I Write A Dream

 It’s night-time, everything is a dark shade of blue and the air has a grain to it, as if it is full of dust or soot. I am walking very slowly down a dirt path way that is lined by reflective white stones and I seem to be waiting for something to happen. In the distance I can see the sea, but can not hear it as it seems to be paused from motion. I am walking towards it. I hear my dog, Cap, barking. The sound echoes and he runs to me from a dark pebbled beach to the left and in front of me. He has a spring to the way he runs which always amuses me, he is a far too old a dog to move like that. The white of his fur is as reflective as the stones, where as the black makes him almost invisible. We seem to be the only living things around and the only things moving.

            We continue, now in silence, and to the right of us we begin to see a curve of a concrete staircase that twists around an abandoned Lighthouse. We are drawn to it.

             At the point when we are close it, the waves pulse into motion and the sound is deafening, I focus on the steps and stand very still, my breath is in the air. Cap barks very loudly so I look down to him. I see his face very clearly and his eyes look inky in this light. He barks again softly whilst holding my gaze and then runs away, up the Lighthouse steps.

            I don’t want to let him go but I am unwilling to follow him. So I stand at the foot of the Lighthouse and stare up at the entirety of the building. It impresses me how large and solid it is as I have never seen one close up before. I wonder why its light is not on and why the thin windows look like sheets of ice in wooden frames. I have an overwhelming urge to pick up a white stone and break them all, but I do not.

            I start to walk up the steps, very cautiously, as the steps are very cold and seem damp. I really don’t want to slip as there is no one there to catch me. Then I am looking at the glass at the peek of the Lighthouse as if I am elevated equal to it and I see shadows within. My vision scopes down the height of the Lighthouse and I see that the steps are choking around it. I then see myself walking at a steady pace to the top. I am dressed in a black trench coat and a long scarf; it has lost its colour in the darkness.

            Something must have happened in the windowed room as I now see myself moving much quicker down the stairs, I am worried for myself as there are no hand rails, and I feel like I am going to fall. I don’t know where Cap has gone.

            I am now seeing out from in my own body again and I am still moving downwards, only now the spiral is evening out, and the further I progress, the slower I move and tomb stones appear around me, at first a few then many. The air becomes denser as I descend.

            I am unable to turn around and look back at the Lighthouse, but the fear I felt at the top has gone. I am clearly now in a cemetery, it is still night and I can make out the dark emerald colour of the grass beneath me. Like the stars, the blades are wet and I can feel cold beads of dew frozen to them, as if I am also the grass. This time there is no barking and my eyes look into a space which is cluttered with tomb stones, and between the two most striking graves Cap steps out from the one to the left.  I really want to walk forwards and stroke him or even call out to him, but, again, I can not. I feel like I’m not aloud to.

Trying to write a dream is difficult. If you attempt to write a dream, as I have attempted above, you may find yourself  using the word 'I'. However, the prospective in a dream is hard to place as it often shifts and you identify with many of the 'characters', perhaps even becoming them and all of these people are all creations and segments of oneself (like the movie Inspection, 2010). The 'I' in a dream may indeed change or disappear completely. If  you are watching your self in a dream, then in many ways that 'I' is not you. It cannot be. You must be the one watching that 'I' as you would in the logic of life. Yet it is you just as much as the background is you, as it is your dream and your creation. It all is you. Also the process of constructing a random and often nonsensical dream into a piece of writing means adapting it, to put it into writing means changing it into a form that is expressive and concise. This adds to the difficulty of writing a dream. You may have to examine the relationship between your dreams form and writings consciousness that is trying to control and find seance in the dream in order to successfully. I would recommend reading Maxine Hong's 'The Woman Warrior'; Memoir of a Girlhood Among Ghosts' as it shows how to successfully write in a dream like voice throughout.  And most of all I would recommend giving writing from this prospective a try.

None of the images for this post are copyrighted or owned by me.

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