Title of the Day — A Dream
I glanced at the clock beside the bed. It was 4:04 A.M., a time in ancient traditions associated with the security of home, power, and protection. Really? I said it out loud to myself. Ancient protection? Where did I read that crap?
Excerpt from my book , Elements— a WIP, which I’ve been working on for longer than you want to know. I reached a point where I couldn’t figure out how to end it so — I’m putting the stories here.
. . .
Sarah Bryn Kenyon is, oddly enough, a lot like me only she’s a whole lot smarter. It happens that I did many of the things that Sarah did. I wrote the book based on things I knew, places I travelled, and some technology that I was involved with at the time. The book contains many journal entries from Sarah. I wanted a way to incorporate her direct voice. Here’s a glimpse into the mind of Sarah from a journal entry from the chapter, Title Of The Day.
Journal entry: Friday, July 8, 1994
I am a house of notes. I write in the dark of the night at about 4:04. It’s uncanny how often I awake to that time on my clock. I don’t want to wake at that hour — i just do and over the years decided it was a thing about myself I just needed to embrace. Maybe I don’t need 8 hours of sleep — or even 7. Or even 6.
I awake to yellow sticky squares or small white tablets on which I have scribbled, often illegibly, notes, reminders, art ideas and titles of things — all kinds of titles. Everything needs a title — that is how the day starts.
The title today is the Hardwood House, and it was about a dream last night. It’s only on rare occasions that I remember a dream except for this past year where everything has become vivid and often disturbing. Most are simple, the usual — I think I hear the doorbell ring or a loud bang, or a shout, sometimes it’s a perceptible word like the one last week that seemed to call out, ‘Hey’. Each time, I get up to explore the house but there is no one there to yell any word at all and nothing that has fallen to make a bang, and no one at the door or in the yard or any other place I look.
There were other dreams I remember. One I called the Paper Shredder — another I called the Ice Cube Dream — both dystopian themes where I am witness to the end of all things. Goals, hope, desire, innocence. Life. As disturbing as that is, this night the dream was curious in a different way. Had I eaten anything unusual that encouraged such an odd dream like the night I ate the barbequed crawfish with their lifeless black eyes and dreamed about shifting eyes all night? No. So, I decided it was worth some analysis.
I glanced at the clock beside the bed. It was 4:04 A.M., a time in ancient traditions associated with the security of home, power, and protection. Really? I said it out loud to myself. Ancient protection? Where did I read that crap? I didn’t believe in such things — astrology, numbers that determine your personality, random cards picked… But I did believe there is a meaning to some dreams if you can sift through the visuals and sounds and interpretations of the million-moments that wedge into some tiny brain wrinkle and wait to attach themselves to a meaningful thought before tumbling out in dream-form. How do our scrambled brains put anything together at all, and how much of it is pure fiction created to elate or depress? Are those dreamscapes the reason some days I smile toothy and seductively at a stranger in an elevator like some flirty tripe or snap at the young man packing my groceries with the bread at the bottom? How often does a dream unrealized set the tone of the day — those days I wandered through the usual chaos annoyed at something I couldn’t quite define?
I call this one the Hardwood House dream because that was the dream focus. The house is made of beautiful wood but somehow, I feel myself as less — less beautiful? I wasn’t sure. I wandered around the big house. It was four levels and made entirely of glass except for large interior corner pillars, floors, and steps, which were made of a rich dark hardwood, beautifully crafted. There was no furniture, no kitchen nor bath. No curtains or coverings on any of the glass. There were steps on either side of the house, and I would climb and descend — up and down the steps over and over. I continued the ascent and decent until one time a new set of stairs appeared from nowhere and I took them because, of course that’s what you do in dreams. When I reached the top of the stairs I realized it was the fourth floor. I turned toward the massive glass windows that stretched 18 feet high and discovered that I could not see my reflection in the glass, but I could see the entirety of the world spread out in front of me in all directions.
I ran down the stairs to the glass on the third floor, the second floor and the first and realized that I could not see out at all. It was glass to be sure — I touched it and felt the smoothness and saw my sweating handprints appear and smudge on the gleaming surface.
On the first three floors I could only see myself as a reflection but on the fourth, I could see everything except myself. Exhausted from running up and down the stairs, I lay down on the polished hardwood floor and cried until I fell back asleep hoping and wishing this was one of those of a million-moments. Was this a good vision or another doomsday?
What do you think?
