Sometimes old dreams float up to the surface of consciousness after more than half a century. This is one such, but it is not a faithful recording of the dream, which did involve being on a strange planet in the dark, but didn’t have any floating triangles. What it is is the collaboration of two dreamers, one a kid, and one that still-kid decades hence.
…and then she woke up.
Do we lose consciousness, or gain it?
Here we are at year’s end. And here is an acrostic poem that is both revelatory and cryptic.
Dusty & Left Alone/Trivial One
Duty-free & obsessed with Trivia
User friendly so Ell O Ell
Seeking Kindness & room & kibble–O
Tears of Shame may yet fill my well–in
Yearning Dreams there sleeps une Belle
Ocelot Dreams
On the plain & off the grid
Creep & pounce or reconsider
Endgames of the vole & grebe
Indefensible arriba
On the go big cats will scram
Theory blesses–practice damns
L’envoi
Bullies preen & boss a lot
Till they meet an Ocelot.
These two efforts, one a month in the making and one reactive and near-instantaneous, complement each other, if not quite complimentarily.
frailty
when a dream shatters
one must be careful not to
step on shards barefoot
Merry Christmas and Peace and Love to all who read these words, be you Christian or otherwise (I’m an Otherwise myself). May we all see a better year ahead.
Velvet Dreams
Vexacious times wear Trouble like a beard
Vicissitudes cause wars, most undeclared
Enchantments give a wish a wheel to steer
Events make crosses children borne must bear
Lieutenancies emerge in Fate’s fell spate
Love’s touch lends voice to scent we taste & see
Legalities help predators predate
Voracious carnivores still spare the pea
Victorious survivors sport the stoma
Ventricular caprice makes tragic trauma
Entranced botanicals enjoy the loam
Enhanced mechanicks find a shop & glom
The SATINED VISIONS steer us through the isthmus
Then make(s) The Presence present(s) here/now/Christmas
Note: “vexacious” and “mechanicks” are deliberate misspellings. They would drive my younger self crazy. I refer him, and you, to the “extended play” version of Ralph Waldo Emerson’s famous quotation about foolish consistency:
“A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines. With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do. He may as well concern himself with his shadow on the wall. Speak what you think now in hard words, and to-morrow speak what to-morrow thinks in hard words again, though it contradict every thing you said to-day. — ‘Ah, so you shall be sure to be misunderstood.’ — Is it so bad, then, to be misunderstood? Pythagoras was misunderstood, and Socrates, and Jesus, and Luther, and Copernicus, and Galileo, and Newton, and every pure and wise spirit that ever took flesh. To be great is to be misunderstood.”
I just love Index Cards, so much so that I think of them as friends, as benevolent messengers, as the Type O Blood of information conveyance. They go in pockets, on refrigerators, in those nifty little metal boxes with the cute dividers. They are big enough to contain the hugest ideas. Write small enough and you can put a decent-sized short story on one. They’re great for five-minute portraiture, ten-minute dream capture, fifteen-minute landscapes, sixty-minute meeting minutes. For reminders, Valentines, plot outlines, and affirmations they are hard to beat. So here’s to ’em:
It’s RED WHITE & BLUE on one side–the other blanc
N is for NOTES or NOTIONS or NOSTALGIA
Dreams need not fade if this & a pencil serve as recorder
Edifying, talking points, & love may be conveyed
Xylophone music written & drawn with gravitic graphitic pyrotechnics
Special thanks and manifold gratitude to my Sweetheart, Denise, for not only introducing me to the Index Card Project but also for giving me a pack of 100 cards, one of which I used for this post. Sweetheart, special as they are, the entire pack of cards could not thoroughly describe your wonderfulness!
it begins to fade so let’s hurry: a classroom for adult continuing education
a stern teacher perhaps mrs. holmberg from 6th grade
a door to the bright-sunshined outside opens and it is you
and you have wigs with you some brunette some redhead
and i realize: it’s a class in social dynamics
you are a guest lecturer
there are some minutes before class begins
there is an empty seat two from me and you sit in it
the guy between you and me is a friend of mine but opportunistic
he begins to chat you up and i interrupt and ask him to stand
he does and i do and i ask him to sit where i had been sitting
i sat where he had been say “that’s ever so much nicer” for now i’m sitting next to you
i’m sitting next to you for the first time
what a smile you have
i ask you how old you were when you gave your first lecture and you say “three”
i ask if it were in church and the strolling teacher looks at me sternly and i wake up
One with Clay, Image and Text 