DREAMS FROM 1971
DREAMS FROM 1971
Most of my dreams prior to the 1980s are included in my daily journals and my trip journals. Dreams are placed unpredictably in the 1970s.
3/29/71
SHIP DREAM
I've boarded an enormous liner, I guess based on the beautifully clean lines and lighting of the QE2 which I'd seen in its dock on Saturday night, and it was sailing from its dock THROUGH the city, at one point through canals dug in the streets, at other points coasting smoothly up and down the streets in the city and through the country. At one time I had something to do with steering it, marveling at the easy way it handled and how it just managed to brush the leaves of the trees on either side, avoiding the people riding bicycles on the street, who didn't look up, as if this happened every day. Then I got off to get something in a shop, and didn't see the ship, and either I was underground and it was above ground, or vice versa, but I know where it would re-meet where I was walking, and there it was just as planned. The sky was a marvelously clear blue, and the buildings from the distance and close-up were perfectly sharp-edged, and I had a feeling of good-standing with the world, and the people on the ship, and the whole dream. John took good things from it when I told him about it in the morning, saying that it was based on my feelings of self-confidence from the talk last night, and I said, hoping to please him, that it was really self-confidence in the RELATIONSHIP that I sensed, that I never once, which is unusual, thought that the argument would have any possible effect on the relationship (is this just taking it even MORE for granted?), but that it was just a localized argument which would eventually be solved and everyone would be happy again. We lay together, touching lightly, talking over the radio from the apartment above, and got out of bed at 8. I'd hoped that the positive feeling from the dream would carry over through the day, but by the time evening came around, I was again sunk into the depressed feeling that I was doing NOTHING with my day, but that the time managed to pass and it was now time to CLEAN THE PLACE UP, but there wouldn't be enough time before John got here, and again I'd be rushing after seeming to have wasted the whole day. There just doesn't seem to be any happy medium where I can FUNCTION. GOT to start on that GODDAM second BOOK!
6/8/71
I guess it was Monday morning, June 7, that I dreamed this, maybe because I'd napped much of Sunday, and therefore didn't fall into a deep sleep, but stayed in the midsection which permits dreams. At first I was in some sort of elaborate wooden frame house, somewhat like the old place in Akron, but it had a great number of porches and awnings and colored outcroppings, rather like a four-story house built progressively smaller with Lincoln Logs. Anyway, I was at the top of the building, and---now I've forgotten! I think someone was trying to break in, and I was putting up wood to keep them out. Shit, I've really forgotten! I don't remember. Anyway, I remember it was connected with this house, and it was very precise and clear AT THAT TIME, but now it isn't, just 40 hours later. Then there was the SECOND part of it, also very clear, where I was some sort of officer in an army, but I had the idea it was far in the distant future, as if I were in some sort of reserve unit, called up 40 years after being familiar with the ranks and customs. There were many "soldiers" to whom I seemed superior, and there were two "others" who seemed more on my level, and I cautiously asked them who they were, and they announced that they were both "Somethings," and that I was "Something else" and it was obvious from their way of saying it that my "Something else" was HIGHER than their "Something," but they understood, somehow, that I was out of touch with current events, and like good sergeants, it was their job to make sure I didn't make any horrible mistakes, and I felt very safe with them around, as a buffer between me and the rest of the "soldiers," and I felt comfortable that I'd gotten the hierarchy established without making any terrible mistake, and I felt increased confidence in my ability to handle anything else that came up. Then I woke. It sounds so stupid now, but I'm sure I could have written three or four pages of details about the extremely vivid and clear dreams that were linked into the two, though when I woke, I only told John, "Gee, I had some strange dreams," but they seemed so uninteresting I wouldn't go into them. Maybe THAT'S what the DIARY is for?
6/9/71
I'm walking up a slight hill in a city, and it seems familiar, as if I'm walking up toward a rounded corner on which stands a movie theater very much like the Colonial in Akron, except that the hill is steeper, and it gives a feeling of slight vertigo, I'm sure, to cars driving on it, since it's strangely slanted away from the curb, leading from two side streets down to the base of the Y letter that I'm climbing. But there's also an "English" look to the place, and the name "Strand" comes to mind; not the movie house in Akron, which wasn't on a corner, but some mythical corner in the Strand in London. It's a bright clear day, and I'm enjoying the passersby, noticing that there are women in very colorful clothes walking down the street, some even masked, and there's a figure in a white dress with gay green embroidery on the ankle-length hem, and on the bottom of the veil that I see she has thrown over her head, and I wonder how she can see to walk in her pert, snappy, Carmen-like way. Then I turn and see that there's a parade marching diagonally up the street behind me, which is the main street, and there are marching units in bright uniform costumes and dresses, all playing on brass horns or all on drums, led by someone in the same uniform wearing a shako and carrying a drum major's staff. But then, as I look more toward my right, three painted girls, like the whores in "Romeo and Juliet," pass me by, talking animatedly, and I see that the street is running in water, and it's slush, because it's snowing very hard, but the units march on, and I feel that they're unaffected by the water and the snow. Then a double-hulled boat comes skimming down from the "Strand corner," and I marvel that they trust the water to be deep enough, but it seems to be, since the marchers in the new unit, coming closer, seem to be disgruntled by the cold and the wet, though they try to keep courageous faces. I see females, looking like Lois Cohen, struggling toward me in white silk false beards, and I decide they're dressed like Santa Clauses, and it must be a Christmas parade, and they look very sorry to be out in the horrible weather, and I observe that the DISTANT units look good, because I can't see the expressions on their faces, while the units which are close, and seeable, are unpleasant, because everyone's struggling.
6/10/71
Seemed to have just left a group of people who were attending some sort of Mass or religious service, and I sat in a huge structure filled with people, suddenly aware that I was in the wrong place. Out through the ornate doors to ask someone where I was and where I had to go, and it seemed, again, to be around Akron, and he said, "Well, it's the long way, but it's the easiest to describe," and I went down a road---seemed to be flying---and passed a sign which said "Arlington, Town Limits," and I figured, "Sure, Arlington is a suburb of Akron that juts in here; I'll pass through it and come out where I want to be." But the right direction turned into the wrong direction, and I found myself going downhill to the sea, where there was an old castle-like building in wine-red stone, glowing in the setting sun (though it was only noon) and it was built so that it BECAME the coast line of the sea, and I went inside to find myself in the glowing, almost HOT red walls, but there was a cool feeling from the massive stone, and I found that I was walking on flat pieces of metal across the floor, through which I could look down and see other levels below me, so that at a distance I could see yellow lights through the masses of metal supports, and I seemed to be in the center of some enormous structure which was very nearly hollow, and I gasped as the metal supports shifted positions, and I saw I could put my foot in the widening space and fall, and I lowered myself into a prone position to feel more secure, and I recall vividly STARING at the edges of the metal supports, bending under my weight, to see that there was still about an inch of crossbeam hidden by the curved edges of the supports, and though I knew there was danger, I really didn't feel great fear. Then I was out of the building, and in another kind of church, and I knew that this ceremony was the same length as the RIGHT one, which my friends were at, and it was merely a matter of getting together with them afterwards, and though there was more to the dream, it decreased in distinctness after I GLARED at the supports shifting under my feet, and it fades into a haze of ceremonious pomp, large church-like buildings, and masses of people.
1/20/72
LONGEST DREAM IN THE WORLD
There were MANY sections to it: getting lost in a town, trying to find a map, driving up and down many streets hoping to find landmarks, but seeing only NEW sights, talking to someone behind a desk who tries to draw a map on a sheet formed by scotch-taping three scraps of yellow paper together. Then the elaborate wading-pool sequence, driving down into a small Tannhauser-like set-village to a dead-end flight of steps, a crane comes down and lifts the car to park it somewhere, and we're at the top of a concrete parapet looking down over an 18" deep pool of water with teenage daters standing and laughing and dancing in it, lots of kids running around, too, and a series of Moroccan-type balconies at one side, vacant at first, then filling with elegant couples in regal long felt robes with silver embroidery along the edges, and then at the sand below the balconies are families in costume (Germanic villagers, more regal robes, tinselly Halloween costumes) eating elaborate lunches at picnic tables. Then there's no place to stay, and I try RE-finding the place I slept "last night" which was awful, but it's better than nothing, and there's a bed-filled garret in a dim attic filled with strewn sheets and suitcases. Again try to find a map, and then there's a magazine of YMCA's and gay places, and a lovely set of photographs advertising a hotel nightclub with boys covered in soap, yet with erections sticking up through the suds, in obscure couplings with each other; but then on the AAA-type map, in vivid color, it's obvious that the place being advertised is in Randi, New Mexico, which is circled in orange magic marker in the north-south center of the state, about 1/3 of the width from the east boundary, reached by a marked road coming up from the lower right corner of the state, up from Texas. Obviously that's no good, and there's no listing for THIS city we're in, which switches exasperatingly from being in Virginia or in WEST Virginia. Sometime I'm alone, sometime with John (for the wading pool), sometime with Mom (looking for landmarks, driving backwards or with some sort of difficulties, or without keys), and sometimes with someone, though I couldn't identify who. Seems I dreamed for HOURS!