the tip of the pen off in my arm. I looked at the ink spreading through my veins and told him that he was way too violent. He just smirked at me before racing off up the stairs. “Beware the Values and Beliefs Committee!”

Bryce’s friends said that he went to get his gun and that I had better leave. It was an odd space, wide open in the center and then winding corridors with doors and passageways off to the side. I needed to go to the bathroom, but they were all closed or occupied. I finally found what looked like a bathroom in the corner, which had a view down the valley, but it was full of people, some my former students, all of them chanting, “Beware the Value and Beliefs committee! Beware the Value and Beliefs committee!”

I pleaded with everyone to leave, but it was a big joke, especially for Tom Hanks. He was photographing everything and mocked me for wanting privacy. The sound of gunfire was everywhere, and everyone ducked and scattered, except for Tom Hanks who continued to mock me. He made it impossible for me to go to the bathroom and so I offered him my camera, complete with zoom lens. Before leaving, he delivered the line perfectly, “The Values and Beliefs Committee, you know, it might sound like a good thing, but it’s just another cloaking device to maintain status quo. Think about that.”

The Floating Principle

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There are so many notes, too many to write down, through the layers, each idea scribbled for the one above, seeking to understand the depths, or just trigger that moment of happiness and stay in that. There was a drunken child wanting to fight everyone, and I kept him in my room before going back up through the city, floating above the crowds, not floating as much as striding, walking in flight, thinking someone would be confounded, and yet none of that happened.And then I was at the rink, tightening my skates for the game, as I took notes, hoping I was in the right layer to remember that I was playing for the Leafs again.