the shape of my dreams

lately i've been obsessed with writing. it's like i'm in college again and have a paper due tomorrow. a better approxiamation would be the scene in "alien" when the guy's sitting at the table and the alien ejects itself via his sternum. bloody and unexpected--that's what this feels like.

it doesn't happen all the time. some nights or even mornings i sit down with the urge to put fingers to keyboard and nothing--and i mean nothing--happens. i wish that the urge could have a constant outlet, that i could put into words all that i process during the day--but that would be impossible, unless i wrote in my sleep, because even there my mind overhauls the days and weeks and compresses them into a pseudo-reality that's difficult to separate from my actual waking hours.

perhaps those are the real hours, and these "waking" hours are the dream? there are days that i don't know. nights when my brain is a fertile ground in which every green shoot becomes jack's bean stalk, a fantastical ladder to a fantastical world.

it's hanging there at all times--the option to fall into sleep and clamber up, see what's there. when i do wake the rest of my life becomes a gathering ground for the dreams, but it does not stop there. i often wonder what it is about the brain that forms the shape of my dreams. they're not anything i can describe properly with words, despite my attempts. dan often looks at me and says, you're weird.

i cannot honestly recall a night in which i did not dream. sometimes i cannot recall the dream itself -- but i know that it happened, just as i know that i forgot to brush my teeth last night before bed.

but where do they come from? the deepest pits of hell, the heights of heaven. loving, bloody, horrific, sweet and sentimental, you name it--one dream can be peppered with all of the above, and often is. everything in the dream is incongruous, when i wake up, but during the dream it is seamless and makes perfect sense.

perhaps that is why i can accept real life for what it is--odd and terrifying, in both good and bad ways.

i remember waking up years ago--literally like seven years ago--and telling dan about the dream i'd just had. we were traveling somewhere, me and dan and some other girl. in the dream we walked with another group of people across a broad, waving grassy plain. the sky was gray, a hint of hidden sun. at some point we walked into a cave, a giant black maw in the landscape, and then something happened to us. we woke up in a room with a huge number of people, all waking with the same puzzled faces.

i read somewhere once that you do not dream about people you do not know--but my dreams are so often staffed with a bevy of unknowns that i know it's not true.

anyway. the room is huge--the ceiling is probably twenty feet high, the walls are poured concrete, the doors are giant and unrelenting dark steel. the whole place is new and clean. bright neon lights cast everyone in lurid color. there's a voice, saying that this is a game. there is another like group of people in a twin to this room. the lights go out and there is the hiss of gas; we topple into sleep again.

awake again; we struggle to our feet, but this time it is just dan and me and this strange girl with whom we travel. as our eyes adjust to the light we see that the people around us have been dismembered--they are strewn about all over, clean and bloodless, bright red seams of flesh where they have been cut apart. the voice comes again, explaining that we have to put everyone back together again--find the body parts that match, assemble them again, humpty-dumpty style. there are arms clad in flannels, denim legs, torsos wearing various t-shirts and blouses.

there is no time to be horror stricken; the game is that we must put together all of our bodies before the people in the next room do the same. whoever wins will live.

at that point i woke up, confused. it was about three am, and i told myself to change my dream, and fell back asleep.

this time we were in the room, with all the chilled body parts, but rescue was on its way. we opened the doors and people from all kinds of other rooms were doing the same--it was not just two rooms, but many. or perhaps there were rooms in which others were just not all dead. either way, we surged up a wide hallway, going towards the light at the top of it. there was no noise; we were silent, this large herd of people.

at the mouth of the cave we paused. helicopters buzzed through the air--some belonging to whatever terrorist group had held us, others to the police. cop cars dotted the previously peaceful landscape, lights flashing. it was near dusk or dawn--the sun was behind gray again.

i pressed myself against the cave wall and everyone behind me did the same, creeping forward slowly. a helicopter swung into the cave, swirled over us, sprayed us with bullets. some of the escapees fell. then a bazooka boomed, and the aircraft slammed against the wall, crumpling to the cave floor. the pilot's body oozed out of the helicopter just like a caterpillar's body would, if stepped upon: yellow and green, slimy.

we ran out of the cave and i woke up again, and told dan my story.

he, too, had dreamed. he'd dreamed that he flew to chicago, the plane crashed, and he rescued a kitten.

***

there are times when i know that my dreams are different--there was another dream about finding a serial killer's house--the killers were a husband and wife in their seventies; it was gruesome. and another dream where the world was going to end because teenagers on skateboards were bombing things.

then there was the one about the giant stuffed spider (which actually hangs from the ceiling at half-price books) that me and an asian produce mart owner killed, which was part and parcel of the same dream where my sister being held hostage at a community center, and a girl was knifed on a city street.

i could chalk it up to television or books, but to be honest, i don't watch a lot of gruesome shows, or read horrifying books. what is it about my mind, swimming in this bone goblet, that leans towards the horrific, and can be lead down the ridiculous, too? (ridiculous being the dream in which my siblings and i slugged our way through some humid and tropical south american jungle, after which my brother gave birth to a glistening ebony bowling ball.)

there are folds in the corpus collosum--is this my subconcious doing the mundane job of ironing them flat? if so, does it use starch or just a spritz of stale water, as my mother does?

i'm in my thirties, and the dreams are more and more reality and not fiction. i cannot always separate them from my life. did i dream that i filled up my gas tank, or did i fill it? did i bake bread, or do i need to pick some up at the store? do i need to review cnn online to see if there has been some horrific thing that is real, or did i dream it?

the evening news can be just as disconcerting. case in point: the boy randomly decapitated on that canadian bus.

what is real? what is just my mind, shaping invisible clay into whatever it wishes? tossing it in the air, seeing the virgin mary's face on one side of my lopsided creation?

***

this week i've been watching shark shows on discovery channel. do i dream of sharks, swimming arrogantly beautiful in the ocean, large eyes searching? no, i dream of assembling bright orange cheddar cheese balls and garnishing them with fresh, green parsley for some ghoulish zombie ball, at which there are actually rotting undead. why would they want a cheese ball?

this morning, i woke and finished a book, and thought about sitting down to work on the story that's constantly bubbling on the back burner. while i drank my first coffee, i watched more sharks, and came to the conclusion that a writer does not always just graze like an antelope, gleaning what they can from life. sometimes they have to go on the offensive, chase out their prey--nouns, verbs, whatnot--and trap it.

it's odd to think that my mind can be just as gory as it is--scary and terrifying, and beautiful at the same time, to my poet's eyes. during the day i am the prey--i am the four-legged ungulate, cropping at new shoots. i'm not a bull shark, sampling the world with my thousand teeth.

so perhaps if i graze during my real life--the time in which bills are paid and cats are fed--then i hunt in my dreams, where every individual can go beyond the acceptable pale? i don't know.

then again, are my eyes open, just now?