Dream Collage

Dream Collage
Art by Norman E. Masters



"...wandering into some darker corridors, some of the DreamScrolls
began projecting undertones of dark mystery -- alluring me to listen
more closely to whatever forbidden secrets they were willing to share."


Dream Library of the Ages


from DREAMER'S WORLDS


Copyright 2000 byNorman E. Masters


I found myself in the strange and endless Library of All the Ages of Dream where every dreamthought of every dreaming creature that has ever existed is recorded in endless books and scrolls, tablets of clay, stone inscriptions and... Well, all the ways it *is* done. I'm sure computer discs were there, somewhere -- but I never got into that section. Millions of dream crystals, tho -- in one area I passed through. In one area a mountain of sand -- where every grain of sand held a lifetime of dreams... The number of "volumes" (in the larger meaning that word is being extended to encompass) were nigh-unto infinite.

It was a four-dimensional maze -- for shifts-in-time were a part of its filing system; and where I found myself, initially, I was floating, globelike thru unending tunnels of books and scrolls. But in the timelessness of this Dream Library of the Ages nothing aged. The Works were ever-new -- for few Dreamers have discovered this place -- and those who do -- amidst a nigh-infinite number of volumes, how many volumes can *any* Dreamer find dreamtime to puruse even *once*?

Gravity, here, was a strange variable of the dreaming consciousness. The Books and Scrolls of Dream not only held to their shelves and deep cubicles to the front of where one was facing, and behind, and on both sides, but they were *also* above and below, in areas that kept to a rectangular formation. In the mountain of sand it was global vaults. But there were other sections where the mediums in which the dreams were stored were arranged at every conceivable angle and intricate curvilinear formation in endlessly variating configuration. Some of those angles, especially, seemed to be nexus-points that led ElseWheres, just as some of those strange curves seemed to be shimmering portals to still OtherWheres -- far distant in dreamspace and dreamtime. There was a very disturbing and disorienting *alien* feel to some of those angles and shimmerings...

In some sections the Books of Dreams were really restive and some of them would sporadically decide to abruptly change places with others, nudging them out of their placement, snuggled between two other Dream Volumes -- often to outraged cries of protest. Sometimes it became an animated push-and-shove back and forth as to *which* Dream Volumes one would be pressed-up against so intimately! I observed one instance where hundreds of volumes rippled together like a deck of cards being shuffled -- the majority group decision over*riding the protests of some who preferred where they had been. Another time it was more like millions of volumes being tossed chaotically into space by some disgruntled demigod. One could also compare it to millions of startled hens in a henhouse, I suppose. That unexpected flurry of so *many* volumes was rather scarey to be in the middle of, quite frankly, until they settled back into some semblance of order, again.

In some areas it was as quiet as death -- or maybe the Dream Volumes were just sleeping. In others there were occasional whisperings that were fiercely "Shhhhhh!"sed by others. But in many areas the books were animatedly talking with each other in an endless interweaving flow of whispers of confidentiality, muted discussion, louder argumentation, weeping anguish and all those other variables of expressiveness, with scattered exclamation!!! and *imprecation*. Volumes of endless declamation -- some incendiarily bursting into ghost-flames that never really consumed them, but expressing, graphically, how they *felt*... Poets' dreams where they spoke non-stop eternally -- for their goal was an Eternity of Immortality for their Words and *nothing* was *ever* going to shut them up -- within the parameters of *their* dreams! And lots of Dream Volumes of gibbering nonsense -- the dreams of madmen locked into their cells of insanity...

But where I found myself, initially -- none of volumes were speaking in any language I could even *understand*! Only the intonations, the interweaving emotions, the oratorical pontification and what seemed to be immensitudes of unlistened to yabbering advice getting more and more strident...

But wandering into some darker corridors, some of the DreamScrolls began projecting undertones of dark mystery -- alluring me to listen more closely to whatever forbidden secrets they were willing to share. And from some of these I was able to discern intimations of hidden meanings I felt I could *almost* understand...

I leaned my ear closer to one ancient scroll whose muted tones of suggestiveness gave promise of some esoteric knowledge from the Dream Libraries of a mystery religion of the ancient past that was supposed to be genuine supernal *gnosis*. What attracted me most was that some of the syllables sounded *almost* like English -- but they were taking strange turns so that it never quite was... Maybe a mutation of the English we speak -- from an alternate timeline? Then the whispering cacophony of other volumes down the corridor increased, beginning to drown out what I was wanting to hear and try to make some sense of, so I leaned in closer still, touching my ear directly to it so that the Scroll of the Cosmic Mystery was much like a speaking tube against my ear, hoping to be able to discern what it was saying. It had been the sound of certain names, "Zosimos" and "Eleleth" that initially perked my attention and deepening interest... Then the names "Mirothea" and "Norea" seemed to be whispered, piquing my interest most intensely..

I was hoping, of course, to hear more of Norea -- and reflected how maddening it was to be unable to translate what was being said about her into English!

In synchronicity with the thought of how maddening this was -- just as my ear had touched the scroll, I experienced a vertiginous temporal and spacial shift, finding myself in a section of the Library of the Ages of Dream where some actual English-speaking volumes *were* housed. Then, almost immediately a verbal tongue flicked out from one of those volumes, curling around me and sweeping me *in* to what I can only call a mad grammarian's dream...

At first he didn't seem *utterly* insane. He was only trying to capture into words what no other had ever expressed before, obsessed with begetting the largest range of implications to every nuance of his expressiveness that he could attain, ever-striving for a kind of suggestive evocation that was infinite in implication...

Okay, I thought, a word-painter, a sometimes writer addicted to poetic prose, a man who carries on orgies with *words* in his head...

"Verbal orgies!" the grammarian exclaimed, as if suddenly inspired -- with a kind of manic yet whimsical playfulness in his intonation of that thought.

I wondered if my *own* thought had fused with *his* in this particular Dream... Can our very presence, I wondered, silently, when we are involved in partaking of the Dream of another in the Library of All Dreams, actually effect a *mutation* in those Living Dreams, themselves? For there are ways in which these Dreams are ever-alive -- with some of them actually having an archetypal effect that spans the millennia as they recurrently impregnate future minds with their images...

Anyways, in the streams of language this writer was dreaming (I think his name was David Philips or something like that) I observed this absolute *orgy* begin taking place -- no more than six feet away from me! -- nouns fornicating with verbs -- but far from fully satisfying and gratifying the verbs' lustily voracious and (it began to seem) *insatiable* appetites! There were some really *hot* verbs running thru that grammarian's dream-consciousness! Indeed, it was not long before those verbs were becoming downright nymphomanic in their antics! (And what the interjections began interjecting into all this is perhaps best left undescribed...)

After the nouns had all gone limp the verbs began calling out, "It's time for the conjunctions! We want more conjunctions!" (The prepositions, I should mention, were still making no more than phrasal propositions on the sidelines.) Then the adjectives and adverbs starting mixing-in, fullsomely renewing the energy of the conjunctions and adding considerably more colorfulness to the frolicking.

The pronouns, however, tended to be excluded from the orgy. "We don't want any pronouns in here," said the verbs. "They get too possessive!"

Conjugal formations of gerunds and infinitives began chanting "Alphabet soup! Alphabet soup!"

The pronouns took up the call, feeling that was the only way *they* would be allowed to mix-in with the reveling.

"Awww, that's really going to fuck up the menu!" muttered the proper noun, "Gamaliel".

"Hey -- I like *that* cute menu! I'd love to dine on *her*!"

"Hey! Lick the menu, if you want, but don't you go messing with her; you know how those pronouns get..."

So streams of words began loosing their identities -- just really juicing-it-up -- into what they called "alphabet soup" (and then that verbal orgy began to get *really* steamy! -- it was much like being in the midst of a veritable verbal sauna! -- they were getting so *hot* with each other -- in such frantic -- and I assume, to them, delectable frictioning -- letter-to-lettering -- doing far more than they'd even been *able* to do in just rubbing against each other word-to-word!), all of them breaking down into their component letters, the pronouns now plunging in, squirming into frenzied re-mixing-comminglings, some of the letters prancey-dancing. Amidst this frantic scramble towards recombination I saw R's with their legs caressing the insides of the C's, an I getting *very* intimate with the cleft of a V, one S hooking an a and an o, doing its sinuously swirling thing with 2 at once -- and a W getting frisky with two upsidedown U's!

A few of them got together to spell out, "sHeeR EcSTaxy!!"

I thought it rather clever of that x to have squeezed in there. I did observe that a lot of x's and q's and z's got left-out in the recombining; but "sHeeR EcSTaxy!!" evicted the x in pretty short order when an s slinked her way in while a couple more exclamation points inserted themselves before the s... However, the questionable move by a question mark -- ram-jamming into the space between the two words, got itself booted out almost immediately by the capital R who began nuzzling, suggestively, against the E...

Then the message assembled, "Why aren't YOU disassembling and joining in?" and began wriggle-snaking towards me menacingly, with formations of "hissssssss" "hssssssss!" "ssssssssss!" coming out its mouth like a three-pronged fork.

As I quickly backed away from that verbal snake a couple cute prepositions began rubbing against me quite seductively, getting *really* propositional with me, clearly wanting to add me to *their* recombinant phrase, so I hastily grabbed a q and an x from the sidelines and maid my exit as quickly as possible -- hastening along the corridor between the DreamVolumes to put *lots* of distance between me and that particular Dream Volume before some of those recombinant Words got to feeling that my stand-offishness was *not* to be countenanced, and decided to utterly disassemble and incorporate me into *their* schemes and dreams and screaming ecstasies!

I guess it was that semi-focus upon *my* sense of utter bewilderment that caused them -- for a time -- to renounce and reject any stray interjections of pronoun*ced exclamation and variant pronoun*ciation that would sometimes ejaculate from the corner where I was observing all these goings-on...

28.February.2000



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