[This is directly transcribed, without changes or edits, from a journal entry dated August 10th, 1998]
...horrid dreams, my two children poisoned and dead in their coffins, and no one to save me from my despair...
Category: dreams
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brief despair
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home invasion
[This is directly transcribed, without changes or edits, from a journal entry dated January 6th, 1997]
I stand in the front window and watch as the car makes its second pass, making myself as visible as possible to the men inside . . . letting them know that there are people home and they’ll have to find someone else to rob.
On their fourth pass, I make eye contact with the driver and I know then that this is no normal robbery. They want me to see them.
We stand there, watching the pass and I realize that we’re being diverted.
Misdirection.
Someone is already in the house, I know. Someone came in the back — the car had been empty? The car had been full on the first pass, but the last few times, I could see that the men inside were not so cramped; one of them was gone.
They were already in the house.
Through the house I go, searching.
Passing by my room I see that the french doors have been kicked in.
Someone is in the house.
In a back room, my teenage daughter’s room, I find them. He is sitting at the piano, holding a gun in her face. She sits on the bed, crying.
With a broken crystal candlestick, I stab him in the back — just to the left of the spine — before he can turn.
Push the splintered end deep into him, glancing off the shoulderblade, scraping against the bone.
He breathes once, heavy, and then dies.
When the car passes by the window again, I am there — his head in my fist, raising it high, my fingers in his hair.
I see the eyes widen as they see his glazed, empty gaze.
I meet the eyes of one in the car as it speeds off — that is the one, I know, who will return for revenge.
The car drives off into the night and I drop the head, realizing that — for the first time — it is snowing in the Midlands.
[2013 Addendum: This is a odd one to look at now. In 1997, I did not have a daughter. Now I have two. And, for what it’s worth, my bedroom (four houses and sixteen years later) has French doors. That’s not going to help me get to sleep any easier.)
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the recursive old woman
[This is directly transcribed, without changes or edits, from a journal entry dated December 6th, 1996]
...I’m standing in front of a shelf full of journals and books in the dead man’s rooms. I take one down, finding [ILLEGIBLE] and poetry, handwritten recollections between the pages — it dawns on me that these are the rooms of my great uncle, the missionary to Burma, and that only I know he is dead.
The guard eyes me through the front windows and I move on to the inner rooms, marveling at the collection of antiques, souvenirs, and artifacts [ILLEGIBLE] the grimy gray walls, the peeling paint, and the dusty windowpanes.
Within the inner rooms, I come upon a woman — elderly and wholly lovely. She embraces me and slowly we back to an old bare mattress with a brass frame and headboard tarnished and lovely.
...and then the guard is knocking at the window and shouting and I am still standing at the bookshelf, a book open before me with a picture of an alluring elderly woman open on the page.
And I know I am dreaming, but still I set the book back upon the shelf and move once again into the inner rooms, coming to the place of the woman yet again, embracing and being embraced yet again, awakening once more at the shelf of books with the guard behind me, knocking on the window of the dead man’s rooms.
And again, I turn to pass back into the inner chamber again,
And again.
Again.
Until I wake in the dark morning.
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lion
…and in my dream it is a lion that circles and follows me—a savage pet that, inexplicably, had made us his family…
…I see a screen door opening and closing, sweeping its shadow across the afternoon light…
…I see a four poster bed in a sea of boxes, an island of bitter regret…
…I see my son.
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uneasy sleep
[This is directly transcribed, without changes or edits, from a journal entry dated April 11th, 1994]
And it doesn’t get any better as the days go on.
Wasted time and uneasy sleep. Like Macbeth, I have murdered the deep life — drowned by days, and smothered under chemical work and answering machines.
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haunted
[This is directly transcribed, without changes or edits, from a journal entry dated April 4th, 1994]
Ghost dreams. Windows that won’t stay closed. Doors opening onto nothing.
Tired and depressed, once again.
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wedding errand
Walking through a parking lot towards a line of children. Accosted, my money taken. Finally convincing them to let me go — “Please, I’m getting married today.”
Amazingly — I’m released.
But the ceremony has started and I’m late.
Putting on a tuxedo in the great underground empire while searching for a washcloth.
Sent on some pissant while of an errand by my wife, my own wedding starts without me.
* * *
My chest is continually constricted and I have blood in my eyes.
The gray dawn has returned and my nights are only pain.
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dust and bones
Dreaming of empty houses. Rooms like vaulted graves, Corners filled with dust and bones.
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the three old men
Three old men. Drunken and cheaply dressed sit in a library and make vulgar innuendos to every girl who walks by. In the background a brass ensemble plays Cab Calloway tunes.
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mother, father, cat
Do demons stand still? Can you look for them in corners or out of the way places? Do demons stop long enough for you to see them? Do demons stand near us? Where do they stand?
In the dream, my house has been transformed into a filthy hole. The kitchen is a mess, bits of food, dirty pots and pans, and crusty dishes piled everywhere.
My mother sits on the patio and smokes cigarettes.
My father sits in the living room, studying Talmud.
I try to clean up the mess.
My cat walks though my dream, his mind embraced by madness. His mouth gapes, his eyes stare, insane light shining through. His tongue flaps out between his fangs, drooling mucous and vomit. He yowls to wake the dead.
I call to my mother to put on her glasses. I ask her “Can you see him? Can you see the cat?” She doesn’t answer. And I ask her again, and then I say “Can you see demons..?” And I go into my earlier ideas on demons. I speak and the cat yowls and in the living room my father is a dusty corpse.
When I woke from this dream I was saying “Do demons stand still?” in a breathless gasp.
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gitchy
a hard couple of months
visualizing, thin times