Dream diary: "Birthday"

Last night several of my children were spending the night, and my daughter was cold in her room; I turned up the heat and about six in the morning had the most intricate writer's nightmare. I dreamed that I was young and in a class with John Gardner. (Why? The only person I know who has talked at length about what John Gardner meant to him as a teacher is Jeffrey Ford, so I don't know a lot about Gardner as a teacher other than what Jeff has said. And certainly not whether Gardner had an affinity to cats...)

We were to discuss a story called "Birthday." It seems we were at Brown, in a classroom in a nineteenth-century house. Gardner was seated behind a bullet-gray metal desk; he became threatening to the class as time passed, and kept opening the top right drawer in a way that made people uneasy. They seemed to feel that he might soon brandish a weapon. But I was sitting beside and oddly near the desk and kept craning to see what was inside. Neatly arranged boxes full of brightly colored pushpins, round-headed short pins, and other small shapes filled the drawer. It looked rather like some Modernist mosaic, but more complicated.

People began to get up and leave. Soon police surrounded the building. I was trying to comfort Gardner, who at some point (understandably so) transformed himself into a cat (a pleasant-looking Tenniel gray tiger) and curled up in what must have been the desire to protect himself from the world. I held him in my arms close to my face, and though he scratched at me several times in agitation, he did not attempt to flee away from me and hide. A single remaining classmate tried to call for help.

Noises came from below; perhaps some sort of rescue was beginning, but it made me strangely uneasy. I got up and began climbing upward through the house and took refuge on what I believe was the third floor, the cat still in my arms close to my face. I opened a closet and crept inside to lie down, my head and torso and the cat inside its shelter.

Robots were combing the house, spraying pesticide. The remaining classmate tried to call her mother on her cell phone, but could not get through. (Perhaps because there were no cell phones when Gardner was alive?) After a while, she lay down on the floor of the room and did not stir. The house was full of the stink of pesticide.

I told the cat a secret, that today was really and truly my birthday. Gardner-cat seemed quite interested and stirred and nosed at me, but of course he was a cat now, and not a talking Cheshire cat, so I was glad that he understood but knew that he could not tell me what moved in his mind.

A lady robot, also gun-metal gray but with shocking-pink eyes chartreuse neon hair, entered the room and began spraying the corners of the room. She rolled to the closet and began spraying the cat in my arms and me. Being a writer and a dreamer to boot, I was able to change my point of view to a more limited omniscient view and see the death of cat-Gardner and girl from above. A few classmates filtered into the building later on and announced (though ineffectually) their displeasure at what had happened. The room stank of cat piss. The girl and cat were still dead, but it was a sunny day without robots, though yellow tape and policemen were still outside.

Bontasaurus poetry assemblage & more

Dave Bonta's second annual list of poetry books of the year is up, each chosen by a different writer:

Just like last year, I thought I’d put out a call to poetry readers to contribute to a favorite poetry books list that doesn’t pay much heed to critical fashions or even date of publication. I asked people to try to select a single favorite book, which I realize is a tough assignment… and not quite everybody managed it. (I allowed a few reviewers to sneak in a second book, as you’ll see.) Unlike last year, I forgot to do this earlier in December so people could use the list for holiday shopping purposes. Oh well. Poetry books do make great Valentine’s Day gifts! And the responses I got are, I think you’ll agree, wonderfully varied, personal and eccentric. Thanks to everyone who took part. —Dave

Take a look! My choice was Susan Hankla's Clinch River, which I reviewed for The Hollins Critic.

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29 December, the fifth day of Christmas

And Gary talked about Thaliad...
What fun!

I'm adding an assemblage-update: I'm realio-and-trulio touched by the wonderful Gary Dietz putting me in his personal pantheon here. Gary is an all-around interesting person and a wonderful single father who has surmounted more challenges than most people ever face I'm putting a link here because I'm pleased by his tribute but also because it feels immodest to say so, and most of the people who will read this post have already passed by. So I suppose I'm hiding it in plain sight in order to say thank you, Gary--what a sweet man.

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When I woke, I was having such an obvious, complex dream about the state of arts culture and my own minor place in the hierarchy of that world that I'm still bemused. Talk about symbolic! It involved being in a large Checker cab with a bunch of male writers (including Bob Dylan) and no back door. I had that horrible dream sensation of forgetting something--in this case, my manuscripts to read--but was rescued by sending out a mental call for a very large bird to fetch them.

Good morning, snow--

Woke up at 5. Groped my way downstairs, turned up the heat, and went back to bed. Woke up a bit later with Theodora the long-haired calico diva pressed against one side of me and the Puffcat (the please-comb-me blue Persian) on the other. Suddenly realized there was an enormous bird splayed out just below the Puffcat. Perhaps it was a gull, only its beak was more like that of a toucan, and a little uneven under my fingertips. Dead or just tired? I glanced down at the floor and saw a black box of playing cards with tall white letters: INFINITY. So exhausted I fell asleep anyway. Woke up again and Michael is telling me that gulls have lice, and that this gull has lice. Fell asleep anyway and woke up when the alarm went off at 6:45, cats gone, bird gone, INFINITY cards gone back to INFINITY... 

The Glimmerglass giveaway is over. 1,564 people signed up for a chance, and the winner is T. Lee Deprospero of Florida. Confetti!

Question of the day: Why am I, a Southerner, not in Florida instead of living in a snow heap with more lovely snow falling steadily out of the rather low sky? Bonus question: Why do I have 20/20 vision in dreams?

The Bandersnatch

Drifted into a wee small nap, and woke dreaming that I was at a literary conference, staying in a marvelous hotel with sunny big rooms and wide halls that felt like home (only tidier, lacking progeny.) The place was called The Bandersnatch, and the outside was made of wood, wonderfully carved in a folk-art sort of way with the Bandersnatch itself closely surrounded by flowers and leaves and insects, all stained deep, brilliant colors with inks rather than being painted. The predominant color was a deep greeney color with a dash of turquoise blue in the mix. The sight was so wonderful that I felt disoriented on waking to realize that there is no such carved, inked hotel called The Bandersnatch in this world.

I tell you not to bore you with somebody else's dream but in order to increase the knowledge of The Bandersnatch, in hopes that some quirky, generous billionaire should be inspired to add it to the collection of marvels in our world. I believe my friend Clive could design the carved, inked Bandersnatch in his prospect of flowers and leaves. I always wanted to see a Bandersnatch, and now I have. However, all its sharp detail is disintegrating, as is the way in dreams. Like vampires, they suffer from the light.

P. S. As this is a second post of the day, I would hate for you to miss the beau présent challenge in the first. Scroll down! Be not shy but increase the strangeness and color of the world! Love, Marly

Dream words

Rebecca Beatrice Miller,
quazdraws.tumblr.com

One of my favorite things is to write or read in a dream, close enough to the edge of waking to remember the whole or part when I wake. Whole chapters in a book I was working on have come to me in that pleasant, rich state.

Often a poem in a dream seems to me of a massively different order than a day-poem, and I have sometimes wakened in tears because the thing I wrote or read seemed so dazzling, magnified by dream. This morning, just as my husband rolled out of bed and woke me, I was dreaming that I saw a poem on a table in a shadowy room. I bent over it and had taken in a few glimpses when I woke up.

Of course I immediately wrote a poem. And of course it was not the poem in the dream because I hadn't gotten to read the entire poem and only had a few beams of light in my head. But it captured those bits of light and wove them into something that is a kind of souvenir of the dream.

It was a delicious way to start a day. Have a good one!

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If you're a new visitor and want to know more about my writings, please check the tabs above for my 2012 books--A Death at the White Camellia Orphanage (novel/Mercer/Ferrol Sams Award), The Foliate Head (collection of poetry/Stanza Press), and Thaliad (epic adventure in verse/Phoenicia)--and 2011's poetry collection, The Throne of Psyche. For Thaliad, the Phoenicia Publishing page for the book has a collection of review clips and comments and good help on how to order in hardcover or paperback. You may read samples from the three 2012 books at Scribd.

Tell

Since you know all, and I nothing, tell me what I dreamed last night.
--George Herbert, Jacula Prudentum

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The royalty free "Dream Staircase" is by Reena Young of San Francisco, www.sxc.hu/