Dreaming

In a more common language of dreams When we succumb to the deft plunge one makes when entering the regions of a dream, we take with us our meager humanity fringed with flickering shadows trailing perilously behind, as if carried on powerful ‘energy-currents’--- capable of wafting or blowing the whimsy-ribbons of a gorgeous fate…whipping us this way and that. But we should count ourselves lucky if it be a mere case of dreaming a fortuitous dream of wealth or love gained; but no; it is more common we know this spiritual charge of dreaming as more of an impact of adversity. We know a dream is a nightly sojourn of unpredictability; and if we could, we’d make haste with what meager safety we might muster during its swirling adventure; but all too late would our posed preparations seem; for in an instant we are plunged deeply into the swell and pitch of its violent waves of energy. We tumble headlong with our night-clothes trailing upward to mark the awful depth of our descent, our skittering toes perchance lighting deftly where angels have been ‘treading time’, or where devils are busily tracking the outcome of another human failure. It is a lurching and halted pitch of going forward or backward in what seems an upside-down world of surreal knick-knackery; of denizens, we know not, nor would we ‘ask’ to dine at their tables; for theirs is a collapsed world of insanity, none of their ventures gained by due strategy, nor any semblance of reason stayed by moorings of their good sense or much needed practicality! An ‘air of inevitability’ seems to foist these eerie residents of ‘dream-land’ as our inestimable guests; we cannot avoid their abrading presence and instantly know them as serving a far more reaching importance, for it seems they prod us with razor sharp confrontations; tear at our look-goods with maniacal dexterity; fall upon us with brash turpitude, slighting our preference to be understood with extreme moral caring.

We matter little in their protocol of ‘me-first-others-last’, theirs is a compassionless world of savagery and we the flighty prisoners, dispatched far more often into another pickle of their wicked devising. If we were to stand up to their pressures it would no longer be a dream, but a wish to rule spirits, demons, night-mares, incubi, wicked spells cast by ancient alchemists, a multitude of gods from beyond the reach of human comprehensions. We know our lot in a dream as a terrible risk of sorts; being we haven’t the slightest bearings of where or whilst we are traveling, there will be no captain or stewardess announcing our flight plan, our wind speed; or warnings of foul weather coming. As a nightly occurrence, we are put upon by nature without so much as considering the conceit of our due respect, this is a nightly ritual wherein the mystery of nature’s depths is plumbed mercilessly, effortlessly without our owed or willing acquiescence. To where this headlong plunge might direct us is of no consequence, we fall from the precipice of our sober humanity to the ungodly depths of a roiling strangeness. We descend to breathe the dust of rare earth, or are swallowed whole by engulfing feelings as if submerged in torrents of ugly moods, or sent asunder to hysterically grovel before whiplash threats of merciless dangers, never for once catching our bearings to set the simple task of knowing…where are we feeling this…what body do we have---why can’t I see my body? Then off we go on the windy sails of a full-blown passion, or drenched voluptuously with the sexual, maybe inflated heroically, or panicked as the coward, or steeped in the minutiae of a dull moment to pool outward as a gargantuan plague of deadly stagnation—and we trying in vain to step out of this thick morass of deadly immobility. Or we might be caught unawares by the filth of memories long ago obfuscated by extreme embarrassment --- in a dream becoming unbearably exposed as if we were stripped of all modesty, unburdened by the good sense of propriety, standing red-faced naked during our secrecy we labored so long to forget. Within the region of a dream, there is that sinister inevitability that we must be

dashed headlong into the brutal honesty of a preordained drama, its jarring unexpurgated truth glaring back at our squeamish adjustments, rousing our fright it might be possible our most recent banishments from consciousness are now glowering back at us as frightful protagonists; haunting us with chilling perfection. Almost as if our ‘embarrassments’, had become actors with garish makeup, to taunt us with complaints or jeering accusations, that we might morally compensate them with the much-needed attention we owe them. In a dream, we are under the savage eye of off-screen investigations, seemly initiated by detectives bent on pursuing the last dogged detail of our secret life--who then expose our clandestine antics as universally known foibles we can no longer hide from wide eyed knowers of our dreamscape. We hide nothing, nor are we given the privilege of choosing what may open in our hyperactive dream-space. We are not alone, that much we know, but with whom we consort, only the god of dreams knows. But we do know on some rarified level, our dream-company must bluster in from the metaphysical, or at least a ‘region-of-mysterious-energy’, wherein an efficient dramatist’ stages theatrical affects incarnating as extreme shifts or changes of the fundamental nature of our souls. A dream sequence as such; seems pitched by the directive effort of an unknown ‘Shakespeare’, deftly preempting our humanly power to edit, reject, or avoid the fate of this mysterious playwright’s matchless efficiency—for this nightly creative-opus is felt as ‘destiny itself’. It is no wonder then; our suspicions will quickly press upon our imagination the possibility of briefly transcending our humanity. What with the atmosphere of a ‘dreams’ inescapability; the mere presence of its ‘other-worldly-energy’, causing the distinct feeling we might at any time be temporarily morphed for dramatic effect. For we might be submerged whole to breathe like fish in unknown waters, or find ourselves prying open the jaws of lions with herculean strength, or fall from great heights, then miraculously get up unscathed like a superhero…or fly without wings!!! But these dream endowments are not reconciled as personal-power; no; they

feel more like the aim of cherry-picking dramatists, salting ‘plot incidentals’ as the most efficient means of displaying their dramatic intentions; maniacally playing the monstrous playwright from the sidelines with their every thrust or jest of ‘super-power’ installed. One feels them as ‘directive-cues’, a felt contempt of ‘metaphysical-impatience’; a wanting of the dream-message, or its import, to be experienced at once without delay, hence the dramatic ‘I’s dotted, the ‘T’s crossed with due emphasis. And yet we look forward to the end of our daylight hours, and claim the soft pillow a haven of peace and tranquility…that is until we ‘fall’ to sleep!! Then we are reminded we hail from a different world and must return to its storm-tossed shores; a mysterious region where we are nightly hatched as new babes from the wilderness of its steady-creation. A supernatural domain, where an ‘artfulgiant’ on bended knee, sloshes the waters of a ‘timeless-ocean’; watching this mystical agitation move gently forward the rivulets of its energy commended as ‘dream-moments’, to bob and float we humans in its swirling force of reckless adventure! E a Arciniega

[email protected]