Dream Combinatorics One

1
Back in the living room I see more red candles are lit and placed on the dining room table. The table is raised at the center like a spiral, draped by an embroidered white cloth, and there is a thin crooked brass tube shaped like a question mark dangling upside down from the ceiling, above the peak of the spiral. Beneath the tree there is a cabin, a woodland cabin high in the mountains owned by some wealthy entrepreneur. Agents storm all four stairwells of the abandoned apartment complex. The passage leads to the bottom floor of a many-storied warehouse. I slam the screen door shut and a swirl of desert sand blasts my face. In the final room of the underground complex we find a grandfather clock. Green helicopter search lights reflect off the wall of the next building over. The image of a map outlining the location of a series of costal towers and the track of an abandoned monorail  – with a deep sense of related urgency – fade from my mind, leaving me sickened. Impossibility within the dream serves as a doorway.

2
A pale blond man next to me attempts to answer my question. The ceiling seems higher than the roof indicated from outside. He will wait here at the shore for the tide to take him away. Boxes of electronics, hygiene products, snack foods, and other useless items fill the place, a testament to the age that brought this upon us. I doubt the bus lines are in service here anyway. At the ends of the chains hang a variety of keys, some skeleton keys, some car keys, some electronic chipped security keys. We move to the center of the building away from the windows. I am handed a drink. Preserving these unrealities is a method for reconnecting with the real.

3
Everyone here is an unrecognized part of you. Were you to come here more often you might know them better. She tells me, “The owners are upstairs sleeping.” The approaching storm is more intimidating than I expected. Staircases lead to catwalks suspended from impossibly high ceilings. I’ve tread this stretch before, though never in its entirety. The face of the clock is decorated not with roman numerals but glyphs of a sort I’ve never seen, arranged in circles within each other, like a barometer combined with a compass combined with a clock. They’ve cut the power, but our night vision has increased greatly since the collapse. Something in the color and lighting here dulls feeling and memory. Operation within conceptual systems conditions the acceptance of the absence of novelty.

4
I look to the faces in the room, who have all gathered in a circle around the spiral of red candles. I think of asking her why are you here, and isn’t this dangerous, but I am eager to explore the interior of the house. We see its churning black mass gaining strength off the coast. More car parts, entertainment systems, and now I see weapons of a completely unfamiliar make. A bus I might’ve caught roars by me without slowing. There are more than two hands on the clock, and they appear to rotate irregularly. Papers with complex diagrams are pinned all over the walls, scale models of contraptions I’ve never imagined, with measurements in a colorful pictographic language. “Just let it go,” my old history teacher councils me. Novelty characterizes unconditioned experience.

5
I can see each of their golden faces, I scrutinize them trying to recognize someone, to no avail. She points to the skylights above us where the ceiling meets the south wall. We ascend the slope, over the hill, across the interstate littered with abandoned cars. Time is short, but I want to climb a little higher to find some indication of where we are. It disappears against the horizon. After executing a complex adjustment intuitively, the face retracts into the clock, which retracts into the wall and disappears, turning into a doorway. I pull a book from the shelf and lay it open on the floor. I never liked him, but this place feels so much better than wherever I just came from that I decide to take his advice.

6
In a different state of mind you might find this place differently. “Do you see it?” she asks me. There is morbid pleasure in the advantage of independence our destitution allows us. Only after climbing too high do I realize I’ve tarried too long. Twilight turns to starlight. The doorway leads back into another room. It’s a vellum edition, hand bound, what looks and smells like a leather cover but embossed with a self-correcting illumined glyph that corresponds to the user. Unconditioned experience always presents itself as an impossibility.

7
The last candle is placed on the spiral and everyone raises their arms, pointing their hands toward the center and moving in a slow circle around it, humming loudly in harmony. The panels depict different horizons and constellations, mostly dark blues and purples. We move beneath overpasses we know not where as the first fingers of storm make shore. The stairs are far longer on the way down than I remember. I will not be making it to my destination. I lift the lantern. Sitting before the blank pages, we close our eyes, we come to somewhere in Europe. The seamless is unreal.

8
As the crescendo of humming around the glowing spiral approaches, it occurs to me this scene resembles similar ones in several of the most important dreams I’ve had. The image cast on the floor changes with the alignment of the panels. “Let’s go,” I rasp to the others still digging through obsolete knick knacks. I light a cream-colored candle and place it on the front steps for him. An ill gust of wind from nowhere extinguishes our light. The cities here are destroyed too, but we suspect fewer militias. “Shh!” I implore her. A rustling comes from the other room. A cloud passes over the moon. The image disappears. The mind reaches beyond the confines of conceptualization toward that which is unthought.

Combinatorics Two

1
I see carefully cultivated fields on terraced land and complex irrigation systems running throughout, and little wooden platforms decorate the ponds where the trail runs out. Only as I pass the doors of the mall do I remember, they’re oval shaped like eggs but larger, semi-translucent, and lined in rows like a carton, but they're not a full dozen. We take a seat near the entrance, having brought the camper into the dank valley and parked it a good distance from the gathering itself. She crumples back into the floor and falls asleep. She sees me I think but keeps walking. Where have you been? How could these delicate creatures ever expect to survive in the lower world? Behind us, many of those still moving down the trail stop to look up as the stormy black hole pulsates. I only barely touched the objects but my hands are already dried out and cracking from the contact. They’re not from here. Night turns to day and the stale taste of a wasted evening lingers on every beer can and smoldering cigarette. The sun is barely risen. The empty day-lit house is filled in this way with mostly unfamiliar people by night fall. It’s a grid laid out in colorful squares, each with its own inscrutable designation.

2
Outsiders begin to visit the sanctuary. The native creatures being so small have no difficultly maneuvering these obstacles, but I am not this character and this is only a movie. They’re also draped in a fine gauze or netting of gossamer, barely visible. The passage of people along the main trail is so rapid and chaotic I seek refuge in the camper and my father gives me a look of combined envy and ridicule. I call to her, asking are we still dreaming?! and then there is nothing but a long colorful train of sunshades and carts heading down the mountain, like some Tibetan convoy moving away from Lhasa. There is no way around their caravan on these narrow switchbacks. Then the singularity storm spews a black stream of wailing formlessness at the sanctuary in the clouds. I show him my hands. He turns back once to look at me and then he keeps running. So few familiar faces amidst the horde. I’m exhausted. It occurs to me again perhaps I’m still dreaming, but the abandon with which these people go about their evening is hued by a deeper despair. We see that each square in the grid beneath our feet corresponds to a period of our lives as well as a point in the development of mankind generally.

3
The natives’ appearance begins to change, and the human visitors are too heavy to step across the panels without grabbing on to the spiky stalks that grow out of them. Unfortunately, the roommates and friends I came with were just consumed by the storm. I’m tempted to handle them. She looks to me sympathetically, asks me “Where did your friend go?” Through these windows I can observe all that goes on outside. I scale the side of the truck with violent intent, then speak inarticulately to her about my dreams and how confused I am at the moment. His eyes are so blood shot, but I know he’s not drunk. Each dark spirit finds a person on the path, crashing into them. We move into the mall where before it was sunny, but now a mist settles all around, beginning to obscure my view. On our way out I wake the girl, but I don’t give it a second thought. In the middle of the largest wall of the house, in plain sight – I realize now it has been there all along – is a high-definition screen showing the same jumble of signals I’ve been hearing in my head. She moves from square to square describing our movement along the game board.

4
Slowly they begin to dismantle the sanctuary, preparing for an exodus. I wont let my fellow travelers rest or slow down though, as one, another, and then the last one, dearest to me, gets hit by the swooping banshee coming out of the storm, as I run to her yelling. They project a facsimile of their own spatial relation before the handler, a few feet in front of him. I didn’t notice before, but my friend has disappeared. Everything's reduced to indecipherable madness, a carnival of faces blurring together and passing down the main trail. Then I gain access to the cab where from above I can see a large red-haired man at the wheel. My disheveled state says more than enough. I leave the council and day breaks to the east. The magnificent sight of the singularity is paralyzing. I meet man along the way who doesn’t speak my language. She tries to pull me toward her. Cars pass by at great speeds for our quiet little neighborhood, cars of a sort uncommon in this bourgie suburb, fragmented unrelated sound bites at times, and then multiple overlapped signals. She reaches a particular square right in front of me and stops.

5
A small dark hole appears above the village, and only I know the horror that awaits the sanctuary. She transforms before my eyes into just another dull humanoid that evidently doesn’t remember me. Since it is much bigger than its model, the movement performed with the hands is sped up greatly and the projection shimmers and sparkles in shifting interrelations. A couple runs toward the exit. Having regained a little control I exit the vehicle. Ahead Denny avenue is blocked off by police. She’s not so interested in talking to me as she seemed when we had class together at Evergreen. On her trade blanket is a small rectangular box. I stand transfixed until the turtle man gently tugs at my sleeve. He seems to be the only one still willing to interact with a stranger. The broken down cars are shoddily repaired, I turn to a man next to me and ask him where are we? After a moment I ask her why it is we have not moved beyond this square.

6
He wears the white robe and bandanna of an apprentice. They put up protest, but I take off. I can see that my friend gets great pleasure from manipulating these silicon egg projectors. Then a few more. The side of the valley now has lights, electricity. We take a detour onto eighth, finding ourselves in an unfamiliar alley. Across the street at the baptist neighbors’ place a ruckus has broken out. Inside is a folded handkerchief with small rocks and gems around the edge. He offers me something in his hand, cars that are combinations of different models, driven recklessly by people I’ve never seen here. Why must that screen be there and why can’t we turn it off?!

7
He goes through each of the steps without the characteristic impatience of lowlanders, but where the black hole over the village was once small enough to ignore, now one of the evil creatures to the left is wearing a tuxedo. I try it out but only touch it briefly, not sure of the effect of such devices. People frantically run out of the building, then I see it’s actually just trees around a house. At the far end of the alley red and blue lights play on the bricks and people run toward us from there. He’s still not around, but I hear voices in the house. The price tag reads: one hundred dollars. Do I risk infection? He smiles and lights a red candle, placing it carefully on the dining room table.

8
I am so enrapt by the movie I consider using that last line as my next face book profile update. Now it looms huge, consuming the entire horizon, and everyone is eager to leave. I pass through nonchalantly, locating an exit, running toward home. Where before there were only the ones next to me on the curb, now I see they are growing everywhere across the mall parking lot; gossamer webbing slowly overtakes the place. The viral threat is finally announced over the intercom. But I still rent a room here! We run with them to the sound of voices I don’t know and a radio dial spun quickly. Then I offer her a twenty. She takes it.

9
Our descent is complicated by a series of long steep switch backs lined with the slow moving carts and wagons full of native creatures making their own escape attempt. The last bit of trail dissolves, the sky overhead zooms into a visible ceiling, and we are returned to our normal size. How did I become the character of this movie? But it’s just patches of eggs and gossamer netting all over the lot..? My motor cycle is parked out front, sirens are on all sides, and shadows also are cast on the wall like people, and then become people. I spread the numinous cloth I bought out beneath the shade of a low hung canvass desert tent, entering the next dream.