Dream Book

[dedalus_1947]

A candy-colored clown they call the sandman

Tiptoes to my room every night,

Just to sprinkle stardust and to whisper

Go to sleep. Everything is all right.

 

I close my eyes, then I drift away

Into the magic night. I softly say

A silent prayer, like dreamers do.

Then I fall asleep to dream my dreams of you.

 

In dreams I walk with you.

In dreams I talk to you.

In dreams you’re mine.

All of the time we’re together

In dreams, in dreams.

 

But just before the dawn, I awake and find you gone.

I can’t help it; I can’t help it, if I cry.

I remember that you said goodbye.

It’s too bad that all these things,

Can only happen in my dreams;

Only in dreams, in beautiful dreams.

(In Dreams, Roy Orbison: 1963)

Sometimes I mix up my earliest childhood memories with dreams. I can’t tell the dream-like pictures from actual events. The first scene I remember is of an infant being lifted in the air, in the strong arms of a man with black, curly hair and a pencil-thin moustache. Looking down at the face of the smiling man, the babe was filled with the excitement only supreme confidence can bring. He panned the surrounding landscape in a 180 degree swivel of his head and looked down to see a young woman with light wavy hair, wearing a white linen blouse, looking up at him. She held her arms up close to her chest as if ready to catch or snatch the infant from the arms of the man. There were a handful of scruffy-looking children surrounding her, dressed in loose-fitting dresses and tee shirts. They laughed and giggled at the sight, encouraging the man to toss the baby into the air. The babe, held high in the sky, smiled down at them.
 

The clearest dream I recall is with a silhouetted house on a hill. It was an old wooden house with a triangular framed porch façade. A cement pathway divided two patches of park-like, coarse grass that extended like a thick green carpet with a grey stripe running down the middle. There was a chubby-faced 5 year old boy, wearing an over-sized, faded checkered shirt and blue jeans rolled up at the cuffs. He held his sister’s hand. She was a little girl, one or two years younger than her brother, with a large, white bow in her light, brown hair. He pointed to the house with his free hand.

“That’s our house” he announced to another boy, the girl’s twin, standing next to him.

“Then why does it look different?” the sandy-haired boy challenged, shaking his head in doubt. The smaller boy was correct; the house was wrong - but the older brother couldn’t accept the anomaly. They followed what he believed would have been their father’s instructions. They had recognized  all the landmarks and familiar sights. So why did their house look and feel different?

“I don’t know” he confessed, “but everything else is right. Let’s go in”.

“Wait a minute, Tony” the girl interrupted, squeezing his hand tightly in alarm. “What if it’s somebody else’s house?”

“It’s not” Tony replied firmly. “I’m sure this is where we’ll find Mom and Dad. I’m sure this is home”.

They had traveled a long way. Starting from the towering Sears Building in Boyle Heights, they had followed the railroad tracks to Griffith Park, and then crossed the hills through Elysian Park. They fought back their rising panic by pointing and calling out names of the places and sights they had visited with their parents on previous occasions. The older brother couldn’t remember what had happened to their parents in the department store. One minute they were looking at ice boxes and the next they were gone. He told his twin siblings that this was a new game he wanted to play; but they were becoming suspicious and apprehensive. Thankfully, they were being assisted in their journey by some kind of miraculous spell. This magical power was not only sedating his fears and giving him the words to destract and reassure his younger siblings, but it was also speeding their progress. Although apparently walking, they seemed to appear at each locale, as if transported from spot to spot, and place to place, by a mystical force. But the enchantment had evaporated in front of this house, and the magic had stopped. He could feel the heavy stillness of this moment. Darkness began to spread over the sky; covering the sun as they slowly approached the beckoning house.

“Mommy, daddy!” the girl shouted, plaintively; starting to cry when no sounds emerged from the sullen house.

“Shhh” the older boy scolded, “Tita, be quiet!” He squelched back the same urge to call out for help, sensing that it would only provoke his own tears. “They can’t hear you. They probably went to sleep waiting for us to come home”.

“I’ll go see” the sandy-haired brother shouted as he bolted forward, running up the porch stairs and disappearing behind the slamming screen door.

“Tito!” they called out together, too late to grab or restrain him. The skinny boy was swallowed by the ominous, but strangely familiar house that wasn’t quite their home. The adrenaline rush from Tito’s rash actions unfroze their legs and the pair finally started moving forward again, hand in hand.

“Tito, Tito” he whispered, peeking his head into the mahogany tinted room as Tita held back the screen door. They glided into the living room as if on skates, and then coasted through a series of rooms. Suddenly Tito reappeared at their side.

“Tony, follow me” he said, motioning with his arm, “I found Gracie!” He led them quickly into a draped and darkened room, with old wallpaper of faded pink and yellow flowers. There was a tall, lacy bassinet in the middle of the floor. Looking into the cradle, they saw a small, blonde, curly-haired baby girl sleeping peacefully. Her gentle breathing only heightened the gloomy wrongness of the setting.

“Where’s mommy and daddy?” keened Tita, letting go of her brother’s hand and bringing them both up to her eyes to hold back the cascading tears.

“I don’t know” moaned Tony, finally giving up and letting his despair flow out through his tears. Slowly, Tito stepped between the weeping pair and took their hands, sealing the sibling circle around the bassinet. He closed his eyes, whispered five words,  and firmly squeezed the hands of his brother and sister.

 
Struggling to release the strangled wail that caught in my throat, I awoke from my first nightmare. Gasping for breath and touching my cheeks for evidence of the tears I had wept in my sleep, it took me a long time to calm down. I didn’t relax until I'd made a bed check to see that Tito, Tita, my mom and dad, and Gracie were all accounted for. Slipping back into my bed, I stayed awake until daybreak, afraid to go back to sleep.

This week I started a Dream Book. I never took the idea of a dream journal seriously. I recall Frosty, a school psychologist and Kathy’s friend from college, keeping one and telling me about its benefits many years ago; and my own therapist strongly recommended one during my three years of counseling. Although I respected their opinions, and understood the importance of dreaming, I never followed their advice. I thought dreams were naturally occurring phenomena and, if they were truly important, I would always remember them in the morning and throughout the day. Yet, when I took the time to reflect on them and analyze their content and images, it struck me that the dreams I tended to remember were in fact nightmares, and they were recurrent during certain periods of my life.

Nightmares like my old dream of being lost or abandoned in Sears as a child were the ones that haunted me for years. The themes of those disturbing dreams might change with age and my emotional stages of development, but they were definitely nightmares. I could track my dream life as the theatrical offerings of a long running season, showing abandonment dreams in childhood, war and conflict dreams in adolescence, and closing with witch and serpent dreams at puberty through young adulthood. The details of all other dreams (falling dreams, going to school undressed dreams, and anthropomorphic dreams, in which I changed into someone else while still, somehow, remaining myself) slowly dissipated upon waking, and dissolved by morning. These were the ordinary dreams that I shed daily, as effortlessly and thoughtlessly as skin.

Lately, I’d been dreaming – a lot. With my daughter’s upcoming marriage, looming retirement, and preparing to leave my office, school and career, I was experiencing a multitude of dreams. It seemed as if every evening or early morning, I would awaken for a moment, fully conscious of the dream I was having, and then go back to sleep; whereupon the remnants of that dream would transform themselves into another dream. However, by the time I actually arose from bed to write my Morning Pages, all clear details of those dreams had dissipated. I was beginning to feel a real loss from this evaporation. There was a whole world of fantastic and impossible images, scenes, faeries, elves, and monsters dancing in my mind in these early morning dreams and I was letting them fade away and disappear – like Brigadoon. This had never bothered me before, but suddenly it did.

Perhaps it was the book I was reading – Becoming a Writer, by Dorothea Brande, that finally pushed me into action. The author emphasized the need to harness one’s unconscious so that it would flow into the pictures and metaphors that writers use in their work. It struck me that I shouldn’t rely on the images and descriptions modeled by other authors and writers.  I had my own reservoir of scenes in dreams that were never recorded. I visited these wonderful places every night, but I never remembered the details. Until that moment, using a Dream Book only seemed an invitation to interrupt my sleep; something I especially hated doing during the work week. But I would soon no longer need that excuse. On June 30^th I would no longer have a job, career, or profession. With retirement, I could easily afford to spend 10 minutes jotting down dreams without worrying about falling immediately back to sleep. An equation came into my head:

To Retire (Jubilarse in Spanish, or “jubilation”) = Dreaming + Recording (or Writing).

What a wonderful formula for retirement! It almost sounded like a Dream Quest. Now came the hard part; how could I apply this theoretical equation and engineer something new? What would be the device to make this happen?

The answer came at work on Monday. I was packing and cleaning out my office when I discovered a brand new “Project Planner” notebook in my desk. This was the only type of notebook I used to record all my business interactions, phone calls, and professional encounters. I preferred this particular brand, as opposed to a stenographer’s notebook, because it provided a wide margin on the left-side of the page for summaries, generalizations, and reflective comments or drawings. It was the all-purpose, daily “work journal” that I’d kept faithfully for 17 years. I had just boxed an unbroken chain of notebooks dating back to my first assignment as principal of Fire Mountain Middle School in 1991, to my last in 2009. As I held this last, unused notebook in my hand, I wondered “What will become of this practice now?” I hated the idea of tossing away a brand new notebook, so I stuck it in my bag and took it home. When I fished it out that evening, the answer hit me. A Dream Book! I could transform my Project Planner into a dream book. It would be the rebirth, the renaissance of an old friend; my notebook would evolve from projects to dreams.

On Tuesday night, I set my new Dream Book on my nightstand, along with a pencil, next to the alarm clock. This would be a test. I would see if I could find a way to tap into my unconscious. I fell asleep reading Barack Obama’s autobiography, Dreams from My Father.  I awoke at 1 o’clock after a disturbing series of dreams and remembered to reach for my journal and write down as much as possible. It was difficult keeping my eyes open, and it required an effort to recall specific details and actions. They were disappearing like smoke rings being grasped by a child’s hand. I wrote what I could and then read myself back to sleep. That morning, while writing my Morning Pages, I described the first dream I recorded in my Dream Book.

 It began nicely enough and then turned bizarre. I was standing next to President Barack Obama on the production set of a T.V. game show. The show involved overcoming three trials or challenges. These games were spread out and displayed at different locations on the set. We were being televised from an antique theatre with thick, velvety drapes and curtains, which were old and worn. I looked toward the crowd that was clapping and cheering for us, but I saw no one through the harsh lighting coming from the overhead scaffolding. A spotlight shone on a tall and hideously mascara-ed circus ringmaster who was tossing large, brightly colored disks onto the worn and warped stage floor. The round objects hit the wooden floor with a wet, sucking sound. The other two upcoming challenges were now hidden from view, pushed off to the side of the stage. Then the towering ringmaster, who looked like a garish Richard Dawson with a melon slice, Cheshire cat smile pasted on his face, started the game. The lighting switched, and the stage shifted from bright and colorful, to a dark and ominous set. The fluorescent disks slowly turned pale and mushy, like rotting flesh. They sprouted sharp, jagged teeth which began to grow and expand along the edges. Suddenly the flat, rounded disks bent inward and became independently snapping jaws, with shark-like teeth. They became menacing versions of the clacking teeth that were sold as toys in my youth – only these weren’t toys. They were voracious devourers of everything, swarming over the stage and filling the auditorium, like a wave of big jawed rats. They were everywhere, climbing the curtains, ropes, poles, and stage work. They snapped and clacked as they hopped along the floor, climbed up walls, and hung on the ceiling. The venue was covered with them. They bit and devoured everything they encountered: walls, bars, wood, steel scaffolding, and pipes. Suddenly the auditorium filled with dark, murky water. Instead of halting these grotesque clamping teeth, the water only fueled them, causing them to expand and increase in size and number. They developed deformed fish bodies with massively, over-sized, needle-sharp teeth. The auditorium also changed and was transformed into a beach and lake front. The large and slimy, piranha-like creatures were leaving the water and swarming the beach. They blanketed the bronzed and white skinned sunbathers and loungers in endless waves, biting and chewing off their flesh.

The two contestants, Obama and I, were watching these revolting scenes as if through a thick, bullet-proof glass. We saw what was happening, but were unable to do anything except stand and watch. I was secretly relieved at being isolated and safe, but confused that such an innocent game could turn into a horror movie reminiscent of Stephen King’s Langoliers.  Then the entire scene changed again. I was walking alone, along a long, dark corridor that was cave-like and claustrophobic. I was walking down the hallway of MASH Middle School, inspecting the fire and water damage from an act of school vandalism and arson. Smoke still hung in the air, and it clung to the cavernous walls and ceilings. I walked up to my office door and looked inside. I could hear the drip, drip, drip of water which sounded like the slow, chattering of teeth. Looking down I saw a slithering, silvery scaled fish on the ground. It was grinning at me, as it flopped about in its final death throes. That was the point I awoke from my dream.