Dream Diary 2

WEDNESDAY, APRIL 16, 2008

 

I’m thinking of starting a dream diary again.  I kept one from December 1993 through January 1996 because I was curious about what sorts of things I was dreaming.  For over two years I kept the record and discovered some interesting things:  That dreams are seasonal, like weather.  That I have my own dream-city, a rambling and shambling thing with good bus service, at least one river, and many bridges.  (It has a water bus service called the Women’s Line, which was the invention of Victorian feminists and cannot be used by men, and a used book store so crammed and labyrinthine that it would be closed instantly in the real world as a fire hazard.)  That dreams are often mixed- and multi-media, and not all of those media exist in waking life.  And so on. 

After two years and change, I read the diary for the first time.  Then, my curiosity satisfied, I stopped.

The better bits of the dream diary were published as Lord Vacant on the Boulevard of Naked Angels.  You can find it here.

Anyway, last night I had a dream I found evocative enough to tempt me to begin the project anew.  I present it here:

I dreamed I was in a modern city that sprawled across the side of a mountain.  Somewhere most of the way up the mountain, I climbed up the side and across the top of an enormous white marble building.  It was built in the shape of a naked woman, lying on her back but just beginning to rose up on her elbows, so that she was half-sitting.  Her face was vast and placid and unreadable, as is the case with most neo-classical monumental statuary.

I started climbing at the fluted jamb of the front entrance, and then strolled up the abdomen and belly.  Climbing again, I made my way up the torso to the building’s left breast.  There I paused.  I sat down spraddle-legged just above the nipple, and looked out over the city.

The view was magnificent.

*