Dream Sequence
In the park, across from my office I sit where the hotel should be. It is a very urban park. Futuristic, the sum of the green movement. I’m in a park, across from work, at some point in history where it would seem the post industrial world has long been moved on from.
I sit there. Alone. There are no sounds. This is how I know it’s a dream.
I’m aware in such a dream, but still, I know, it’s just a dream.
In the park I look at the office building. Room 713 doesn’t exist. My office is not there, neither is the reality of the building’s finished architecture. Only a skeleton of the building next to other skeletons of the buildings that should be the one I work within. The entire city skyline is made up of these strange types of white skeletons. You can see straight through them. But it’s not like there not complete. It feels if they are finished, that they are meant to be mere skeletons, that in this world this is how they look, there will be no bricks ever laid. The buildings are the way they are supposed to be. The buildings don’t seem to be made out of metal. They seem to be made out of paper.
The wind blows; I can feel it on my skin, I’m totally aware. I know where I’m at, but still, I can’t tell that I’m dreaming, cant make sense that nothing is out of place, that nothing that I see in this dream is real.
Then a loud speaker sounds, as if a megaphone that echoes throughout the city. I can’t make out the words. The skyscrapers, the skyline, my office, all made out of paper skeletons sound as if they are all whispering something. I can’t make out what the voices are saying.
The wind continues to blow. I’m sitting on a bench next to trees, and a tiny pond, that has many great big golden fish swimming up to the top.
A young woman walks into the park. I can’t make out her face. I can’t tell she’s a woman by the features on her body. I can only feel it, and this, once again, I can’t really explain.
She kneels down and feeds the fish some kind of food that she had in a bag. She looks up at me. Her face is bright and dark at the same time, like a solar eclipse, that’s the only way I know how to explain it.
She looks up at me, holds out her hand, and she whispers. I can’t understand her, he voice and words are just like the sounds that are streaming out of every block within the city; a city that is made out of paper skeletons that reach up toward the clouds.
I shake my head and tell her that I can’t understand her. I tell her it’s a dream. I start tapping my foot; the woman sits next to me. She touches my hand and asks me not to go, but she doesn’t speak this, I just feel her communication as if voiceless music, I can make out what she’s saying as if she is a harp, as if strings, as if notes on a read sheet of composition blues.
I keep tapping my foot. The skyline and buildings are moving back and forth as if they are dancing, but they’re not moving the way the wind is blowing. I know this because the wind is moving in the opposite direction as the back and forth slant that the buildings are weaving fourth and back to.
The woman is holding my hand; I’m starting to be able to make out her face. She tells me not to go, that she’s been waiting for me. I tell her I don’t understand. My right foot starts tapping, uncontrollably tapping, tapping in four-four beats, tapping to the movement of the buildings, to my building directly in front of me, as I sit in the park, trapped in this dream, my building in front of me that is just constructed out of paper.
The woman squeezes my hand. I tell her once again that I don’t understand. There is a sound of an ocean liner coming into the shore, it horns its arrival. She says she has to go. I say don’t, that I don’t understand. She disappears.
The buildings, as if claymations, build themselves up, looking like they should in real life. I can see my office. I can see the street and the traffic and the lights of the city and its miles of skylines as they should be. I can hear the sounds of cars and people yelling and high-heels walking on the sidewalks all over the city blocks. Everything is how it should be.
I remember that I’m still dreaming. I close my eyes. I try to wake up. I open my eyes, still trying to wake up.
I realize that I’m in room 713, in the hotel, across from my office. I’m staring at a person who is in my office. I can’t make out who the person is. I start to panic and once again I forget that I’m in a dream.
Who is that person? How did I get into room 713? What is going on? I continue to look at my office.
The person across the street who is in my office stands next to the window, it looks like they are looking directly at me. I start to grind my teeth. The other person picks up my binoculars and looks over toward the hotel in room 713 where I’m standing, where I forgot that I’m dreaming. I see the person. The person sees me. I hear those whispers again. I remember about just dreaming.
In the dream I Remember that I went home after work and are really just sleeping in my apartment, on the couch.
I can hear the sound of the train. It must be around 5:22 in the morning, because the train arrives at the station to bring morning commuters downtown at 5:30am. Even though I’m aware of this, I’m still in the hotel, still in room 713, still looking out the window towards my office at the stranger who seems to be looking at me. All of a sudden I feel my eyes, I know my body, and I know where I’m staring. I see the stranger in my office, I can see them through the tinted windows, and their face is much like the woman’s, much like a solar eclipse, intensively dark and terrifyingly bright at the same time. Everything is strange. Everything is contradictory. It feels real.
The next thing I know is that I am in my office. I am looking at room 713 through the binoculars. I am looking at the person who is standing in front of the window, where just a second ago I was standing. The person is wearing a dress, some kind of floral print, their left foot is tapping, I start to hear the ships horn again. This time I can make out what its saying, plainly enough the boat is enouncing last call to board, last call to board. I have absolutely no damn clue what any of this means.
Next I zoom in on the person in room 713. I try to make out their human physical features. Just like all the others in my dream they have a strangely eclipsed face. I can’t tell if it’s the same person, the same woman, the same symbolic hallucination as the woman that I met in the park, met earlier in this weird dream.
My foot starts tapping again, I’m consumed by a constant stream of whispers; I hear sounds that both only exist in my dreams and those that exist in reality, the real sensed sounds that I feel when I’m not sleeping. I see everything at once that I have seen, every object that I have interacted with, up to this point of the dream. I’m still at this moment of the dream staring at room 713 from the vantage point of my office. Then something strange happens.
Like a firecracker or a unconscious palpation of the heart I see through my eyes in the park, I see through the goldfishes eyes, I see through the woman in the parks eyes, I see through the paper skeleton buildings eyes, I see through the eyes I had in room 713, I see through the eyes of the woman with the floral print dress, I see through my eyes of where I really am; sleeping on my coach about to realize I slept through and missed the train to work.
At this point of this maddening dream I see through the televisions eyes, my microwaves, and my thermostats eyes. I see through my dream eyes that are in my office trapped in some kind of dream within a dream, the person I am in my dream where I’m tapping in that obnoxious rhythmic four-for patterns.
All at once I see through my computer’s eyes that are behind me in my office, facing the opposite direction, and I can see the framed picture of the fake couple dancing on the beach in black and white.
I see from every point of reference, from every plant and tree and insect all at once. Then my coffee maker clicks on and I smell the fresh aroma. I see my reflection. My second alarm goes off. I hear horns of angry morning commuters, the trucks picking up the trash, the birds chirping, the sirens of police and ambulance. I hear my heart beat-beat-beat-beating. I see from the point of a bug landing on a leaf, as one single blood vessel moving from my heart, up past my brain, and then as if a pinched fire of a candle the solar eclipse vanishes and my sight as a blood vessel explodes.
I see every color imaginable. I hear every sound possible. I feel every emotion intentionally. It is if I’m a firework, as if I was present at the big bang. I am at the formation of the planets and the earth and see with the eyes that I know consciously are my own, but eyes that are not visible, that have no mass; I see with my eyes as part of gravity.
All of this. Doctor I know. I know, you don’t have to tell me that it’s strange, I know; but it’s the only way I can make sense of this dream, and a dream that I’ve had once a month for the last five years, this is the only way how I can explain all this nonsense. I mean you’re the psychiatrist, the best one I could pay for. Its all about symbols right?
The dream, the dream; its like when you rub your eyes in the dark, and you see sparks of white light, you see color, you feel color, you see just the abstract concept of sight, what seeing actually means, even though there is no sight around, nothing physical to actual see with your eyes. Doc, does this even make sense?
But this is how it always ends, the dream that is.
My coffee pot starts talking, telling me its time to wake up, that I’m running fifteen minutes behind, that the Spencer Morgan account is to be finalized today; that the tensions between American and North Korea are now said to be, according to the associated press and not yet confirmed by the New York times passed all diplomatic resolution, the United Nations has called all foreign dignitaries home.
My coffee pot is telling me that its 5:45 am. That if I want to make it to the next train I have approximately 16 minutes, because it’s running two minutes behind, due to a pedestrian that fell asleep on the tracks last night.
I’m informed it’s going to be seventy-two degrees today with a three percent chance of rain. I’m informed that my horoscope has a good-outlook for success for the remainder of the month, and that I should take it easy on co-workers and family, because they are just human like the rest of us.
My eyes are still closed. I’m awake. I’m dreaming. I know all of this. I know exactly what is going on.
My eyes are still close. The television turns on. My stereo turns on. Mozart’s Diverteno in D Minor sounds at level five, level eight, level ten. My eyes are still closed, the stereo gets loader; level fifteen, level sixteen, my coffee pot tells me I have seven minutes to make it to the train.
Now the stereo is turned up to level twenty, the loudest it can go, the track is now at the last line, almost to the last measure in the composition. The coffee pot tells me that I’ve never once been late, that I’m the only one in the entire company that has had perfect attendance the eight years I’ve been there. The stereo, the score, the sweeping Mozart sonata is finished, it stops.
“Your coffee is getting cold” the maker tells me.
I wake up. I run to the train, four minutes until it leaves to downtown. I’m still wearing my suit from yesterday; I fell asleep on the coach. My eyes are open but I’m still thinking about the dream, it’s if I’m still stuck within the dream.
I’m on the train, the sun is starting to get warm, there are hardly any clouds out today, all the buildings windows reflect what we always see. I still hear the whispers.
I see a beautiful woman’s face, but it’s not the girl from my monthly reoccurring dream. My eyes are open. The train arrives at my stop. The doors open. People and crowds hurry and pass by me. An old man asks me what my problem is, one of those mornings he says. I see my building. I get off the train. I see all the buildings, there not made out of paper, their concrete, their real. I’m not dreaming. Finally, I’m awake.
I go up the elevator. Once again, like always I’m the first one in the office. I walk to the coffee maker, I empty the dirty grounds. The window wipers are still on the eight floor. Its 7:47. I forget about the dream. I forget about her. I’m all alone. I’m on time. I’m waiting.
Adventures In American Writing 