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January was a brutal month in every way, and I'm delighted to be done with it, so that we might light February band birthday candles and spend maybe one day choosing love. At the very least, I will have a brief reprieve from doctor's appointments. As Robert Jordan wrote, “Life is a dream from which we all must wake before we can dream again.” But the story doesn't end when we flip over the covers or the calendar page or click off the screens. The stories don't stop coming, even in our brains' “off hours.” I marvel - and shudder* - at the inscrutable algorithm curating my unconscious. *A minor trigger warning: There will be blood, but often softened by the fantastical. And I've left the most scarring details out.
Today's 2-Minute Tale
My dreams are quite boring. My nightmares, on the other hand, are spectacular. So alien to me I often feel like the pet my mind keeps. Aware it goes to work, but not understanding where, only away. Hopeful it may return with treats.
Sometimes, the treats still have bones in them.
~*~
Everywhere the red moonlight touches, the earth cracks open into flames. We are running for our lives, hiding in abandoned hotels. The wallpaper is moving. Spiders. This is a good sign - Didn’t someone once tell me spiders on the wall symbolize protection? There is a prophecy. We must find the great, glowing blue dove that can extinguish the world.
~*~
I am a young nurse in the 1930s, perhaps, based on the uniforms. Nightly, I dole out the pills in little cups, checking open mouths for confirmation they’re swallowed. A psychiatric facility in an old Victorian house, a peaceful respite for raging minds in a removed country setting. At night, when the patients have gone to sleep, the staff relaxes in the rocking chairs of the wraparound porch.
One night, a woman emerges from the woods, bedraggled, accompanied by at least nine small children. Each pull scissors from their pockets, open them lengthwise, and begin sawing at their necks. I rush to intervene, and am held back - I haven’t had enough training. Chaos. Cut to us tallying the dead, patching up and sedating the few children we could save.
~*~
I am one of mathematician John Nash’s schizophrenic hallucinations. I have never been real.
~*~
I am a detective. There’s been a murder at a winery. The sunlight coming in through the wine bottles is turning the room red. Injured, the victim tried to crawl away. The bloody handprints on the floor are too small. I wake before I can round the corner.
~*~
It doesn’t know I’m watching, yet, the demon. It chooses targets in crowds. The person slowly realizes everyone around them is them, each version doing mundane things that will somehow result in their death. The one aware of this is IN the scenario the demon has deemed the most horrible. I have powers, and can hide in space and time, traveling to any city I’ve ever visited as long as I’m holding a piece of mail from that place. I can take one person along, holding their hand. But I can’t help her. She’s inside the ritual and it’s too late.
By the end, she welcomes the death he’s chosen for her … not with resignation, not with acceptance, but with joy. It is so gruesome … so bizarre … I wake from the nightmare afraid of myself for imagining it, and tell no one.
I cannot choose the movies my mind makes, no matter what hopeful reference materials and sunny suggestions I leave scattered about my days (though I've been known to dream-rehearse, sometimes). And on some level, I’m as grateful as that final girl; why settle for being slightly unsettled by lousy stories and second-rate nightmares? I am horrified enough, crudely and with less art, while I’m awake.
***
Last night, I had my first anxiety dream about my upcoming surgery. In it, the procedure was successful, but as I inspected my bruises and scars from the passenger seat, we got boxed in during an ICE raid (which makes gallbladder removal seem less scary, I guess). In the waking world, I'm as prepared as a person can be, on a strict diet for two more months so that no performances will be impacted. But that means no chocolate for Valentine's Day. No tasties at Rob's birthday show February 7at Island Pride Oasis (so you have to come and eat them for me). No treats after all.
Except maybe this beautiful dream-team cover of my song, “Hum,” performed by Eryn Michel and Sean Morse last week on the virtual open mic Rob and Rowan started during pandemic. A review recently pointed out it's about giving what you're able, savoring what you can. A valentine for the times.
