Dream: Burning Names
Dad and I struck the tent and hiked across the glacier toward the cavern under the frozen waterfall. We stagger in the deep snow. Overhead two eagles squabble like gulls for the fawn one of them has killed. Breath streams from our mouths.
We went into the cave, which branched in two directions. I knew it was a game, that reality was created in the instant you made the choice, turned right or left. I explained this to Dad, that it was a creation, a test, that I knew what I was doing. The cave walls were ochre. We went right.
We came to a parlour inside the cavern, Persian rugs on the stone floor, lamps with silk shades, furniture in carved wood and green velvet. We went into small room made by the empty fireplace, an alcove of blank white limestone traced with smoke. I wrote my name on a piece of paper and set fire to it.
I put the curled black ashes into a machine that created possible futures. We watched mine. I don’t remember it well. A lot of sex. A mutant crab-spider at one point – possibly during the sex. I watched my face flick through its future lives. Dad did his. I was annoyed with him. He spent his time arranging his desk.
Then I am someone else. One of my futures? I remember giving birth. I remember ripping apart. I remember washing my face in a public bathroom, my blonde hair tangled, my dress torn, my eyes bright-blind-blue and rimmed with shining black oil. Something had happened, I didn’t want anyone to know. The woman next to me was concerned, asking too many questions. I knew what to do. I went into a stall and spoke the thing that had happened. The words took the memory out of me and made it into an artifact, a display case. The oil and light leaves my eyes. I straighten my dress. I go out past the woman and she doesn't know me.
I am someone else. An older self. It is the 51st century. I am reading in the living room of my home. I have done what I can, there are books, but the room is sterile. We made the wrong choice when we turned into this century; there is too much science and no art, like an idea of the 1950s. The carpet is icy blue. My parents come to the door. I am older now – my parents and I are the same age. I say the girls are away. We decide to go upstairs for a moment before we must all leave.
Upstairs it seems again the 19th century – Chairs with oval backs of carved wood, topped with roses, upholstered in maroon velvet, cluster tight against marble tables that float above the dark carpet like chunks of ice in a river. We weave through the crowded gallery, barking shins. From the small arched window at the end of the hall, I see myself get into a car with my parents and drive away.
Who am I? I am someone else, in a hot dress, corset crushing my ribs. I go into an alcove and it is lined with sepia photographs in heavy frames. I touch a dusty glass and I know. I am Anastasia Romonov. I go back to the window. There is a phonograph there. I set it spinning. I kneel. I write my name on a piece of paper and strike a match.
3 Comments
Wow. that’s such a wonderful, beautiful dream. The kind where you don’t ever want to know what it means, but instead savor the flavours of the different experiences. And hopefully it didn’t make your whole day confused as you felt like different people.
How can you recall your dreams in such detail? Usually all I wake with is vague impressions and moods.
Well, this one struck me so strongly that I got up and jotted down some key words. I remember my dreams much longer and more strongly if I write them down right away. Just a few words to anchor them. I had “math / hotel / fishing whales” up on the chalkboard in my nest for the longest time. But now that I write in the morning, I don’t normally have to get up at 3 am.
Something that helps if you lose a dream: take the same physical position that you had while dreaming — lying on the right side with one hand under the ear, etc.
(“How much of the memory / is carried in the body?”)