Fever dreams provide unconscious access to vulnerabilities. They are the narratives that are motivated by fear and longing combined, with a no win or resolvable plot. In my waking mind, I try to stay powered by desire and belonging. But this last week, the fever dreams have crept in to my mind even when I'm awake. All except #3. Number Three was a fear and vulnerability dream that was prescient and it took places 6 years after all of New York Publishing rejected a book I represented , with an Intro by the former CIA Director, William Casey, and written by a Newsweek reporter and NPR journalist on exactly how this could happen and way to circumvent it from happening.
Dream1 : At a house party on the North Shore, I can smell the sea and see the bonfire on the beach. Most of the party is taking place in a brilliantly colored victorian in to which my mind can see, even though I'm on the rocks between the beach and house. Suddenly I'm in the house introducing an indistinct family member to Steve. Steve hasn't changed in the nearly four decades since I last saw him. We're crowded in a narrow hallway along the stairs and people are trying to get his attention. But he's as stunned to see me as I am him.
He looks sheepish. A good word as his wavy still chestnut hair bouncing while he twist and shouts over the raucous partiers. I fear he'll spill my inner most weakness, the ones I had at 25, as a green behind the ears girl in NYC. I fear he'll ask me to sing on the stage set up on the porch. I haven't sung regularly or in front of strangers in eons. In my dream he's still a blues signing and actor. I think of the times I got on stage at Wonderland, the Lone Star and China Club, at his urging, during my go-go 80's NYC time with him. Now I can't summon that younger self. She's trapped in a woman who hasn't written or sung or created work of significance, besides her two children. Biology not fine tuned craft. Unless you count the made up lullabies and blues tunes she sang them as babies. My daughter now lives in NY and is age I was when I dated Steve. I felt so much older then, than she is now.
I'm in the kitchen - out on the beach - then back in the hallway. Steve hovers like a phantom at the edge of each shifting setting. As I go towards him, I hear him say he married the next woman, named Karen, he dated (true). That he moved to LA and he was in a Soap Opera for many years (true). He now lives on the North Shore of MA (true). That his singing is now a passion and no longer a dream (maybe). He now teachers acting and does little showcases (true). Those last two admissions make me uncomfortable and sweaty, probably coughing in my sleep as my son says I've been doing all week.
Why? He has lived a good and happy life. Why should that make me uncomfortable? I only now notice my dream version of has Steve looking much like the stepfather I hated, Zee. Does he? Did he? Creepy! Is it because it's a shared life with the other Karen and so much of my life has been and remains singular? Is that I'm still longing to allow myself to write, while he has spent these same four decades acting and singing? Is that I try to connect t and belong wherever go, and yet when asked where is home, there is no easy answer, other than New England? Is that I'm still partnerless after all these years?
Steve wants to introduce me to Karen, but she keeps being held up by interested others. I want to leave and can't seem to make my way out of the house. I'm telescoping in time between my 25 year old self and my 61 year old self. Too many boyfriends and a husband spinning like kaleidoscope pieces in a funhouse chamber. I feel even more fearful and sick. I wake up.
Dream 2: The same fever dream I've had since I was a girl in Bolton, MA. I think they started after my parents separated (4-6). This dream always begins with me on a rooftop in Tunis. I'm running, and jumping over and between rooftops. I'm being chased by men in white robes. I can't seem to hide. I have no money. Don't know the language. Usually an animal ~ dog, camel, sheep~ tries to help me, but I have to get down to the street level to receive their help and I only made it close to the ground once or twice in over half a century.
The light is fading and casts long shadows. I feel that I'm in danger, but I don't know what caused this. I run, run, run. And jump. Nights that I'm getting over my fevers, like last night, I can also fly by jumping down stair cases. I've always wanted to go to Africa. My aunt is Ghanaian. Perhaps the gifts of skin drums and little gold weights that looks like demons, that my uncle sent to us when I was a little girl, infused my sleep. When I wake up after this dream I know my fever will be over 100. Every time!
This is the my most persistent fever dream. I only learned it was Tunis as a teenager when I saw photographs and paintings like this. My mother hung one in the house at Dingley and I was glad it wasn't in the room where I slept. It was hung in our eldest sister/guest room. I would look at in in the morning light and try to imagine walking on the streets. How would it smell, sound, feel to actually walk those streets.
Dream 3: I had the same feverish dream for the 5 nights leading up to 9/11/2001 *.
I was on an elevated train, most likely in Brooklyn. I'm looking around and think something is off and then I realize there is no color. Usually my dreams are vivid in every way, right down to the colors. Additionally, I keep looking at the skyline of Manhattan that should be close and knowable. Only something is missing and my brain is upset because it can't figure out what it is. My stop finally comes, the door opens and I step onto the platform. No sooner do I do that than I notice it's snowing, only I know it's fall in my mind. So I bend at the waist, drag my right pointer finger through the "snow" only to realize that its warm and soft. I wake up in a cold sweat.
On the 5th morning I can't take it anymore. It's early, SF time, but I go down to make some coffee, as the kids are still asleep and Peter is in Europe on business. Maybe I can get some agency work done. No sooner do my feet hit the first floor, than my chosen brother, John Marsh, calls me on the land line.
John, "Baa, turn on the tv. I know you have friends and family in NY. I love you. I can't talk more now. Call me later, if you can."
Friends and family in NY? Call if I can? I love you ~ what is this???
I turn on the tv and see the replay of the first plane hitting the tower. As I watch, it become apparent that there are more planes "off course" and this isn't an accident. There is a clear blue, lovely sky over Manhattan. I watch this tragedy unfold while my children sleep upstairs and my husband is a continent away.
Then I see it. The wind has started to gently blow as the sun rises in the sky. After the second tower is hit, the wind is carrying the ash over the East River and into Brooklyn. The clear blue sky is now a blizzard of ash and horror as it slowly lifts and lands.
As the day progresses the sun is eclipsed by the ash. Color and lives have been stripped away. I watched those towers be built since I was a girl of 12. You could see them growing from the stoop of my godmother's apartment on Cornelia Street. I worried about her. All my publishing friends. My brother in Brooklyn, was he on tour?
John was right. It was impossible to get a hold of anyone via phone or the internet for quiet sometime.
That dream never came again, but it haunts me.
{* I've had premonition dreams - waking and sleeping- since I was a girl. This was just the worst one, it generated it's on fever during the dream and cooled when I awoke}
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