i had a dream i was a teenage girl. she was on a train, sitting next to the boy she likes.
she's over-analyzing her face. i function as her eyes and as mirror: i see her pimples,
dry skin, her little facial hair, and her flakey makeup. she complains about all of this,
but the boy she’s with offers no response but a warm smile and a gentle gaze.
she holds eye contact with him in the same manner, and then we see the scenery outside the train.
the green pastures, and rivers, and mountains bending and warping with speed.
clearly i've been worrying too much. clearly these past few days have been horrible,
not because of the material reality of my life, but because my mind has shifted -
degenerated! - my perspective, my world.
during parent-teacher night at my daughter’s school, the teacher reads a story to the parents.
the story is short:
the dad arrives to the school and steps onto the playground. the kids, upon
seeing him arrive, duck behind a wall to hide their shame. one boy, after explaining he failed his
classes and is repeating the year, says to the dad, "i'll always be in elementary school."
the shame is felt by everyone.
when the dad leaves, he doesn't return the way he came - why not go back through the door, where walls
would separate them from his sight? because, as he walks across the playground, with tears in his eyes,
laughing softly behind quiet sobs, he can turn back one last time. because, this way, he can see them
struggling with a much-too-big backpack, clutching poster boards in unsteady arms, and talking to their
friends about the mysteries of basic arithmetic.
when the teacher finished reading the story, the room was filled with tears. parents were dismissed,
and as i lovingly teased my daughter by tugging her ear, the other parents chatted about how much they
enjoy discussing school subjects with their children. one father, in particular, turned to his daughter
and said, "i love how you talk about literature."
this dream made me wake up with such a desperate cry. the dad in the story, it was my dad. i've been missing him
so much lately, and i miss our long car conversations about everything under the sun. and how, when i was little,
he never simply handed me the answer.
outdoor backyard party. all the women in my family are young girls again, myself included. i see myself as an adult interacting with the girls, seeing them play with balloons and rubber balls. i look like my mother, and i might be my mother. everything was pink and red.
DEAR DREAMS,
you are the only thing that that matters. you are my hope and i live for and in you. you are rawness
and wildness, the colours, the scents, passion, events appearing. you are the things i live for. please take me over.
dreams cause the vision world to break loose our consciousness.
dreams by themselves aren't enough to destroy the blanket of dullness. the dreams we allow to destroy us cause us
to be visionaries/see the vision world.
every day a sharp tool, a powerful destroyer, is necessary to cut away dullness, lobotomy, buzzing, belief in human
beings, stagnancy, images, and accumulation.as soon as we stop believing
in human beings, rather know we are dogs and trees, we'll start to be happy.
once we've gotten a glimpse of the vision world (notice here how the conventional language obscures:
WE as if somebodies are the centre of activity SEE what is the
centre of activity: pure VISION. actually, the VISION creates US. is anything true?).
once we have gotten a glimpse of the vision world, we must be
careful not to think the vision world is us. we must go further and go crazier.
from
blood and guts in high school by kathy acker