I have left a gigantic spider in the dirty dishes. I did it initially as a prank, or as some sort of lesson, but now I have left the spider in the dishes for far too long. I am now waiting longer, hoping that the spider will have drowned in the dish water.
The creature is immense: the legs measure a foot at least. This spider has visited me in dreams before--last time, in a cave where I visited my mother. (She was bound to a chair there. No analysis, please.) Then, the spider hung at the cave's entrance, and its legs (many more than eight) writhed above my head. Now only these legs are visible, poking out between plates, floating limp atop the water and the scum. It must be dead by now, I think.
I touch its legs--they writhe slowly in response. This weighs heavily on me, as I placed the spider here myself, and I hoped it would simply die on its own through my negligence. But it has stayed here, head submerged, at the edge of death, and now I must complete the job that won't complete itself.
I take a layer of plates off--the spider's body sits just beneath the water, though there's too much murk and debris to discern the outline. All I can see is the slight undulation of the water as the spider moves. Some of its hair breaks the surface--a patch at the abdomen and a patch at the cephalothorax.
I have in my hand a heavy silver spindle, sharp at the tip. In my brain its purpose is clear; I have since forgotten what it might be used for. But I drive this into the spider's body. This feels like accomplishment; I'm finally addressing my darker corners. I relish my horror--I've earned it.
But the task is not yet complete. I'll need to use a knife. The silver spindle, firmly piercing the spider's body, moves up and down with its heaves. I'm envisioning the plunge of the knife and the cut as I awaken.
And this dream stayed with me all day. The creature was fearful and pitiful, and I had made it myself--through negligence. This I took as didactic. The monsters rise up when you fail to take the knife into your hand at the start of your adventures--or perhaps the monsters arise at the intersection of evil and negligence.
I feel a sense of gratefulness to the dead spider now, and I don't know if this too is a relic of the dream or a product of wakeful reflection. I spent the morning stabbing some of my hoarier spiders, and the horror I felt I'd definitely earned.
Thursday, April 30, 2009
Sunday, April 19, 2009
Thursday, April 16, 2009
Adorno's dreams, indexed
While I was in Portland I found a book of Theodor Adorno's dreams. And the publisher was kind enough to index the major motifs. Imagine having an index to your own dreams--your own set of subconscious reference books.
Here's a snippet from Adorno's:
Adorno seemed to hold a special fascination in his dreams with the architecture of brothels: one was devoted 80% to administrative staff, with only one dark room for the women. Another was located high in an American skyscraper, but resembled on the inside the sleeper car of a train--each woman in a different curtained vestibule.
He considered the dream journal a literary genre in its own right, and the afterword by Jan Phillip Reemstma attempts to explore it as such, especially in its dependence on non-meaning. And while this is true, one thing that struck me most about Adorno's dreams--and my own, in hindsight--is the almost voluptuous excess feeling of meaning you can feel in them--not so much in direct and readable information, which is sparse, but in the gut sense that something important has just passed--that a critical idea, or love, or connection has been made inside the dreaming mind, and has been lost on waking.
I don't believe that anything so critical actually does flash through our brains at night--rather, I think the parts of our minds that know how to make us feel as if we've just stood in the presence of the sublime feel it to be the only time they might trot outside, stretch their neurons. And we bask in the mystery of their calisthenics for the rest of the morning.
Here's a snippet from Adorno's:
Serkin, Rudolf 61-2
sex: Babamüll technique 14-15, 96; in bed with L.'s wives 19-21; comments called out 50; cutlets playing a dog's game 50-1; and death 36, 101; prick washing machine 75; 'Verkehr' 96; vivdly dreamt 58; see also brothels; women
Shakespeare, William: The Comedy of Errors 25
shaving 29
Siegfried (mythological) 2
social manners and breaches: Kaiser Wilhelm and 24-5; at opera 9; ragged children and hoodlums 26; squeezing girls 50
sociology exam anxiety 57-8
Spann, Othmar 60-1
stars 35-6
Statue of Liberty 3
Steuermann, Eduard 41, 76
Stravinsky, Igor 46
Suhrkamp, Peter 73
sunglasses 11
Adorno seemed to hold a special fascination in his dreams with the architecture of brothels: one was devoted 80% to administrative staff, with only one dark room for the women. Another was located high in an American skyscraper, but resembled on the inside the sleeper car of a train--each woman in a different curtained vestibule.
He considered the dream journal a literary genre in its own right, and the afterword by Jan Phillip Reemstma attempts to explore it as such, especially in its dependence on non-meaning. And while this is true, one thing that struck me most about Adorno's dreams--and my own, in hindsight--is the almost voluptuous excess feeling of meaning you can feel in them--not so much in direct and readable information, which is sparse, but in the gut sense that something important has just passed--that a critical idea, or love, or connection has been made inside the dreaming mind, and has been lost on waking.
I don't believe that anything so critical actually does flash through our brains at night--rather, I think the parts of our minds that know how to make us feel as if we've just stood in the presence of the sublime feel it to be the only time they might trot outside, stretch their neurons. And we bask in the mystery of their calisthenics for the rest of the morning.
Tuesday, April 7, 2009
One Year Between Fiction Submissions
Just recently I sat down to send a story out to fiction magazines again. The last time I had mailed out--and it was the same piece I was mailing--seems to have occurred one year ago.
The process is surely painful, but if I don't face it more often, I'll continue at my present pace--virtually standstill. The excuses are good ones. Submitting work is better.
The process is surely painful, but if I don't face it more often, I'll continue at my present pace--virtually standstill. The excuses are good ones. Submitting work is better.
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