Dream 1 - Pools

This week, your dreams have been reflective, like pools of water. You descent. You fear things are not what they seem.

Here’s the first one.

You’re inside     what could be described as a Bubble Home–    the kind that’s all white concrete spheres   and curved glass, and is planted over the sea on stilts.     It’s the home of one of your parents‘ friends, an artist, who is very well known    and whom your parents see only very rarely but have known for a long time.

You see the artist’s work all throughout the house,    and as you and your parents enter the living room he grabs you and starts to explain it all.    They are sculptures of him as a boy, elaborate and dramatized scenes of his childhood where every character is made out of shiny platemail armor,    but still uncomfortably lifelike. Your father makes a comment on the artist’s success, which makes you think about the state of your own artistic practice.    You focus on how close the armored boys are to your face. The artist, trying to be helpful, gives you the kind of advice only successful people can give to those who have yet to succeed.

The artist and your parents settle down on the back porch       and you make an excuse to leave, say you’re going to help make appetizers       in the kitchen. Looking for the kitchen you go down the spiral staircase    at the center of the house, which is much deeper than should be possible due to the house being on stilts     over water. The walls of it are rough white stone, and you notice they are frescoed with an icy alien landscape   that cannot have been painted by the artist, or at least not in the same state of mind as his other work. Your walk down is marked by archways,     which seem to be telling a spiritual narrative in broad, conceptual terms, and at other times in words completely made up for that philosophy. You start to get the sense     the text is describing a beast, and that the frescoes are there to keep something in.

There is a garden     at the bottom of the stairs,    with labyrinthic pond, a dark ambulatory surrounding it,     and flowers so exaggerated in shape they look painted onto the air.   From the shadows you can feel the beast start to move and its golden mask of a face gleams    as it notices you. “Hello,” it says, and you understand this beast is wise, much wiser    in fact, than the artist. The beast smiles as if it is about to tell you a joke. “Tear off his mustache,”    it says “It’s really all he really has.” And the rest you don’t remember.

The next thing you remember    is this: you are sitting in the shallow     of a courtyard swimming pool surrounded      by tropical plants and wooden blue balconies.   Your hair is tremendously long, reaching evenly towards the edges of the pool.       On one of the pool chairs, you’ve left the long sparkly outfit you don’t want to wear.        You’ll be forced to wear it soon, but you’ll be defiant until then.

You’re reading something      in the reflection of the pool,     an ongoing World War 2 story about two men,    perpetually being separated and reunited again,      but only in times of great sorrow, or great happiness.       You remember the scene where they point this out to one another.     There are no illustrations, but the text changes size and shape to help convey emotion.             

A gaggle of tourists,     beach-drunk and happy,      shuffles through the courtyard  past the pool. They wear group T-shirts,     blue with a white frog as a logo. Behind them,     you see your sister, tagging along. The skin on her neck and shoulders     has become transparent like a glass frog, showing through to veins and organs.

By the time you’ve shortened your hair   and gotten out of the pool, they’ve left your sight.

Immediately you are looking for something to hold   and the dress on the pool chair has turned into    an elaborate, diamond-encrusted rifle. Somehow you know that holding it,     will look exactly the same as wearing it, to anyone seeing you. People are leaving their hotel rooms,    starting to decorate the balconies, so you head for the largest exit.

It leads you down a flight of stairs,    which is dug into uneven stony walls.  At the bottom you find a shallow pool of clear water.      Thin windows of light pierce through the right-hand wall of the cave  onto blue skies, and you understand you are inside a seaside cliff.      Small alcoves dot the walls– all of them contain meticulously carved wooden scenes    of summer camp activities. Every scene has a direction, and seems to point towards the center of the pool,     where you see a giant translucent frog sitting on top of a tall reflective sphere, which is the source of the water.    

The frog seems to smile at you.   It blinks by momentarily swallowing its eyes    back into its head. You notice blue neon, hanging above the pool,     and poorly-made scaffolding holding up the sides of the room: constructed    not by those who made this place, but those who found it, and became its slave.

You dip your hand into the water,     and it disappears. The rest you’ve forgotten.

This is the final dream you remember.    You are in an embassy, the architecture of which is     flat disks rimmed with windows, protruding from a glacier,    and connected on the inside by glass elevators. The interior design of the halls   is slightly outdated, with fuzzy orange throw-pillows strewn on long benches which remind you of the 80s.

You’ve been here a while,    staying in one of the rooms.  All of the other residents are significantly older than you.     All of you wear light-colored tunics, which are slightly lumpier than the sleek gowns     worn by officials. You know you’re here for a different reason from the other residents, but you haven’t yet figured out   what it is.

You walk around,    looking for doors to open.    Most of them are locked, but as you end up in a quiet offshoot of the facility,     you find one open, right in the glass of a small lightwell. It leads onto an elevated catwalk,   clinging to the exterior of the building, heading down. Holding your blanket-tunic close, you step out onto this catwalk,    excited to finally be doing something you’re not supposed to do.

On your way down,   you start to see decorations attached to the walkway:   strings of twine and peach pits, beaded together in increasingly elaborate shapes,    like the bead-animals kids put on their backpacks in elementary school. Near the bottom    you reach a service door, left ajar. A corner of orange cloth is pinned to the top left of the frame        and you enter what seems like a giant pillow fort built into the HVAC system. Bright-colored blankets filter light from   deviated security footage and tangled trouble lights. There are beds in the smaller vents, but all of them are empty of people.

You know what happened here.    You see it happen on the security footage.     You recall the main atrium, which you now see turned    into an improvised water park, complete with a blue slide,    and a shallow wave pool. All of the residents are children; some of them know the location of the fort    in the HVAC. Most of them do, in fact– but what happened here forced them to forget. You don’t get to see what it was–  you only know none of them realized it was happening.

As you turn away,   you feel a sudden wave    of kinship and understanding   with this place. But already   someone is coming to get you for knowing what happened,     shuffling heavily down the vents into the fort. You scramble to unscrew all the lightbulbs,      knowing that the dark will keep you safe.

The only thing left visible     in the infinite black space you’ve created     is your white tunic, glowing like neon. The vents have stopped rattling    and you can start walking away.