Friday, April 23, 2010

Matins by Louise Glück

The sun shines; by the mailbox, leaves of the divided birch tree folded, pleated like fins.
Underneath, hollow stems of the white daffodils,
       Ice Wings, Cantatrice; dark
leaves of the wild violet. Noah says
depressives hate the spring, imbalance
between the inner and the outer world. I make
another case­­­—being depressed, yes, but in a sense passionately
attached to the living tree, my body
actually curled in the split trunk, almost at peace,
        in the evening rain
almost able to feel
sap frothing and rising: Noah says this is
an error of depressives, identifying
with a tree, whereas the happy heart
wanders the garden like a falling leaf, a figure for
the part, not the whole.

Sunday, April 04, 2010

when you say "sweet dreams," is this what you mean?

i am on brett’s family vacation. he is himself, but his mother, father, and sister are not. we’re riding in a van, i’m looking at the backs of heads. we’re going to new york or some other big scary city. i dont think i’m very excited.

our rat trap hotel is a rat maze. to get to the room, i have to crawl on all fours, round and round, up and up. i’m alone, trying to squeeze around corners and read the room numbers. at one point i have to turn around. have a weird interaction with one of the other guests? where are you?

we’re all leaving the hotel down some crazy sky escalator. i think your dad is giving me directions, but i’m not understanding or i’m just nervous or something. i think i get in trouble? feel like a failure.

lots of strange, restricted travel-- multiple weird disconnected escalators into the sky. strange staircases with weird rules. i have to jump backwards down some steps, and i do one extra just in case. but the platform between these stairs and the next is shorter than i anticipated, and i land on another set of stairs. nearly fall, but somehow catch myself. brendan commends my good balance, but seems to think that what i did was stupid.
where are you? were you meeting a professor on these stone steps? i keep getting left alone in this huge city.

this part of the dream is just text on a page. i’m telling you i’m pregnant, and you can barely respond. i am desperate to get a reaction, but you can’t seem to say anything. maybe you tell me that you can’t live with me.

some weird history about a girl coming from a concentration camp in memphis.. is that my character or someone else? her face is sunken, sun-baked, sad.

we go to a ridiculously fancy movie theatre. it’s very high up... lots of escaltors to get to our seats. beth ellers, my film professor, is the ticket taker. i ask her if the film is good, and i’m hoping for a rave review. she says it’s mediocre and pretentious, so i’m disappointed of course. i think we’re finally sitting together in the the theatre, but you’re hating the film so much, i think you might have left. someone owes us a favor or something. i pull small pieces of paper from a book or a corn husk looking thing and give t hem to this usher girl, who gives them to a large man in front of us and asks for a couple of blunts. the movie is going on... i feel like it’s just a stage and different musicians performing. one song-- a guy is covering bright eyes. the music is a guitar, but he’s prentending to play a piano. at first, he plays with the music but then he just gets totally off. random people start appearing from under the piano... playing different instruments?

i know there’s more, but i can get it back right now. this was the most complex, vivid dream i’ve had (or remembered) in a long time. would like to remember more... would like to learn more about how dreams work. perhaps this has something to do with being the first 8 or 9 hours of sleep i've gotten in a long time.