The Gods

How often do you dream? 

Or, maybe it should be, how often do you remember your dreams?

I feel as though I dream intensely and often. The dreams often stick around long after I've woken up, and I agitate them all day, like one does a mouth ulcer.

The more pertinent question may then be, how affected are you by your dreams?

I feel as though I am very affected by them. I am a firm proponent of dreams as catharsis. That is, that dreams fill a similar niche to horror films, or the Greek Tragedies. The releasing of the accumulated emotional flotsam in a healthy and (somewhat) expected way. Another compelling theory is that of ‘readiness’. You experience something larger than life, in a controlled way, and maybe you’ll be better equipped to process things when the shit does hit the fan. Of course, dreams can also be omens, insofar as anything can be an omen. Those who expect a poem, before reading a cluster of words, will read a poem. 

I would love to use this space to chronicle my dreams and dissect them when, and as, they come up. Call it a glorified diary, but you’re welcome along for the ride.

To get us started, what follows is my most-common recurring dream, followed by my second most-common recurring dream. We will loosely term these ‘the Gods’, but the constituent parts may be referred to as ‘Falling Up’ and ‘Falling Down’.

Falling Up:

I am standing on a path when a figure tears the air in front of me. Through this rent, I am given a peek behind the curtain. I am offered a spoiler of things to come by some cosmic entity, who stands nearby, silently observing. Observing me, that is, and not the action through the rent. 

The figure, when I can get a good look at it, wears clothes that are too big - mud-stained jeans which end halfway along bare feet, and a jersey which hides the hands and droops at the neck. The face never moves, and has the appearance of flesh that has been vacuum-sealed into the mould of a face. No eyes, nostrils, or mouth-hole, and the blotchy consistency of luncheon meat. The figure has jet-black hair, which hides any ears and curtains the face. As happens in dreams, there is no empirical evidence for it, but I always get the feeling that the figure is trustworthy. I also get the feeling the figure can see me, despite there being no eyes.

The rent in the air sometimes displays mass disease or a demonic invasion, or some other form of world-ending terror, but always depicts a cairn, or a sludge, made of the absence of light. Again, without evidence, I know that this shadow is the cause of so much destruction. 

The figure with the over-sized clothes waves the rent away, and walks back into the forest, having never said a word. I run. I don’t pause for breath, or food, or water. Every person I come across gets the same warning - run, get away, go while you can. But each warning falls on deaf ears or, sometimes, is met by active derision. I run for days, trying in vain to spread my message, but cannot convince anyone, especially when nothing looks untoward.

As the people fall sick around me, or the army swarms in from all sides. I see the scene I was shown roughly a fortnight ago, except not from above, from eye-level. I see the black sludge coalescing from all sides. When all seems lost, and the hordes are closing in, I get raptured. 

This is, however, no welcome or sedate ascension. It’s as if gravity has reversed, and I am tumbling towards the sky. I am buffeted by wind so strong, it feels like being tackled. I pass through clouds that blind me momentarily, and chill me to the bone. I scream, and the tendons in my neck form taut cords as I try to keep my jaw in place. Then it all stops, and the silence feels too much.

Often, that’s where the dream ends but, one time, I caught a glimpse of myself. I saw mottled skin, blistered by the ascent, and skin stretched too large. I knew, if I gave a concerted effort, I could probably force it into the shape of my old face.

Falling Down:

I have transgressed somehow. I have done something which displeases the gods. I never know what this is, but I know I am penitent. As punishment, the disciples on Earth encase me, up to my neck. Sometimes, they encase me in concrete. Sometimes, they smelt me into some kind of metal. But, I always have my head out. 

They then load me onto a ship, take me far out over the ocean, and drop me down. I watch the surface, and the light, rush away. I try to hold my breath as long as I can, until it feels as though my lungs will burst. When I feel as though I can no longer take it, I breathe in, and learn that the ultimate curse is that I can breathe the water. 

I watch the light slowly get dim and turn to complete darkness, as I fall to the seabed. The scene stays like that for just a beat too long before I wake.

Do you have interesting dreams? I would love to hear about them. Email me at blathermag@gmail.com.

No psychoanalysis or Freud stans, please.