The Humours of Sufism in Iranian New Wave Cinema

The prophet Khizr Khan Khwaja by Anonymous

"I know you've been dreaming of me. But don't take it seriously. You know that dawn is when God visits his devotees. And divides the daily bread among them." Spoken by a Sufi Mystic who appears in dream visions in the Iranian film Pari by Dariush Mehrjui

Interestingly, this brilliant film was originally adapted from "Franny and Zooey" by J.D. Salinger without authorization, by iconoclastic and renowned Persian film director, Dariush Mehrjui. The film was adamantly attacked on all sides, by both Salinger's lawyers and Islamic approval. It seems that artists are often at work portraying characters and illustrations of their own internal struggle, where in this film, Pari, a young aspiring theatre actress drowns in pseudo-mystic emotionalism surrounded by a family of intellectuals and artists. Pari (a Persian name meaning "mermaid") finds herself swimming in over her head, a being caught between two worlds, and wishing to unite with her beloved uncle who took his own life. Indeed, the auteur filmmaker, and artists of a higher order conceive the focal point of their internal development, interwoven with an external social conflict, as a kind of dreaming, where it is seen through towards the dawn, beyond both the day of social tension and the night of inner turmoil.

For a great wealth of film reviews on Dariush Mehrjui's extraordinary work visit The Film Sufi

_________

a Fellini-esque mindtrip of character haunts, my feet dragging through superstitious nostalgias and the blind opacity of lost friendships, tragic wants, and open futures.

"Fellini, la Grande Parade" by Jean-Pierre Dalbera

black and white fur, white and black fur, the coloration of his follicles, a childhood escape through naming, and here he is again, in full glory, my dead companion of all things meditative, a leader in the subconscious wave of true surrender to the spiritual laughter of play 

Myojakdo (Painting of Cats and Sparrows) by Byeon Sang-byeok

here he is, I can feel his warmth in that little heart beating patiently between two rib cages of delicate whimsy, and he leads on through the empty darkness, a labyrinth of hollows beckons me forward, through to a sweetening, mental taste

_______

“I saw the trunk,”
Her Hindu elephant from outside
Walks coolly from music’s grand Guest

At the public house,
In the window,
A final flicker before traversing the footboard
loosened with railroad age
           Over the national telephone of spiritual callings
           Abused by electrified tradition
           Stunned in the tingled alcoholic flame
                  In isolated, deserted and abandoned bodies
                          Whose spirits bore a frail passage,
                          engraved in the air of soundless rhyme

A knowing
Ever thoughtless to the strength in pure being,
To grasp coldly into the summer’s beaten plea
           To sustain our musical sharing
           In human heaven’s piercing
                  Through the empty eye holes
                  Peering with my mirrored face of light
                          Radiating, through absolute darkness
                          as a visible cry
                                 To haunt our sacred sanctuary

“That inebriated muse!”
Drinking the words of men into her silent womb,
To fixate her fingers into the cross
           Formed over a chest glorified with Catholic warnings
           To relieve one’s self of the world
           and ask divinity to replace human desire

To become one collective struggling
As a unified presence,
Whose heart remained fixedly sanctified
           Before the death of the Mother and the Father’s bared ghost
                  Pictured as a beacon
                  Blended into our animalistic foresight

excerpt from "An Unknown Pleasure of Respect"

Vishnu's Universal Dream of Creation: A Philosophy of Art

The Recumbent Vishnu and the Creation of Brahma from Guler, Himachal Pradesh, India

The painting shown here is an illustration of Vishnu reclining on Shesha, a serpent alluding to the meaning of infinity, or Ananta, also one of the many names of Vishnu. Out of his navel, springs the universe, which is Brahma, pictured here as multi-faceted. Here, Brahma appears as the dream of Vishnu, dreaming the universe into existence.

The role of Vishnu as the existential dreamer, whose dreaming is the experience of creation gives the mythology of Vishnu profound meaning for artists and all creative thinkers. The striking thing that caught my eye about ancient Indian religious philosophy in relation to creative writing, is the way in which Joseph Campbell describes the role of Vishnu in leading the awe-inspiring traditions of ancient Indian yogic philosophy towards a recollection of the shattered mirror of thought and creative inspiration, into one yoked unity of enlightened perception, which is seen in its fullness as Vishnu eyes the dream-lotus of universal creation.

Read Joseph Campbell's brilliant article, "Hindu Wisdom"

Also, check out this arts book, interestingly eponymous with the Dream Author, called, "Secrets of Rusty Things" where an artist explores found art with mythological application to the creative dreaming of Vishnu's in-sight.

_________

Lightning premonitions, deft déjà vu of tone, the amalgamated voice of anger enunciates towards a new acquaintance, a poet of Canadian life. And in that rage, the unearthed moans of my internal aching, the gorge of indulgent emotional farce, an awakened source, spiked with the thirst of a skinless napalm victim. My life pains for the strength to express such incendiary anger, a pure rage, undignified.

Chemical Kali by Srimati lal

So, within seconds, a brief passing, I apologize with sturdy feet. My breath is steady, and at once I am relieved from my internal night, the concave flexing of cavernous rock, a burden of upended implosive tension. The wilds burn with stolid elasticity and I am inflamed with a secondary respite, at seeing my name lit towards the ceiling, and reacting with confident force, eyeing my winnings; a recognition of literary achievement, in multiple categories, standing beside renowned academics and independent artists of creative literacy.

Vishnu sahasranama manuscript by Anonymous 

I am bedecked with opulent outfitting, and walk to receive my medals with an ostentatious headdress and unnatural clothing. A blathering fake of heady fame, I steal through the tables clumsily and jeopardize the entire name, quickly hiding in the utter obscurity of another day. 

_________

A gourd filled with smoke speaks in a voice,

          Human,
A mindless bowl
                    of mirth
                             inflamed

glasses grow cold in the unheated concrete glue,
                    a fixture of the dead past

a golden consumer begs with a throat full of tears

in front of speakers
                 throbbing with broken-hearted names
                 burning up in a heat of worldly instrumentation,

transcending this same-self curse
                 with a storied high
                        of nameless voice

...

a spiritual womb formed
                        at the fingertips of an artist healer
                                     pursuing the groove of an epoch
                                     stolen from the mind of silent law

in a world’s motionless yearning

                 from afar

in the dark

fearless

night

excerpt from "A Joke Downstairs"

Poet-Doctor, Drugs and Dreams Are Your Friend

Le Rêve du docteur by Albrecht Dürer

"I never dream. When you’re psychotic, you don’t dream. Mugwort is an herb you can pick up at any local herbal shop. Although the tea is mildly poisonous, it can be drunk. Mugwort tea induces vivid, memorable dreams. Dreaming makes me feel normal. I feel connected with everyone through dreaming."

- from a conversation with a local poet and friend, David Rhoads

_______

Night in the suburbs, I jangle out onto the main road in a banged up old Volvo. The car is full of assorted items, the floors are mostly covered in piles of junk and the like. As I step on the gas, I see I’m driving unusually fast, though only about five mph above the speed limit. My lights are never working fine; I’m usually pulled over every time a cruiser spots me. 

In a shadowy nook, I see the dimmed lights of police, out for the catch. As I approach, the lights whir and sound. Still, I am in disbelief. “Again!” They must know me well by now. The cop who stops me perks with dissatisfied boredom as she clambers around awkwardly in the car for an extended time. My friend and I stand outside the car, weary and stung with silent cursing. Then, the overweight female cop raises one finger; it is covered with a green dust in the blaring flashlight. 

She inspects the dust carefully before swiftly grabbing my arms and locking them in a tight hold. “I’ve found marijuana in your car, you are under arrest!” I fight with murderous intensity. “What! All you found was a fingertip swipe of dust!” I am in awe of the local law’s asinine decision-making. As I squirm in contempt, defiant with unforgiving intensity, the lady cop calls for backup. 

In a matter of seconds, an SUV pulls up ahead of the first cruiser with two large, burly officers emerging in a torrent of violent forewarning. They attempt to handcuff me with riot strength, steaming in a haze of purposeless might. I loosen myself easily and struggle with unmatched will. Suddenly, I’m thrown back ten feet with a blood concussion, face puffed with blood, roughed up interminably by a single blow. 

On my way from a police car onto the steps of the police station and courthouse, I regain consciousness. A man on the sidewalk recognizes me. “Remember your permanent residency application!” he advises warmly. I am put before an authoritative lawman. I state my case. “Sir, this is an unjust conviction, I am on my way to gaining residency to live with my wife, this will put me under, don’t let a finger swipe of dust ruin this man’s life.” He takes pity on me. 

Later, I go on to liberate the entire northeast of North America from its bitter criminalization of personal marijuana use.

______

Drugs
"The interpretation of drugs in your dreams depends on the relationship you have with the drugs in your daily life and if they are doctor prescribed or not...The drugs could be suggesting a need for healing and getting in balance. Your unconscious mind may be suggesting outrageous things in hopes that you get the message to 'have fun, dream dreams, and get out of your own head!' Please keep in mind that the purpose of dreams is to raise our consciousness and to assist us in having better lives." (iDream)

______

"preposterous!"
said the proud visiting Englishman
in dismay,
"the army and police force will be trained
by the crown herself,
and no undue report will become of any loyal
to the blank calm
that befuddles our propaganda-fed livestock population"

- excerpt from "preposterous!"

Sufi Poetics: Spontaneity and Oration in Rumi's Verse

(Found at "Awakening the Dreamer")

“Someone may be clairvoyant, able to see the future, and yet have very little wisdom. Like the man who saw water in his dream and began leading everyone toward the mirage…Sleep deeply wherever you are on the way, maybe some traveler will wake you.” – Rumi, translated and read by Coleman Barks

“Be loyal to your daily practice keep working and keep knocking on the door, as you’ll remember as it is said in one of Rumi’s most pithy moments that the door we’re knocking on opens from the inside...These poems were spoken spontaneously.” - Coleman Barks

The generation of dreaming is the door opening from the inside, the spontaneous voice is the mysterious wisdom reminding us that at the moment when the way is clear, it is not we who enter.

_______

At an outdoor music festival, there is chaos. My wife and I gear up to perform together, though there is tension. As we sit and watch the festivities surrounding, we are as encased in a fog gloom. I forecast a no-show or gong show somewhere between us, usually from my end, the weak one. We see likely faces around, old friends at work on their instruments, in bands, invigorating the public eye. One of our friends, a burly Latin man sits at our spot with us. I walk away, fading. I begin to overhear their conversation. “He’s unwilling to learn from any classical training…” In my high paranoia, I only hear my depressed interpretation. I wallow in self-pity before confronting my love. She is already up on stage, interviewed in the drinkable light, interred in a media pandemic. Defeated, I find our Latin friend, and talk about my troubles. He is extremely accepting and friendly. I am comforted by his freewill offerings of friendship in numerous forms as he helps me overcome my difficulties. I become excited again to play purely improvisational music. Our music is from the spontaneous breath of the heart, an instantaneous intuitive wresting of the mind from earthly clamor. My love sits fixated, unwilling to go about her interview smoothly, she points me out in the crowd. Soon I am onstage. She holds me up, a flamingo above the shallow water, with a stilt leg, barely seen in the shimmering gold seascape horizon.

______ 

Performing
"In general, to dream of performing means you have been dishonest, with others or yourself. If it's a pleasant dream, lying has worked in your favour, but it could have bad consequences. This is also a common dream of performers who are 'practicing' a routine in their sleep." (iDream)

Stage
"If you dream of being onstage, you crave more attention and drama in your life. Good times are coming, but you will have to work hard to get there." (iDream)

In light of the Sama'a or the Sufi practice of listening to supernal harmonies through various meditative means, mostly through music and poetry, the practice of turning the ear to hear the inborn harmonics of spirit, i.e. listening to the one listening, may be an antidote to the psychological sufferings of the performing artist.

______

whose secret existence frightens no one
...instantaneous
...insignificant
yet to always be present,
in the moment,
never born nor witnessed by any thing manifest,
whispering from a most minute creation,
a passing glut,
forgotten by the entire visible universe,
only to return through a remembering

heard in voiceless rhythm,
to create from nothing!
an identity beyond the mimicking mold,
shaped by more hands.

- excerpt from "shaped by more hands"

Dreams from an Iran Brutalized until Unconscious…Still Speaking

Narrator

“For more than two years now, the Iranian state has tried to crush the dreams of freedom which arose in June in 2009. Dreams, such as those which others in the Middle East have seen come true this year.”

Pahvan Fahimi – spokeswoman for grieving mothers

“He was a child of 19, preparing to go to university. He hadn’t fulfilled any of his dreams. Who killed him? On whose orders? Why? I ask all of you. What was he asking of this country? Only peace and freedom of thought.”

Narrator

“Bahar is a student and a rapper. Like most young people, in 2009, she dreams of a different Iran.”

Bahar – student and rapper

“Like an enchanted castle crumbling it took just 6 or 7 hours to erase hope. And all those who voted for Moussavi realized it was just a dream.

The Islamic Republic has always been a nightmare for me.

…they’ve done all they can to try to take that hope from us... It will go on and on, until you scream your deepest feelings, you see freedom, and you’re no longer afraid to speak your mind. And that’s the day your hope will become reality.”

From “Letters from Iran” an Al-Jazeera Documentary

___________

This week, from March 20-23, it is Persian New Year, or Nowruz.

New Years

Happy New Years!
Persian, Hebrew, Roman, Chinese
Many in One.

May the New Year live up to its Name.

_________

I am outside of the concrete square homes that the Maya people of Xmaben, Campeche in Mexico construct as a symbol of prestige beside their grass huts, however they don’t live in them. They used to hang my hammock from wall to wall, but before sleep each night, I was visited by a local girl. A small, petite young lady with unmistakably Maya features, she used to send me sweet smiles and laughter from outside, beckoning me to join her in the night. I wanted to marry her. I gave her a jade ring and consummated our innocent feelings. In my dream, I feel as if we are married. After I leave the village, I find myself in a furnished bedroom in a Mexican city. In it, I await my other love, a Spanish woman, a few years older than I, with a gorgeous wit. It seems we have married as well. Our life, however, becomes overly domestic and soon I wait for her, to find only our empty abode. 

As the dream cycle continues, I attend a high school reunion. I am excited and confident to see my old friends from the days of superficial cliques and institutionalized learning. I tell people I married twice in Mexico. They don’t find this surprising from me, and go on to talk in their circles of indiscernible chatter. I later return home to my mother’s house in this same town. My stepfather and her watch television as usual. The television portrays ghastly scenes of war. Children, it seems of Southeast Asia, are being run over mercilessly by tanks, their bodies scarred with burn marks and ash. I react, abhorred and deeply offended by the mindless atrocities that we are witnessing via television, and my mother cries, but my stepfather watches without emotion. I leave. 

_________

Dreaming, Composing Poetry, Meditating

I pass my days
Contemplating the dead students of Tiananmen
And the Green Wave
Childless mothers silenced
Full of blood

A body
Language of resistance
Firm as the vicious fluid of life
Soft as the flesh
Emaciated with the steel of tank tracks
Or torn open in a single kill shot

Or E. Mehtari
Whose stern face became lip-bitingly serious
Upon mentioning the “trouza”
In English, rape

How he holds back tears
A fight against self-pity
The death of the ego
Asking, “where is God if not in you”
Yet, when asking you fall headlong
Into your deathless presence
Where you cease to be this body of crime

Ponder yourself
As the total equation of here
In the moment
At one
With the ground of all being

We humans
Why do some attain self-realization?
Only upon being split in half?
Sundered in shreds by our fellow man?

When did this arcane spiritual responsibility bestow devils of such wonderful emergence?
The Ahriman is certainly turning in its cemetery
Sheathed in female coverings and riot police uniforms

In these pain-ridden lands
Whose story immediately translates into our one story?

Throughout human history
In reclaiming that story
Allowing the truth to resurface naturally
As a feather, thrown with a handful of stones
Over an open lake
Thick with the opacity of crude oil

Hardening urges of those who sleep,
Still, sitting
Upright I petition the burning skin of my Love
To recede into her inmost self-forgiving

Be healed
With the same immediacy that one may feel oncoming death
Approaching with futile procession
Toward the white of their eyes

With equal subtlety
Plunging their ethereal hand
In the porous open of their now entered body

A mere passage
For the voice of all truths

For the Peaceful Youth Protestors Around the World

Take the Leap into a Song of Dream

Hindu, Jew, African, American, Buddhist, Native American

Can you guess who said what? 

"We are not different, that is African, that is...No, we are all brothers"

"You can have millions of styles all aiming at the same direction"

"We are flowers, in one garden."

"He gave us everybody"

"It's never said there is only one path, it's almost, any path which is based on compassion"

"As long as I know I love myself I'm okay."

Does it matter? 

"You have to develop your own one-on-one relationship with the Mystery, with the Divine."

___________

My father sends me an email about a writer that I should send something to. The writer is a spoken word artist, a fiery and impassioned sort. Her name is long, and seems to be of Polish origin. I send her a poem that I’m not sure I wrote, but I can read it in the vision of my dream, it looks like something I would have written, entitled, “Through Palestine” beginning like this:

I am

a me.

an am

 

aim 

at me

And then on to describe some scene I must have witnessed or been privy to about Palestine and the militant infrastructure in place. It is a cry for social justice as many of my pieces about the Middle East. I receive a reply from this writer. The entire message is converted colors, opposite and it seems to have been written on the paint program, with letters and images sprawled out in a unique balance of chaos and harmony, all originally crafted by the archaic computer program. She writes long messages, including script-like poetics and communal dialectics amongst poets of our kind that she, with all heart and intention wishes to consummate through collaboration. She says, with my writing skills and her spoken voice skills, we can be a good duo. 

I wake wondering if I should indeed embark on such a path towards collaborative efforts with poets who have experience, talent and motivation for spoken performance. 

__________

"a woman is dreaming

to hear the pledge 

to the frozen smiles of wide-eyed crowded fields

that grow and decay 

to the orbit of a lunar catastrophe

occurring every oceanic spawning," 

"that ephemeral beauty

we all know to arrive, one day

breathless and raised with red flames of miraculous fatigue

on the shores of the way"

- excerpt from, "Yes, don't fear"

King Solomon and the Drug of the Dreamer

“King Solomon in the Book of Kings goes to a high place and has a dream there where God gives him wisdom and advice and information and riches, now although we don’t have any evidence of this in the bible, we think it was probably very difficult for non-professionals to enter this trance-dreaming state. So, the speculation is that the priests who attended those dream sanctuaries, probably passed out little drinks that would help ease you into a nice sleep that was filled with visions.”

- from History Channel Documentary, "Ancient Drugs" 

________

Novitiate Dreamer

What is the overlapping effect of passionate, searching intent to experience and remember one’s dreams with regularity? What happens when one suddenly replaces the time spent specifically to practice dreaming, as a “writing” process of mental recording, with waking life experience? How does one’s life experience change based on that spiritual momentum and waking transition?

Seasoned Dreamer

You begin to see the Dreamers among the crowd, those who are a bit more aware about the fickle nature of reality, and are fearless to dream in their daily lives, to create worlds out of the creative mediums emanating from their own minds like veins of a pulsing heart, emboldened with the glory of Love’s unmistakable vibration, and they are so clearly seen among crowds of people isolated from the dream connecting us all, because the rest are too afraid to realize that their clothes, hair, attainments, and on are the mere substance of their dreaming and nothing more, and nothing less. 

________

Charged into the luring night

Carved into the alluring heights

Nuanced into tribal delights

Singing with the ancients in tones of space 

Delayed, silent prophecies spell dismay 

and the pandemic smites the land

Wired, fortuitous 

growling, harbored animals’ grow to fame

Sparkling wizard beards of vision 

drunken, smoldering, breathless 

- excerpt from "An Artist's Line"

Professional Dreaming unto the Last Horizon

[Werner Herzog]

"And how does it happen that we are encountering each other here at the end of the world?"

[Stefan Pashov (Philosopher, Forklift Driver)]

"I think that’s a logical place to find each other because this place works almost as a natural selection for people who have this intention to jump off the margin of the map and we all meet here, where all the lines of the map converge. There is no point that is south of the South Pole. I think there is a fair amount of the population here which are full-time travelers and part-time workers. So, yes those are the professional dreamers. They dream all the time. And I think through them the great cosmic dreams come into fruition because the universe dreams to our dreams. And, I think that there is many different ways for the reality to bring itself forward and dreaming is definitely one of those ways." 

From the film, "Encounters at the End of the World"

__________

"In the upswing of a jet train

cooling into the sonic blues

of a new world horizon

soothing the answers of the afraid

in mundane pockets of strange insignificance,

a judgment inane"

excerpt from "Improbability of tongue and belly in Upswing"

The New West of Dreams

It occurs to me that the Old West has become mythologized to conceal things about our past that were lost. What did we lose? Who did we pass that loss along to?

Hollow in the snow by Jean-Baptiste Armand Guillaumin

Autumn leaves drape over the ground. The parchment texture moistens in places, as leaf pigments turn to resemble how I would imagine our internal organs. We are staying at a house, where the cool drafts pass through every corner, and the outside smells better than the inside. We are in the wilderness, though I feel close to home with my old friend from school days back in the Northeast. He’s his usual nonchalant self. We all feel the way one feels a few hours after chain-smoking for days on end. We’re moving on out. The trouble is, the only drivable car is with less capacity than can accommodate the five or six of us needing to get some more supplies in town. We hit the road, I leave my friend behind.

We soon arrive at another house in much the same condition as ours after a ride through the tamed highway wilderness. There is still a calling, leading us out into the mushroom pasture beyond the roadside horizon. We enter a house much like ours; it is empty, with cereal boxes punctured by hungry worms and roving mice. We manage to salvage some granola and milk. Some stay behind and begin to smoke comfortably upon upholstery pockmarked with careless fire. There is now room in the car for my friend, who I’m surprised to see. At the same time, I find it somehow predictable that he’s mustered a stealth ability to show up unannounced at any moment in this drably subdued, heaving chest of fresh air and color admired faintly around us. With immediacy, we are isolated from our past and our future. Yet, there are pinholes of awareness, where our perception heightens to envision the crystalline beauty of our surroundings. It usually happens simultaneously with my old time friend. We now both live in the North American West, though so many miles apart in this vast regional territory of our deliberately open, youthful minds.

We arrive in a town resembling Northern California, where many young men and women once moved many years ago and simply kept wheeling “trees” to all the naïve newcomer spirits. There is a winking eye of newcomer and seasoned residence in these parts, separating us only by distances of a few miles at a time. Blonde dreadlocks and glass-blown artistry melt in a haze of fruitful laughter amongst new kinds of friends, whose eyes touch upon the truth that most friendships disintegrate into a stock of fiends. Now, we are unstable, and lack any apparent humanity in this consumptive island of molten bread and wallowing dreams.

The Page Mazeppa by Jean Louis Theodore Gericault

The dry air is crisp and cloudless over a small town in the dead of the Colorado winter. A silence is treasured with each step. The conservative decisiveness of every citizen follows quickly behind me, like a lingering pet surveying one’s every move. I clamber down from a high iron fence. I see two friends in dense black coats. They greet me simply and inexpressively move on further along their frozen sidewalk path.

There is a young local friend of mine. She is a masculine young woman, resembling Jean-Michel Basquiat in some features of her unadorned, spindly matted hair. She is a bold, creative type, yet stifled with destructive emotion and nasty habits. I can see her hiding a needle in the thick folds of her winter sweatshirt. She walks out into the grayscale concrete light, dimming with a vibratory curse, a mathematical fate, to put her underground. So, she thinks, she will take her life into her own hands, and throw the trash out herself. She shoots up, and meets a couple of tall white guys on an outskirts corner near an open field. I see them as I walk past one morning, thinking of how she was killed. The image of her walking away from me endures.

"whose giving breathes iridescent crystalline surety

under a city lain bare as a leafless twig 

in the winter of human occupation

over the frigid glare of our northern memories

fickle, as we approach a secondary wisdom

understood from blind precepts

that erase the open wounds found in deep cleansing

and spiritual promise"

- excerpt from "The Mythic West"

How All The Dreaming Began

Cyclical Wordplay

I was first turned on to Jerome Rothenberg through a keen interest in Ethnopoetics. When I stumbled upon "Poems and Poetics," I began to see the credibility behind writing a blog, where in his "prospectus" Rothenberg writes, "In this age of internet and blog the possibility opens of a free circulation of works (poems and poetics in the present instance) outside of any commercial or academic nexus."

JR's specific relation to Dream has been alluded to in his poetry foundation bio where it is written:

"Rothenberg has been particularly interested in the poetry of the North American Indians, both verbal and non-verbal: a poetry that can often be expressed, according to Rothenberg, in "music, non-verbal phonetic sounds, dance, gesture and event, game, dream, etc."

Patricia Monaghan stated: "[He] evokes the dream in, of, and through language more effectively than any other contemporary poet,"

Poem: Dreamwork Three by Jerome Rothenberg

__________

Eventually, I found a great online supporter, a student of Rothenberg, through "Poems and Poetics" 

This is How All The Dreaming Began, or as Poet Tree writes:

"The angels don't want to listen to your stories, for to them

Dreams are all equal, they are what got you there."

From "Momentary Anxiety"

Dream Interrogations and Literal Family Torture from Montego Bay

Port-en-Bessin, Entrance to the Harbor by Georges Seurat

Why are waking notions of the word dream a synonym for something to attain…where as in the notion of a subconscious dreaming, the word dream connotes a separate reality. Where is the relationship between these two associations? Is the difference between waking and subconscious perspective or in the idea of dream itself?

I am sitting at my grandmother’s couch in coastal Massachusetts. She shows me a pop can with Chinese characters on it, and mentions something about Hawaii. Next, my mother offers my wife and I a trip to the Caribbean. Through a song of my uncle about Montego Bay, I imagine I am in Montego Bay. The hotel resort is as one would typically imagine an upscale hotel resort in the Caribbean to appear. In my hotel room, however, my toes and fingers and parts of my chest and head are being wired to a torture device that my stepfather is operating. I attempt an escape from the hotel resort, but it turns into a kind of Cretan Labyrinth, where the Taurus is my own family. 

My Love, Seated Celestially At Royal Ease

In succession, a vast interwoven web of dreams courses directly into my imagination with a lucid wit that invigorates my physical intellect in a spark of mental action, a fluid repose enunciates my insides as I feel deeply the excited insights of an active seeing into the contents of mind, perception, memory and the quality of subtle necessity to be, even at the minuscule point of one inner knowing, a shape-shifting life unfolds to meet my dream-woman, Love herself
...................................................................................................................................................
outside of a well-manicured, high-society, private university-type atmosphere, aside elegant glass panes to hold the humidity of an indoor tropical garden, the Autumn light recedes into a root-filled fern forest floor. the damp ground hovers effortlessly before the thriving of innumerable tingling mycelium underneath my bare feet haunted by the rural lore of spiritual flight into the unadulterated natural presence, an enamored romanticism bleeding with dank obscurity in the darkening passageway to my chosen activity. a drum kit drowns the sky in a clamor of happiness. the air fills with the deathless heartbeats of an unschooled drumming, careless and heartening in wild chaos, a laughter from the belly of nature herself. and the smoke of her following lingers, I wander through these free sounds into a labyrinth of hosts, on the screaming edge of Babylon in a glorious architectural feat, a Victorian hideaway, though lightless, subdued red cushions and mahogany hallways lay carpeted, leading with royal ease unto the sofa whereupon my Love resides celestially.
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His Landscape

(written by Her above)

That atmosphere of calm with thunder and with light shows
engulfs me with every kiss, every word, pulse and every sigh
In dreams as in my waken state
Living our Dreams
We strain not to stay attached, but strain any time we are detached
So painful to be apart
even if just an arms length apart

No warmth in the world
Only he is my World
Surrounding me with his glances
and laughter

While I continue to learn of this ridiculous world
As long as I am in Love

The "Extinct" Released!

While submerged in moments dreaming, through the night, past dawn without heed to sleep, my wife pieces together a spellbinding gorgeous array of color and texture through rhythmic sound, composed with originality sparked by intuitive improvised sense awareness on midi keyboard, blank canvas of creative recognition in tune with her virtuostic Zheng spectacle woven seamlessly within the elementary modern electronica and Asiatic-influenced sonic currents streaming through her own resonance in ancient to modern forms of music.

Bask in the brilliance of "Extinct" Vi An's follow-up electronic album after "Endangered"

http://vian.bandcamp.com/album/extinct

Cavernous Dreaming, Forgotten

Lions painted in the Chauvet Cave by HTO

French Archaeologist

The first time I entered the Chauvet cave, I had a chance to get in during five days, and it was so powerful that every night I was dreaming of lions and every day it was the same shock for me, it was an emotional shock, I mean, I am a scientist, but a human too, and after five days I decided not to go back into the cave because I needed time just to relax and take time to...

Herzog

To absorb it?

French Archaeologist

To absorb it.

Herzog

And you dreamt not of paintings of lions but of real lions?

Herzog

Of both. Of both definitely.

Herzog

Were you afraid in your dreams?

French Archaeologist

No, I was not afraid. I was not afraid, it was more a feeling of powerful things and deep things, a way to understand things which is not a direct way.

From "Cave of Forgotten Dreams" by Werner Herzog