"Everything dreams. The play of form, of being, is the dreaming of substance. Rocks have their dreams, and the earth changes."—Ursula K. Le Guin, The Lathe of Heaven

//

Last night I dreamt I was standing on a floor covered in dog hair and I insisted on picking them up, one by one, and dropping them into a jar. Some girl walks into the room and says, "Why don't you fucking sweep the floor?!"

This week: feeling blue and harassed, way too much bedroom time, reading loads. Picnic at Standing Rock, The Lathe of Heaven, Gunnar's Daughter. Intermingling in my subconscious are images of young women disappearing into volcanic caves, the world remade by dreams, a medieval Danish woman slaying her father's killer as he slept. Now I've started The Magic Mountain, about an 'ordinary' man who enters a sanatorium high in the Alps for a three-week stay that turns into 7 years.

When I chat with friends on WhatsApp, I don't describe what I am doing (because, really, I'm doing nothing), I tell my dreams, as if they are the most meaningful part of being alive, and maybe, at this point in time, they are.

<<