A dream inside a dream inside a dream
An exploration of entanglement through a dream mosaic
I wake from a dream inside a dream inside a dream. I wake, facing the warmth of the window, curled fetal onto my right side. My body unfurls but I keep my eyes shut tight, remembering fragments of dreamscapes, drawing them closer as I focus on the feeling. When my eyes open my nails are dug into my palm leaving three little red crescents.
In the first dream, I was alone in a hotel and it was really thunder storming, I mean coming down relentlessly. The gutters were for some reason inside the building and pouring the rain in, flooding everything. I saw my laptop dry but the outlet it was plugged into wet wet wet, inviting chaos in the form of an electrical current. I was afraid my computer would get fried so I crouched onto the flooded ground, it was blood red, and crawled behind the desk to unplug it. I remember tensing in terror of getting electrocuted, but it was Very Important not to fry the computer. Also on the desk, an inch from the window, my 8 x 12 inch green fairytale journal, the one I write in every morning with the embossed cover and the gold clasps and the gold trimmed pages, sopping wet. saturated with water, water spilling out from the pressure of the clasps holding it shut. I’m not sure what happened to the journal. It seemed to be dissolving but it also felt safe, if I just held it in my hands and felt the water pouring from it.
Next, I met a dog in the hotel lobby. The lobby looked kind of like the lobby of the Stanley from The Shining, warm and wood and rugs, before the atmosphere became a looming sense of dread. Before everything went berserk. The dog was tall and lithe and its fur was messy, a little weathered. Blonde, or golden depending on the light. It stared into my eyes and led me outside to where it was at once bright and sunny and green trees and flowers and people in smiling clusters. Maybe this is where all the people were. Maybe this is why I was alone in the hotel. I notice a series of bright orange cones. The people, none of whom I knew or talked to, were doing some sort of relay race. Somehow I got pulled into it and before I knew it I was totally breathless running so so fast but I was always the last one to finish no matter how hard I ran.
A dream inside a dream. I woke up and now I was surrounded by writing.
All sorts of writing. Somewhere I met a professor. Somewhere I became enchanted. Somewhere I was reading a dizzying array of beautiful essays from all different authors. And prompts. I remember so many prompts. Somewhere I was becoming a mosaic, a beautiful pattern, a tiling together, an intricate story. Somewhere I woke up.
A dream inside a dream inside a dream.
Somewhere I was cutting my ex fiance into tiny little squares with the knife Luke gave me. Somewhere it was bloody little pieces of perfectly sliced flesh and it was fantastic and warm and red.
Somewhere, in my bed, I woke up. A list: Dream inside a dream inside a dream Dreamed I cut my ex up into little pieces Dreamed so many fantastic things Dreams that felt sadness and lifeless and submitting Dreams like affirmation of all this leaving my body Dreams like I am digesting Dreams like I am letting go Dreams like this wretched mess is moving Dreams like the writing is exorcising I take a deep breath, hold it, stand, reach my arms above my head, lean back, spine lengthens, heart widens, neck drops back. Sparkles in my eyes in my skull in my cheeks in my chest. Shards? Shimmers Pleasant dizziness Breath, more breath Sit down on the bed, another list coming “Nothing” is very “something” Longing Openness Yearning is wanting Eros snakes through my skin delivering messages Overwhelmed nervous system Lots left undigested Writing is exorcising Breath
A week ago I stood near my door, inhaled deep, became so dizzy I had to run across the room to catch myself on my bed before I crashed to the floor in blackness.
This morning, again, a deep inhale, darkening vision, dizziness.
This isn’t a new occurrence. When you are born open, sensitive, there is a lot coming into your nervous system. Flooding your senses. The nothing of breath touching everything there is in this body. There is much in this body held. Much in this body leaving.
What is this dizziness - this larger than me energy rushing through me, beyond me? I wonder about it. Look to name the ineffable thing.
Alan Watts says, “a thing is a think.” That we have to chop reality up into little bits, things, to think about them, to try to understand. Because the truth is, it’s all entangled. It’s all one. Quantum entanglement, Or if you prefer, as I do, a Big Cosmic Fuck.
In her essay, Hopelessly Entangled in Stars,
sings, “Thoughts are feathers, pine needles, gasoline, sex. Thoughts are butcher knives and clay, unopened umbrellas, blood. Thoughts are buttered popcorn and mildewed books and funerals in empty churches filled only with prayer.Thoughts are consciousness, and consciousness creates all things. Einstein and other scientists have proven this repeatedly. Our thoughts drive our reality.”
Our breath, it seems, is the way consciousness moves round our bodies, penetrates our physical being, our flesh, our meat. Breath draws the subtleties. If you can’t breathe into it, you can’t feel it. You can only think it; you can only thing it. Conceive of it. Abstract it. I don't have scientific data to back that, but I do have the time I breathed into my belly, into Luke’s, with him inside me, our vulnerability pressing warmth into each others’ bodies, and I felt something I’d never in my life felt. I felt opening where there had only been muscles tensing, bracing against feeling. I’ve felt these openings again and again, through my body penetrated or his hands on my skin or our hungry lips. I have felt this opening, breathing, something awakening.
Everywhere, Eros snakes through my skin, delivering messages. Invisible in everything yet realer than anything. This pathway to the infinite. This moment transcendent. This. Bliss.
Somewhere, I sit on the edge of my bed. I am not dizzy now and I see Luke has sent me a message. It’s a photo of a new dog his mom brought home from the shelter. Our newest “foster,” he tells me.
I tell him about my dog dream.