Dreamscape

Legend of the
DREAMCATCHER


Native Americans of the Great
Plains believe the air is filled with
both good and bad dreams

Historically, dreamcatchers
were hung in the tipi or lodge,
and on a baby's cradle board.

According to legend, the good dreams
pass through the center hole
to the sleeping person. The bad dreams
are trapped in the web, where they
perish in the light of dawn.

~~(according to St. Joseph's Indian School)

Richard’s Dreamboat Mirage


I am beginning to dream. A very real dream. I open my eyes & there stands Dream Catcher. I ask him: Is this a place to where I have come to dream good notions? He answers: Why yes. He points to my brother, sitting in his wheelchair. You ought to ask him if he’d like you to bring him his dinner. Now Richard is having a good time so I politely go do so, wrapping his food in a foil “boat”. Pretty soon I notice the women in my large family who are enjoying the festivities of a classic reunion as they chatter about this & that. There are aunts & great aunts, uncles & great uncles, nieces, nephews--all of the next in line relatives & even recognizable friends of the family there. It is as if the whole of the festivities is sitting on a large cloud. The people move in & out & disappear, as their muffled voices fog my mind. Now, sitting at the table, enjoying the food I comment to Richard’s favorite aunt on how well the food has been cooked. She nods & says thank you. Then I get a clever remark from a favourite cousin as she tells me that “her baby” is setting safely over across the room sleeping in her stroller.

The room seems to be shaking with the sounds of authority from a distant land--
“The Old Country”--as many pairs of old wise hands admit to the unique odors of
great food. It seems that I have salvaged ties with the nicest of them quite sur-
risingly since pleasing everyone is a hard job. How did I get here particularly, I ask
Dream Catcher. & he answers, Why you have been asked to come. & thus, it
is so. Actually, I am overjoyed this reunion is happening. I give one of the children
a kiss of friendship & the smell of vinegar in the palms of an aunt who cooked
gnocci & rigatoni with perfection seems to have lasted long after I lift my napkin to
wipe my lips from the rum cake--a prayer. A large barrel of ice with Pepsi & Dr.
Pepper is being filled again& again.

It has been a long afternoon for the children. Parents come to them with sweet kisses
& asking them to be “ready to go”. Finally, someone mentions my brother Richard.
I am receiving grateful praise for being a companion. He loves the children. They
love him. They are especially bright at family reunions. I remember the same type
of gathering in the ‘50’s.

Dream Catcher calls to me. Have you asked Richard how his meal was? I immediately go over & ask Richard, Have you enjoyed your meal? Did you enjoy the ice cream? On a full stomach it was a dreamboat mirage, Vick. I tell him to have fun with his dog Sable tonight. He answers, Yes! She is the light of my life.



Melting Into A Little Bit Of Sensibility

Well, if you sew up your fate you can count the ways to knowing your own personal destiny & you can decide that things you have said about other people bear a real resemblance to the truth & you can speak openly about how people are giving you the chance to examine all of life--knowing, now, what life is all about after youth is over. You can call a destiny as one like no other & that is how you come up with a star in the heavens right smack dab in your dreams. It‘s what gazing at stars is all about. Love circles the universe & rules the planets & you give in to it with strength like a ram wrapping those long horns with another ram.

You can run a rigorous course in the fight to crusade & to examine all virtues as they are & make it impossible to hate by burying the hatchet. Do not langour in ignominy & dance with grace. In dreams thoughts of interests in philosophy cause ecstasies. What forms are shapes with the symmetry of beautiful waterfalls & beautiful landscapes & beautiful deserts, & the mood becomes open as you witness a promise of relaxation & open up the quest for a lover in the midst of classic reverie. In vain, I cry for sensibility when there may be none, in the hopes of finding any at all. I take those things that are boring & make them flamboyant like recalling an exciting trip to Niagra Falls or at a ballroom dance or in a boat on the ocean or during a night-time rendezvous. Even classic conversation is sometimes missed with these sort of dreams. I see all things in a sweat, loosely wishing for the dream to change a bit.



Glass Pears

Suddenly orange slices & malted milk balls become the crazy edible signals of
dreaming delightfully & now I can rearrange the melody of the song & climb the
Great Chain Of Being. I must be on a street, I say to Dream Catcher. Well, Vick,
you are on Moon Avenue , a street that rules a smooth orb in my eyes as I think of
celestial shapes of things to come. I gaze into the mirror to see Dream Catcher’s
reflection as the brew of envelopes simmers the lips of letters that I believe have
something for everyone in them.

The year is now 2004 but I do remember 1965 & how I watered off the tomato
plants & hailed the tomato as I dreamed again about cooking a good meal for my-
self. It was raining today & rain came down as quizzical as light rays & melting
papers & it refreshed the Egyptial Cleo in my dreams tonight. All I remember is
carrying the garbage away to the dumpster spot to the front of the house & so then
again I think quickly of potatoes in butter wrapped in foil & reunions with
Rick.

I see beach pails & seahorses now & get giddy about how visions of women’s
beauty make me see better & I think of the dream that Dream Catcher points
out as Mermaid Avenue. The ocean’s pounding waves collect in the images of
the dream as it surfaces, wet & luminous. It takes me a good mile to walk
through Paradise Estates, pass by Neptune Drive & go north on Gold Star.
I dream of glass pears & how I fondled this one pear dreaming of a real one
with brown spots & so soft & juicy as all ripe fruit is.

Dream Catcher asks me about this--an obsession I have & I tell him that I
must have eaten too much, this last evening. But where did you get them?
he persists. I think they were stolen, I say.

Now this brings me to why. It has to do with stealing money. Once, when I
was younger, I was caught stealing a bag of marbles that I happened to find out
on the steps of an elementary school. I thought that the marbles were a lost
cause, that no-one would want to recover them. Thinking of that incident,
I wanted to hoard glass pears. I wanted to trace the awareness I had of first
stealing. Was it not so wrong since the stealing as a second-guess that the
marbles had accidentally been placed there specifically for someone else
to pick up was innocent? I am not sure of the fear, but I know I developed
some fear & the fear slowly accumulated until the fact occurs to me that
it was not the marbles I wanted at all. After I had stolen them, I wanted to
put them back & the minute that it happened, I recalled the fear that I
might be yelled at. In this sort of predicament I offered to place them in
the exact spot I found them in order to find the rightful owner.


At first I became elated that I had done the right thing but in the next
instant I was sure that no-one could understand me--I was never so em-
barrassed in my youth, so upset, so likely to have been called a
thief, as then.

What was it like? A mistaken event or was it proof that I could do such
a thing, grab at the chance of thievery? How silly , how provoking!
Whatever happened the next day became unimportant. I was told that
life is full of misadventure and temptation & that I should be at least
glad of recovering my good character by vindication but all day I dreamed
of the fact that I had stolen marbles.

It was good that I stopped there. Each time I came across the chance to
steal money from my mother’s jewelry box I caught myself & remembered
that my mother would always be my best friend & that I never did
steal money after that. I still had fears of marbles, jewelry boxes, other
trinkets & noticed a fear cropping up when I ran across burglaries in
newspapers. Stealing was out of the question.

My dream started to make twists & turns, by the way, & I knew I had
been in the company of Dream Catcher who looked like a seer who
was wise more than ever & I could only dream of luscious pears for the
longest time. Just don't steal, you will sell
your soul, said Dream Catcher finally.



Phantom Nightmares

I was walking up a spiral staircase. When I got to the top I imagined all
of these people up there having a big party with rounds of drinks. I
searched long & hard for one single face that was familiar. There seemed to
be none. Then suddenly, I came upon the face of a boy who was the first
boy I had ever dated. He immediately recognized me from a distance. I
watched him as a crowd grew around the general location of this boy.
I heard them making fun of him & telling him what a jock he was to have
such short hair. Finally I walked over & smiled & he began to get admiring
looks from the crowd because I had thrust him in the limelight. He whispered
to me: It’s not fair. I’m in the wrong time period. I shouldn’t be here
drinking this beer & look! My hair is so gd short. But there is nothing
wrong with you, I said. You have always looked like that to me & just
then this girl came out of the bathroom. The boy looked straight into her
eyes & he seemed alarmed but only for a moment as he longed to tell
me how he wished we were alone so he could touch my breasts. He said
that he had always enjoyed me for just being innocently there beside me
at the football games in the rain before he departed in a barage of the
drunken spirithood.

I could feel the boy that I had just been with as he faded from my vision & so
did the whole party. One image stayed--the girl who had been in the
bathroom motioned for me to come closer. First off, I didn’t think I
knew her but in full view my eyes lit up & I realized it was my first &
only best friend from high school. It had been fashionable to have only
one in those days. Would you like to go the movies, she asked. Yes, I
would like that very much, I heard myself say. Good. I hope it hasn’t started
yet. Going to the movies at a young age brought back all these memories of
wonderful things. I didn’t know why because really going to the movies had
been a very traumatic ordeal for me with meeting guys there with my best
friend and so on. She asked me to go in ahead of her. I did. When I turned
around she had disappeared. I had a movie camera in my hand all of a sudden.
The theatre attendant had been placed there beforehand with a giant-sized
grin on his face just waiting anxiously for me to do something wrong. He took
the camera saying that they weren’t allowed in movie theatres. Next, I saw
Sean my latest lover & he seemed very excited like he wasn’t supposed to
be part of this part of a production of my past life but somehow managed to
get there. He was as bright eyed as a rich rock star.

Right then, in the movie theatre, a big burly sweaty looking fellow lumbered
over to the two of us & bawled Sean out for no reason & Sean seemed
recklessly defiant to deck him & hustled me into a deserted row of seats
& disappeared. Right beside me appeared a woman who was unusually
dressed in a foreign costume & who had dark gypsy eyes. She sat there
working dilligently on a tapestry. On the other side of me & behind me
various young men appeared. They appeared to recognize the pattern of
my past life. I remembered that they had always emanated this great admir-
ation for me althought I hadn’t the slightest gestures of love to give them
in return. So they sat there dumbly admiring me with glazed eyes as if
they were just visited by a goddess of some sort & were very pleased just
to be there worshipping me in my embroiled dream. Soon I looked back
to see Sean again. He had decked the burly fellow twice already.

So what should come on the screen? Why it was the Young Man Of My
Life who I classify as such because he had been the only boy I had
so hopelessly & madly fallen in love with in my past life. He had seemed
to have a mark of greatness within him as if he would at some time
leave our hometown and become a national phenomenon so of all things--
he was the star of the movie. Then Sean reappeared & I was riding high
upon his shoulders & all the people around us were staring like crazy
in awe of the boy on the silver screen & it was if we had found ultimate
spiritual freedom in this lunacy. Then Sean grabbed my hands. He
pressed them into his neck. It seemed a glorious way to star in a dream
until he fell lifelessly in a small disgusting heap.

I looked at my hands. They were covered with blood. The burly fellow
reappeared. In his hand he held a razor blade. I covered my face. I knew
that he had his eyes on me now. Thinking of Sean, I figured I had
better make a run for it. I ran & ran & ran. I finally collapsed into Sean’s
arms who had appeared out of the dust. He grabbed me tenderly & kissed
me & propped me up in the very same seat I had occupied before. The
woman with the gypsy eyes was still grasping the razor blade. It was
fastened to her purse with a golden thread.

I thought about everything in a whirlwind like something right out of
a mystery yarn. Instantly, I was aware of people watching me like I was
now on the movie screen with the first boy I had ever loved in my past
life. My head began to grow bigger & bigger until it became the size of
the others on the big movie screen. I took a long breath until, like a
balloon bursting, I deflated back to my normal size. I turned to one
side. I told the lady with the gypsy eyes to get rid of the razor blade
that she was fiddling with. She said he would do no such thing. I yelled
back at her that if she didn’t throw the damn thing under the seat she wouldn’t
be alive to see the end of the gd movie. She laughed like a wicked witch &
began to slit my throat with it. I screamed & carried on until the theatre
attendant came striding over confidently. He said, You’ll be okay. We’ll
fix you up. Don’t you worry. It seemed strange, but I trusted him. He
led me back to a back room & lay me on a table & patched me up good as
new. The next thing I knew my first grade teacher came into the deserted
room that I had been placed in. She told me that no-one was going to
let me bleed to death. I took her hand. We walked out into the light.

What I dreamed next was a nightmare so clearly in another dimension
that it must be classified as a separate kind of vision. It first had me on
a large platform & feeling like a messenger of life beyond death. My eyes?
Luminary stars. My voice? Choir-like as it echoed out into space. Another
young man happened by . He stepped up onto the platform with a slow
deliberate walk of an actor making an entrance into a scene of a play
that had him billed as the chief player & who the crowd had come to
see. He spoke into to my ear & folded his arms around me & we waltzed
about while an invisible audience whistled & cheered. Don’t worry my
dear. You’ve been rescued from Them. Kind of you, I said as he
told me to smile & look to the left where the light was better.

Soon the fellow I had been with hustled me onto a higher platform. I
noted that there were miniature doors placed along the back drop.
My hands began to shake. It was all so incomprehendable. We moved
through a maze as if through seasons of an affair. I felt an electrical
attraction travel between us. As I followed him through the last tiny
door he said. Time to laugh. Come. We entered a large spacious room
where a huge cocktail party was about to begin. Suddenly, all of these
tremendous bodies with tremendous faces smiled at the young man I
had been with & commented on his entrance. We walked through the
crowd that was grouped into clusters with champagne-filled glasses
fashioned properly in their hands & on into a private lounge. The
young man shut the door marked PRIVATE & sat down in a swinging
straw chair suspended from the ceiling. He offered me a seat on his
lap. I accepted the offer & scrutinizing him decided he most certainly
was the most beautiful man I’d ever seen & probably in the world.
He laughed a low sexy laugh. Asked me if I knew who he was. I
had to admit I didn’t have the slightest idea. What a pity, he answered.
Again I studied him. Finally, I remarked that perhaps I had seem
somehwhere before but couldn’t place where. He pointed to the big
lettered printed on his shirt. I read them aloud: STAR TREK. Star
Trek? You? You’re the star of Star Trek? And he said: You
might say that. I added: You’re kidding. But you aren’t the
Shatner fellow& you don’t have pointed ears like Spock . . .
He interrupted me & said: But I mean the real STAR TREK. Things
disn’t fit together that easily but it didn’t seem to matter so much
because of the electrical attraction between the two of us. He kissed
me just as the most beautiful girl I had ever seen walked in & con-
gratulated the young man on throwing a wonderful party & to call
her any time.

The star of STAR TREK kissed me again. This time, a voice like
an angel’s spoke from above my head: You are saved, the voice said.
Is this for real? Or does it matter so long as the both of us will remember
how it felt? I was dreamingly asking myself. I dreamed I woke up feeling
as though I had found the cure for madness & lost it. I knew that I would
never encounter these people ever again.



The Moon Is Made Of Green Cheese

My dream now is a state of mind that is following a humorous pattern to it. I
apologize for not being thrilling enough. I’ve become clean of conscience so
I will laugh & laugh & laugh wanting to tell you that my smile is what is
worth catching. Dream Catcher has asked that I begin another dream that
begins with gifts, magis & lessons and I begin to dream a parable. After that,
I see lovers making kissing sounds who bathe in magic. Then it becomes
distorted as it appears to show the sad end of losing love.

All that a magician has up is sleeve is almost always shown for applause at
the end of tricks like dreams. My dreams are like melting papers that melt
into space so quickly that they demand applause for their unique potent
effect in a small amount of time. Suddenly, I am involved with gigantic saxes
& sentimental big-band music & in dreams of deserts & dairy cows mooing
& lovers in showers.

It is like I am dreaming in an orange-coloured modern school chair as
Dream Catcher schools me on demi-gods & the use of mythology from Cupid
to Zenith. He signifies elegies & pathos as I lie in a field of daisies. I realize
he has given me form to my map of dreams from the beginning. Finally,
two lovers in the dream are, indeed, galloping across a meadow to sit below
a tree & look up at a crescent-shaped moon that might be made of green
cheese.



Christmas Fairies

I think I will now admit that I dreamed of last Christmas eve. It began
as a memory of that evening when I was marveling in an Encyclopedia
& finally got dead tired & fell asleep to dream of standing behind a fellow
waiting in line for a movie ticket to a smash-hit. When I walk out of the
theater I see a wandering star to hold up in the winter sky.

That is how is was thinking of the eve & remembering reading Cold
Mountain by Charles Frazier--a gift from Emmett and Christine--all
during the month of December. Of course the fairies would come soon
& Bill & I would make ourselves appear at mother’s house on Christmas
eve or the children’s sake & then after the big event, Emmett & Chris
would visit and party. I saw a rainbow that floated over dazzling pea-
cock feathers & so then I was eloping with violins playing & dreaming
of concert-style balconies in music halls & boats with Grecian illusions
fizzing into the hot spray of sea breeze & laughter abounded & slave
admirers worshipped me & just about the loveliest illusion became a
touchstone. I dreamed of eggnog & weather in snow & ice.



What’s In A Name

What’s in a name is powerful, is human, leaves you with the power of
taking the star to bed with you & so it comes to me that it has been
a peculiarly starry night as I gaze on more fantasies. I pose in the
dream & posing in a dream becomes suggestive. Words in the dream
seem to be pulling me apart. If I could only think behind the grammar
& finish the puzzle of remarks made to me I would conduct a
symphony. The mover of the dream, Dream Catcher will have then
finished its stimulation.

Now. A dream will repetitously chase its tail if spurned to, as in dreams
a repetitious act will have been spurned over & over. As for the
rest of this slowing logic, a clear note sings like hot oatmeal in the
morning as I dream of deep dark shadows. The dreams waver & a movie star kisses me & says goodbye.



Two Stars: Casimir & Horehound

Casimir is a celestial man in the vast universe that is growling & being
unique & battering me with noise. Yet again, he is a saint--true & valiant.
I pattern him in the dream to be the voice of my dead father.

Dream Catcher asks me, Have you heard your father lately? I answer
No, he’s been dead. Can’t hear a word from him. No signs of his
character in any way. What’s up with this? Dream catcher says that
he’s with Horehound. The tresses of Horehound shimmer in the
moonlight. Do you see her? He points to a distant space. Why yes!
I say , why she’s waving! She is walking the paved gold of an
unforgettable summer evening. Dream Catcher adds, She lifts you
to shine, my dear. Even though it is a wintry night. She wants to fear
Casimir & to cast out demons. She broods behind this masque of
indifference and says to me that “Casimir hails the educated.” He has
a tough side too. He died loving Christian testimonies & passionately
in the arms of Horehound with her long orange tresses. When Casimir
looks dangerous as Horehound comes trailing behind.

Horehound embraces you. She can do nothing but hold a candle for
you. the two protect you from demons, says Dream Catcher. I’m
amazed, I tell him.



Pretty As A Posie

If I were to dissolve Jove & leave the gods like Proserpine who resolute-
ly kiss Plato for luck in the presence of the fates to Dream Catcher’s
descretion I would speculate then that men’s dreams have men’s feathers
& dance in the light to be desired by the gods.

I am looking at the value of earth signs in a difficult stimulation of
monsters like centaurs & Harpys & pedigree dogs & men who are
playing war games with parapets. Again I am lost to the moon.

I feel these old menaces of grief & madness giving me the basis for
keeping a heavy hand on fate’s lasting incorrigible message. My own
fate twists as I reveal myself. Suddenly, Malarme comes to me. I’m
searching for what painted clouds do when they float again & again
into desolate places when they occur in the consciousness.

I think we should know we sound like when we open our secrets like
opening our closets & that’s when jewels spill out. We lie in dead
nights. We want to be illuminated in dreams & even sometimes
things make us excited & we only want to know we are loved & then
we master & secure our own destinies.

Since I can’t dream fast as I lay here & muse, I will locate the
Avenue we are now on. It might be good to use Orange Blossom Avenue and liken it to Madison Street up from my old grade school.

I remember the tunnel of love when love was pink as a pink posie &
I had a rather funnish day which expelled all bad things & I looked
forward to imaginings the next day as being loose & easy by sighting
schoolday friends. I recalled in a dream a bakery truck sitting in
the front the schoolyard. It was the truck that came to bring the school
bread for the cafetaria & I dreamed of a cafetaria line & schoolchildren’s
prissy mouths & I have liked such memories & their inventiveness
drummings & they all look big & smell nice & feel like the flesh
& blood of a wider consciousness.

It was maybe 6 A.M. by now. I fell through the dialogues of a
Faustus character & breezed through the mixings of morning cartoons
with the honeycomb of many dreams whirling & swirling to death until
they all began to succumb to the rhythm of soul music. Yes, I saw
heaven & hell on earth. Creatures from other worlds or imagined
creatures from both worlds. I fear the high & mighty as well as the
bliss of truth in my own world. There are effects to the way we lace
our words in the spheres of our lives. Dreams shape words.



Waking Early

So then I am imagining that I am waking early for a futuristic sun that
rises with bird song . . . I have entwined my dreams as the lullabying
is over. I seem to make an expected positive journey with women sheltering themselves
from rain, sleet, snow & hail. Just that . . women are women and good
at it! Women will survive. A woman's touch is
her Perogative.

Now it appears to be such a lazy awakening while the dreams jam
& slow up like a train at a whistlestop.

Dream Catcher slides into a short-stop position. He says to me,
The earthlings are friendly! That I know, if you don’t complain, Vick.

& now I am awake.


























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