Portholes

I am the next one up at the poetry slam. My whole class of girl poets is performing. Not a problem I think, I'll just go through the poems I have memorized and choose one. I can't think of a single poem. I start getting a little worried and my waking brain kicks in, "maybe my 'poems' are songs" I guess that I could poet a song, but I keep trying to think of something else, I tell my fifth grade teacher Mrs. Vanderlip that I have to go into nature to collect my thoughts, then I hike up into the dark wood behind the stage.

I come to a lake surrounded by black rocks. There is path of rocks out into the water that lead to a boulder. I walk out the island and look into the lake. There is a man with no legs swimming in the water below me. He looks happy. His red flannel shirt tails float around nothing. I wonder how he's swimming so well.

Somehow I know that he is not alive. He is a ghost of someone who lost his legs in the lake. Then I am aware that he is with another ghost, but she is invisible because she died in the lake. I think that I could probably write this down and make a poem out of it. More tourists come up the boulder and I leave, but I get freaked out when I touch the water because it's had dead people in it.

I return to my impending poetry performance. It's over, and my teacher tells me I'll have to perform in tomorrow's show. I am relieved and disappointed.

Later I am attending a writing workshop we're reading a poetry example from the Wilderness Charter School (where I went to high school) The poem is mine. It's very Lorca-esque with references to animals and the color green and some nice little surreal moments. I remember I wrote in in another dark wood by a little stream.

I realize I am watching a film of the writing workshop. It's of my college class. In it I am soliloquizing some important idea and I get a good reaction from the class for showing my solidarity with whatever it is. Then the cameraman leaves the room, and so do I and a bunch of my friends because we're still in the video. We come to a door labeled "Campbell Club" and "Cooks." All of my friends are either members of the Campbell Club or have the name Cook. We go in. It's a bathroom. Cool.

We leave and I ask my friend what he thought of the poetry example in class. I can't hear what he says but I think he didn't like it that much, I dig out the paper and look at the back. My copy is the original and has the rough draft on the back. I read it. It's so bad, so ridiculous that I don't want him to see it, I hide the worst parts with my hands. He falls asleep at the table and because I'm in a movie from the past I kiss him and tell him I love him.

The End.

In the capital and the forest

I was driving around Washington DC in a bus at night, with my sister and Cassie. The bus driver was one of my professors, and we were supposed to go on a date after he finished his route. It became very late, and I had to decide whether to stay overnight with him in DC or to take the last train back to Baltimore with the girls. First I decided that I would stay, and then I changed my mind and decided to return home. As soon as I knew that I was going to leave, the spell was broken and I had no idea why I had been tempted to spend time with my professor in the first place.

Then I was driving with David through a redwood forest, along the edge of a mountain. We pulled over next to a very long, steep dirt road leading down into the trees. David got out of the car, walked over to the road, sat down, pushed himself off and slid down through the trees so fast that he was quickly out of view. I followed, thinking as I sped down how difficult it would be to climb back up later. At the bottom of the road was a narrow beach, and I slid right past a fat black seal into the water. We were in a small, sunny cove, with a high stone wall about fifty feet out that prevented us from seeing the ocean beyond.

Some old written records of dreamscapes — in hopes that sharing them will reactivate that damn part of my soul that once wove these things:

I dreamt today (not today) that I had to hastily prepare a lesson for all of the 9th graders to whom I teach science in Castiglion Fiorentino. I was flipping through the class book to try and understand what unit they were on, and then realized that chapters 4-8 were completely absent from the book... though that wasn't too disconcerning, it was to be expected, in a way. But they'll be back soon! Oh a shark. My friend, Anna, had the children off in some other part of the building for some other activity. I don't teach science! (Often.) I could handle it though. Oh noes, the real worl...

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Swimming, laps. Pippin kicked all the way to other side (no strokes). It took me 40 minutes. A prize? Little fish, blob fish — orange and black, little cave that it protected, funny lips.