Primarily a writing exercise, this dream journal-inspired blog is a quiet introspective sojourn into the process that we traverse in going from private dream to public art. I see our dreaming as an internalized mythmaking. As I philosophize and expressively exhibit dreams, both private and public, I encourage and delight in creative language as a way to practice experiential metaphors through a “public dreaming." Writing Theory: Creative Dream Fiction

Monday 30 July 2012

In The Burning Memory of the Thousand-Dreamt Rimbaud

"montage en rouge: Arthur Rimbaud et éruption volcanique" by PRA
“A thousand Dreams within me softly burn” 

In the spirit of dream interpretation, I endeavour a creative interpretation of Rimbaud's oft-quoted line. All know the saying, "a picture is a thousand words" refers to the ability of the human eye to perceive new realities through the image, to a mode of internal perception awakening Dream, Realization, Insight, Beauty & Truth. Taking into consideration the outlandish tragedy of Rimbaud's life I would wonder to suggest that "softly burn" is an allegory on the fleeting nature of existence, which dream-like, escapes as a softly burning wick, where the wick is the body, tormented by the passing of life, in pain, and at once when life is realized as a dream, that passing burn is soft. Memories, awakenings, visions, are of those thousand dream-images through which the mind of the poet-seer burns, within. 

For a worthwhile initiation into another living mind revisiting this quote, please explore THE DREAMING, full of gorgeous mystical dream-mind renderings from the Yukon and beyond
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The Hindu temple receives a multitude of bodies. Coffins too small for the eye bedeck the well-draped floor. Exotic designs move the carpeting fur under our crossed legs as we admonish the tragedy of a younger generation lost to the violent wave of an incredulous doom. The air is blameless while heavy with the intensity of childless mourning. I visit many coffins, pressing my hand over their delicately sheathed frames, wondering about the unwilling instant of realizing early death at hand. Luxurious instrumentation lightly carries our tears to the sky with a playful tabla swing, impassioned, vibrating the moment’s curse into a blessing of mysterious, celestial hosts. We supplicate for the presence of extra-human understanding.

The demons return to the doorstep of the temple. A slew of bodies fall limp to the floor, blood gushes, filling the red and gold henna-flavored carpet with monochromatic travesty. I hide myself in the ceiling. I can hear the marauders bellowing hotly underneath. Am I the sole survivor? The panicking sets in when bullets and swords pierce through the unprotected foam insulation, serving as a ceiling in between the stone encasing stone structure. The murderers smash idols and burn the priests’ fabrics. Then, they notice me. My heart shakes like a rattlesnake in a rib cage. Gently lowered by the facetious grin of a gangster, I retain my pride. Led to the doorway after bitter interrogation, I am let off, grieving now for the un-mourned, and un-passed, those whose deaths remained undreamt and survive with the turning flesh of burning memory.
_______
Temple
"To dream about a temple represents a need to be appreciated by those you love." (iDream)
_______
she, a mother-in-law, struck a few chords after work and fled to his new apt.
clean and unused, they spread genital juices all over the face of the linoleum floor,
not asking lawyers how to clean it up, they left it for dead
& fled the crime scene to her stepsister's house
where they indulged in mushroom chocolates
& fled the known universe

now legally insane, they saw themselves all perfectly unfit for more
in their mentally unbalanced state, slept soundlessly on the floor,
only he had a dream, that he was back in his home country,
though living on the border, officially, since 3,
& saw a mythical beast riding high in the military fly zone
just before the horizon, not a dragon, nor bird of sorts,
a great golden rabbit appeared, star-cast and beaten from eggshell glory

the profound gaze sent him into a subconscious stupor,
an eyes-glazed reverence serenaded his being with lightly caressing gusts
& breezes echoed sweetly from each celestial hop, the rabbit,
suddenly frozen in space
moved its ears at a lightning pace, and the resounding effect, a divine music
so piercing as to exhale a skeletal release from all human friction,
that generous, breathtaking gorge of sound streamed and crashed into depths unknown
with a lightness and eager wish for interdependent eternity

2 comments:

  1. I love what you said "pasted on the extreme edge of human communication, yet resonates with the sweetest vibrations of intimacy, as one speaking to a relative in the midst of death" - that's like this post, and your writing in general, so vivid and terrifying, so sure of itself but yet so purposefully rudderless, agog at no fixed world, chasing after the nighthorses with terrified third eyes. I like your take on Rimbaud's inscrutable line, the passing of the pain of the flesh is a beautiful light escaping.

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  2. oh and the idea of being saved from death as a bad end to the dream because it deprives some deaths of witness - that's a beautiful thought.

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