Tag Archives: dreams

Red fox

She’s lying with her head on my knees, saying nothing and yet fully present. The warmth of her neck flows through fabric onto my skin. In this small booth out on the grass lawn, I vaguely expect customers – children seeking sugary treats – but in the dewy morning hours it’s quiet for now.

It’s like one of those moments of being physically trapped by a sleeping beloved. I can’t move without disturbing her, and I wouldn’t wish to – I’ll happily surrender. I tentatively stroke the red fur – half-expecting her to rouse up and realise she’s a wild thing in rare contact with a human – but she’s not going anywhere. Her coat is silky smooth, smelling faintly of wood smoke and animal sweat.

Two children are coming now, and yet she still doesn’t leave. A message from Alice that she’s seen a black rat in the area, and recalling once being bitten. She shrugged it off with a mega dose of antibiotics, unconcerned.

Wardrobe

Of course, Narnia. Feeling garments change to branches change to snow. Hearing icy winds blow, and that abrupt disorientation on stumbling out into another, parallel, slow-time-moving world. The taste of Turkish Delight, the witch’s bribe. The warming liquid that’s not quite hot chocolate, and that satisfies so deeply yet so profoundly incompletely as to become an insatiable addiction. The desire felt in the pit of the stomach, and the absolutely unspoken underlying sex of it all.

Girls riding a lion, faun’s kidnapping, sinister queens tempting young boys with sweets and drink. Power and death.

But now… rickety self-assemble hanging rails from Argos lift a few pounds from an undiscerning pocket and begin their short span of life between assembly and skip. A brief and non-illustrious life.

Or, acres of laminated chipboard pass through the great Ikea machine, plastering the walls of fine houses who should know better with birch veneer and blandness. Guilty.

The moths. The holes in my new sweater, or not so new, since lying unwashed in the wash basket for a year due to my inertia around hand washing. Nature will overcome.

The nightmares Luke had around monsters emerging from wardrobes. The buzzing in my ears waking me from dreams as if messengers from another world are urging me to hear.

Astral body

I had the book Discover Astral Projection, and also Osho’s Book of the Secrets where he talks of tantric practices involving the “third eye”. In the yellow painted basement room at W-burn, alone in my single bed. The moss-green satin curtains, hand-made by Zelda before the split, masked out the orange of street lamps and some of the cold.

Lying on my back, attention between eyebrows, breathing, waiting for that golden shower of energy descending from the crown to the heart at the point of sleep. From there, would be conscious control of dreams, and astral exploration.

Of course, in one sense it was all about sex. What lonely guy wouldn’t want a second chance in the non-material world? I’m not judging it, but just note the ulterior motive was often there in these spiritual trips of one kind or another.

Once, drifting off in the relaxed, aware, unusual sleep quality it induced, I heard sudden knocking at the window. Adrenalin shocked my whole system into alert readiness.

“Hello?” 

I opened the curtains, then stumbled round to the door. Nobody there.

Pulling on clothes, I dragged my midnight way down the dark streets to Vanessa’s house, and knocked. Her husband came to the door, clearly roused from bed.

“Is Vanessa OK? Is everything all right with the baby? I thought she might have gone to hospital, or need help.”

 

Yacht

We are anchored in the moonlit bay. Path of the moon reflected on calm water. Lights of the not-distant marina oranging the sky above low hills.

Nearby, masthead lights of our neighbours sway gently. I clamber up into the cockpit, easing through the hatch, treading carefully in the unfamiliar insolidity of footing. Holding on to what’s-that-called, the wire that supports the mast, with one hand, peeing over the side, arc of fluid capturing moonlight like a nocturnal rainbow. Having a wee tinkle to myself, adding minutely to the sea’s foam.

The salt smell of the water. The smokey taste of whisky from down below, lowered voices while winding down conversation with Andrew, Susan asleep on his shoulder on the foam-cushioned bench. The dated wooden interior boasts cubbyholes labelled “Cocktails” and “Snacks”. Andrew proudly produces ice out of a thermos flask.

An increasing feeling of elation, discovery, possibility – these western coves and islands, all accessible by sea, by floating hideaway, rocking to sleep in new and beauteous places each night. Dinghies with outboard motors or elegant oars. Smoking mackerel on gravel beaches, crouched in the wind-shelter of outcropping shoreline rocks. Scrambling into nettle-guarded caves doubtless frequented by ancestors over millennia.

The yacht, basic, ageing, but honestly herioc, becomes my new dream. Before I’m 50, can I be worthy and capable of this?