2012/07/29

Diving Deep

I had another strange dream. Very different from the previous ones, this was not a nightmare, quite the contrary. The diver from the photos appeared to me. He looked nothing like in the photos, but it was the same man. He was the poet who had written the poems as well. In the dream he floated in the air above me in the bedroom as if we were underwater. He was wearing a strange, heavy diving suit, almost like a spacesuit, and he was shining with a bright light. He told me things that in the dream made perfect sense, but now not so much. I’ve made a habit of keeping a notebook and a pen by my nightstand, so that I can write down my dreams as soon as I wake up, but even then, I feel that I missed or misunderstood a lot of what he told me, already beginning to forget it while I was writing it down. Also, when I read through my own notes now, some of them make no sense. But afterward – and still now – I feel shaken by the powerful emotion I felt in the dream. I’ll try to explain the dream as well as I can.

The diver told me that a dark presence had taken over his girlfriend (the woman in the photos). He’d tried everything he could think of to banish it from her, but everything had failed. In the end, he finally understood what he had to do, finally understood the true nature of the dark place that was hidden under the waves of the lake where they lived. The lake was an opening to dark place that was much bigger than the lake itself, in fact, much bigger than the whole universe we live in. He wrote one last poem, his masterpiece, a secret poem, a hidden poem, a poem that’s not among the poems I’ve found in the shoebox. And he took his girlfriend for one last dive. Together they sank down into the depths, far deeper than he had ever dived before. In the dream, I was there, diving with them. And from the depths, something, or some things, surged up to meet them. Things of darkness, but bright things of light as well. The diver explained that these things, or these presences, were forever fighting a war between the forces of light and darkness. A dark presence had taken over his girlfriend, and a bright presence now came to take over him. And he surrendered his body to it, but at the same time, the essence of who he was kept diving deeper, ever deeper, holding the essence of his girlfriend (their spirits? their souls?). The diver (or what was left of him, his true self) spoke the words of his secret poem. The poem described a new world, an island in this sea of darkness, a safe haven, a paradise, a “baby” universe. The nature of the dark place was such that anything dreamed up there, any dream or a work of art, would come true, just as true as anything in our world can be. And the poem came true and the essence of the diver and the essence of his girlfriend escaped from the darkness and disappeared into this new world to live there happily ever after; while their shapes, his now taken over by a bright presence, as his girlfriend’s had been taken over by a dark presence, surged up, through the opening in the lake to our world, to continue their battle there.           

When I woke up I felt overwhelmingly happy and privileged of having been shown this. I’ve never been so moved by a dream and didn’t think it could even be possible. Even now, even though I’ve forgotten many details, the feeling remains: a feeling of hope. I know that something amazing is coming, that something wonderful is going to happen, and at the same time I know that when it does, it will be something totally different from what I’m expecting, something I could never have imagined. And I know it might take a long time before it does happen, but no matter how long it takes, I’ll be here, waiting.



2012/07/26

The Title Page

RETURN by ?

Note: as said, this is not a poem, more like a title page for something. The name of the author has been thoroughly and violently scratched out. Written above the title: "Campbell's MONOMYTH! I) Departure II) Initiation! III) Return".

Poem 18


A good friend passed away today
Quite unexpectedly
A bit of a bad luck there
But these things happen
It was nobody’s fault really
He was taken by
A dark presence
We keep his things in a shoebox
On our mantelpiece

NOTE: "dark presence" has been underlined. Written next to the poem: "E didn't find this funny".

Poem 17


I was surprised to find
That such revulsion could shine
In someone’s eyes. “How I hate your kind,”
He said, as we sat down to dine
On him

Poem 16

Inside this shoebox we killed for
There is
We don’t know what
Neat stacks of hundred dollar bills
Jewels like stars
The dreams of those who’ve slept in this town
The dream of this town (when we open it, the dreamer will wake, and we, all part of his dream, will be gone)
Our wishes come true
The power to punch a hole into the universe

Inside this shoebox we killed for
There is
A coffee thermos
A flashlight
A box of ammo
Two pages of poems
Countless wor(l)ds

Inside this shoebox we killed for
There is
No cat, poisoned or otherwise, dead or living, undead, un-cat
Baleful spirits
All the evils of the world
No hope
Nothing

Darkness

NOTE: lines "A coffee thermos / A flashlight / A box of ammo / Two pages of poems, all crossed out. Written below the poem: "E can't see it. He's view is too narrow, limited. It's not a lake, it's an ocean, darkness before the act of creation, before the Big Bang, darkness upon the face of the deep, upon the face of the waters, before light, before the primeval atom, before the word, before THE POEM. I can be a creator, the creator. It has happened before, and it will happen again, many times."

Poem 15


More than anything
His dearest wish
He wanted to go from there
To leave
But he could not change his heritage
The blood in his veins was ink
And the crown was too tall
To pass through the door
He was doomed to remain
A king forevermore

Poem 14

Tightrope walking
Would you choose
A safety net
That traps you
And kills the thrill
Thin weave of wires
Slices your flesh
I must prefer
The dark air in-between
Soft shadows
Hug you gently
All the way to the ground

NOTE: written below the poem is a quote: "Which are you drinking? The water or the wave?" and the name of the author: "John Fowles". 

Poem 13


I came looking for my princess
Instead I found a witch wearing her face
No one in the family
Had noticed the change
She said:
“She becomes me.”

Through all the wicked things she did
To me, her beauty kept me in a daze
I stared at her adoringly and forgot how she used to be
As she tortured me for days and days
She said:
”She becomes me.”

Isn’t it strange that with every wound
She’s caused her beauty in the mirror fades
I hear she’s already looking for another pretty girl
To put on in the old one’s place
She said:
“She becomes me.”

We’re both so thin
We wear our skeletons on the outside
She becomes me

NOTE: written below the poem: "B offended, thought this was about her, of course it's not".

2012/07/23

More Shoebox Poems

There were six new poems in the shoebox, as well as something else, not a poem, a title page, I suppose, it seems to come from a different batch. All the pages seem old, as if they've gotten wet at some point. In any case, here are the photos:








I'll transcribe the poems in an update soon, just in case the photos are not clear enough.


2012/07/22

Inside the Shoebox


When I found the shoebox again, there were more poems inside, and a battered, old device: a switch of some kind. I actually had to go and ask about it in the local hardware store to be sure what it was. It’s an old light switch. When you flick it, there’s a solid, satisfying click. When I flicked it the first time after finding it, all the lights in the house went out. I swear I’m not making this up. It turned out to be the whole neighborhood actually, and the real reason for the power out turned out to be the thunderstorm rumbling above. But talk about a coincidence of a lifetime! I’ve flicked the switch many times after that and nothing strange has happened. 


I can't explain where this new stuff came from. Someone broke into my house and put it there? That makes no sense.

Houseguests

Soon after my last update, someone contacted me. They had found me through this blog. They said that they know a lot about what’s been going on, about the origin of the shoebox’s contents, and that this kind of a thing had happened before, elsewhere. They promised to tell me more, on the condition that I’d stop updating the blog. They said that this whole thing should be kept secret and hinted that it could be dangerous, that there are people out there who think that the contents of the shoebox can be very valuable and would be willing to commit crimes to get hold of them. In a way it felt a lot like my nightmare about the agent who came asking about the shoebox. Of course this was totally different in many ways, but still, it reminded me of that, like the dream had come true somehow.

I promised to think about what they’d told me. And I have. And that’s the reason why there have been no updates for a while. They were friendly enough, but the more I’ve thought about it, the more the whole thing felt like a threat. And that really pisses me off. It’s a free country, and I can write about anything I want in my own blog. And the shoebox and everything in it came with the house, and thus it’s mine.

I’ve decided to keep updating the blog for now.