A m駘ange of strange dreams of no interest to anybody but, because they pester me while I’m trying to think or write, I let them out here. The first, mostly a dream of sensation rather than narrative or visuals, an urban dessert, perhaps post-apocalyptic. I’ve dreamt this setting before, or at least it feels familiar if only because it is completely alien. But there are no mutants, no dead bodies; there is no remnant of war or devastation. Just an empty world. Or nearly empty. But everything has a zooish quality, and the world is the color of Road Runner cartoons, oranges and browns and burnt sienna.

In this alien space, I find a family. A young Asian family that evidently has survived the Transition — into this empty world — because they were in their car and because the interior of the car was padded. It made sense at the time. It was never a question why I had survived. The dreamer, the narrator, the sole survivor are exempt from explanation.

I befriended the little girl in the family. It was very much an other-world but I was unafraid, only curious. The little girl had lost her pet in the Transition and she was very sad. I took on the role of her pet.

Another dream, an anecdote more than a dream, I observed two supermen. That is, Superman, but two of them. They were trading off. The switch was an odd ritual with dancing. There is a sport in Korea where wrestlers are tied together. I forget what it was called but it was fascinating to watch. Sort of an intimate aggression. Or a dancing battle. The Superman switch looked a lot like that. A Superman junior was replacing the Superman senior. It was meant to be a secret but I saw. The dreamer is the fly on the wall. The dreamer is exempt from the rules. The dreamer is a witness of privilege.

Another dream like a postcard. I’ve just been hired by Paramount. I don’t know what my job is. My office will be in a secret underground building. The bulk of the underground building is a tall needle which is attached at the bottom, and still underground, to a half-sphere. With such a cool place to work in I don’t suppose I care what my job is. It never occurred to me to wonder where I might take my smoke breaks. I’m not sure that I’m a smoker in my dreams.

Another. I’m being pursued. By agents. Wherever I am, I don’t belong. The agents want to capture me and cast me out. I’m in a small town house where a family is cooking. It’s a great safehouse because it looks entirely normal. I’m alerted to the agents coming. I slip out the back. To the smell of cooked cabbage. I can’t leave the block. Perhaps like a video game, my setting has invisible borders. A bank is closed but the building is open. Inside, the lights are on, the floor is shiny. It smells like a post office. I squat behind the counter. The agents, I know, are not fast, but they are persistent. Like a cold virus. I understand that the bank is the last place they look. Again, I am not afraid. I rarely dream fear. I don’t dream that I am ever captured. But I don’t remember my escape.

Perhaps I took the job with Paramount underground.

Hhm? Do you remember Secret Railroad? It was a cartoon I used to watch in the late 70s. There was a little girl, Stella, maybe, with hair like Lisa Simpson. And a black cat named Melody. And an old man who took the train called Passenger or Mr. Passenger and of course a little kid, perhaps named Simon. Perhaps it’s just been fermented and distilled in my brain, but, at least now, that cartoon seems very surreal and mysterious.

SS