Jacob Lawrence, Dreams No. 1 (1965)

Mark's Pages

Intro | Music | Fiction | Photography | Travel | Workbook | Resume | Links | Forums | TriadCity

Dreams

Shopping cart in a hilly parking lot.
This isn't Idaho.
There's still time to make it back to school for your morning presentation.
Special Forces school.
Travel in Europe, with a strange girl you barely know.
Stolen motorcycle.
You've joined the Special Forces.
Walk in La Jolla.
The two of you are living in your childhood apartment.
A cup of wine on the table.
"How long has it been since you worked, ten years, then?"
Women huddle around the photos, nodding, pointing.
Confused.
The band's on stage at the student center.
Perturbed voice: "What are you doing in there?"
Shower and shampoo before going on stage.
Your band is playing a university student center.
Exile, a strange landscape...
You've returned to work very early in the morning...
Road trip with the band, a large old Buick, you in the back.
Six at bats, six home runs.
Your guitar tech loves your Strat.
Bicycle to work.
Mice under the blankets...
Your helicopter group has completed their mission.
The water is receding, leaving you just ankle-deep in sand.
A man and an older woman are there.
Moving to a new apartment, from one end of the complex to the other.
Late to work, half a day late.
Bicycle on city streets, alongside coastal cliffs.
Run and hide.
She'll be alright...
The two of you are living without authorization in the dorm.
Your girlfriend is cheating on you.
There's an exit from the game world...
Recurring dream:
A huge outdoor music festival is being held in the field surrounding your house.
Suzi looked like Hitler.
With evident trepidation the authorities remove you from class.
You and Paul McCartney are giving a presentation on the music of the Beatles.
You're participating in the complex robbery of a large installation.
The interchange is confusing.
It's good to be back at work.
Your colleague has fallen asleep at his desk.
The lady in the passenger seat says it's too hot.
The studio monitors are different.
Jonathan is in the studio, transferring DAT mixes to cassette.
Bicycle, in the old neighborhood.
I left dozens of photos on the wall, when I moved out.
We're staying in a hostel in Europe.
You and Eric Clapton are together in the audience at a large outdoor music festival in the U.K...
The famous singer who has avoided crediting you all these years...
She's in her home town...
Complicated game, a cross between treasure hunt and obstacle course.
Our hostess is angry at you.
Your friend has died suddenly.
The head of a grinning mannequin, with mirror shades.
Look out the window, as you round a narrow corner between old-looking buildings.
Railroad car, Europe.
Stalingrad.
Guitar case: Les Paul.
Your things are in the back of a gray Volkswagen beetle.
I ordered steak and eggs.
Kitty's caught a mouse.
You and the ghosts are pleased to see each other.
Small plane.
She's going feral.
From deep right you're throwing the runner out at Third.
You, your lover, and another couple have flown to Rio.
The Archangel Michael stands above the house, protecting us.
A gray-haired woman is in the laundry room.
You and the kitty are asleep in your car.
There's no room for the new furniture.
727.
Your gear is broken, the recording equipment you struggled so long to afford.
A bad man has committed crimes.
You're taking over as the manager of an international import retail store in a large suburban mall.
In the forest, Native Americans sleep in four-poster beds...
Aerosmith are filming a video shoot somewhere in the upper floors.
The aircraft begins its takeoff run by hurling down a narrow chute...
World Trade Center elevator.
Bicycle trip.
They've changed the furniture where you're staying.
Guests are checking in.
Cheap wine in the window.
Items in the Weapons Room look more like confiscated pornography.
You don't want to be in that man's car.
Every room a bathroom.
Water is filling the ground-floor rooms.
At the lookout point there's a laundry facility:
There are so many offices that a shuttle is provided.
The hotel has a problem which has forced you to sleep outside.
Now you're on a city bus.
Her colleague has an advanced computer screen.
The office is more crowded than you remember.
It's just like those dreams you're always having.
The cliff is dangerous now.
Spider eggs, thick as plastic beads.
Large white toad, more like a small white bulldog...
You wake from a dream to realize that there are people swimming...
The plane must land through an obstacle course of billboards and signs.
Wrong keyboard combination: the windows behave incorrectly.
Every single one of them...
Kittens in a cardboard box, piled in layers.
Inside the cage the chicken's body has decayed...
You left peas and corn on the countertop.
You're not a wolf, you're a Doberman...
To have had someone with you in the piece.
The chorus of dogs.
Pushing a heavy, potted plant laboriously down the brownstone stairs.
Haven't been inside your dorm room for some time.
It's so rare to see penguins at this latitude.
If they were married they'd let you sleep behind the chairs.
Vacuum tubes...
Manhattan highrise.
Shoeboxes of collectors' trading cards...
You and I were leaving on a road trip somewhere, along with a girlfriend of yours.
Her famous breasts preceded her into the room by only inches.
You left your football in the school yard.
Where is this place?
There's a party in progress inside your home.
You're fighting with an old friend, an ex-lover.
You're in charge of an ICBM missile facility which has been placed on high alert status.
Your 12-string acoustic guitar is making no sound as you pluck the strings.
Images.
Smile.
School bus, urban streets...
In the bedroom, multiple portable alarm clocks...
"Who are you people, and what are you doing in here?"
The cries of crows.
Students, college age, earnest faces, backpacks, gathered in a group around you.
A woman carries you in the pool, swimming gracefully on her back with you in her arms.
You're swimming in an outdoor swimming pool.
In dreams you often pedal your car as if it were a bicycle...
A line of businessmen in suits queues for the lift.
Late afternoon light throws long shadows down a narrow concrete alley.
Several members of your department are seated together in a rental car shuttle bus.
Your old room.
You're sleeping in the back room when customers begin to arrive.
Your great-grandmother's house.
Wheelchair races, down the shoulder of a steep winding hill with heavy traffic.
You push the couch out of the way.
Looking out the window of your childhood apartment.
There's a spirit in your home, chill and malevolent.
You have to walk home, there's no ride.
A hobby store, selling model airplanes and wargames.
Your old neighborhood.
"It's faster if I fly."
There are sheep present.
She could use the computer I keep in the bathroom.
"It's water, isn't it?"
There's one on a small table near the stairs.
A fugitive is being chased.
Along the coastal trail the families look daunted.
Chambers, chambers, seen through cold water flowing slow like icicles.
"Why don't you wait upstairs?"
"Are we going east?"
To the side of the roadbed:
"It all begins here."
I was surprised to find you staying in the same hotel.
That's the nature of spiders.
To your amazement a boat appears through thick fog...
Your friends, dressed as '60s longhairs, present an educational sketch...
The apartment has half-filled with warm water.
The city bus takes you the long way around.
Stabbed.
This apartment won't do.
We're in green uniforms, although you've lost your rifle.
Ahead of us the bridge is collapsing.
Your band members have added to the arrangement.
Checking out a new bicycle.
In your mouth are globes of soft rubber, like melted pencil erasers.
Landing above a multi-story courtyard.
"Would you like me to make you breakfast?"
She talks on the phone with her best friend.
Low wooden desks with wood-backed chairs, small, childrens' size.
The students move between classrooms inside laundry carts.
You're loading furniture into a car.
Table in a bay window.
They're attacking the port.

Back to the Fiction section main page.