A Season for a Dream

Daydream, which is to thought as the nebula is to the star, borders on sleep, and is concerned with it as its frontier. An atmosphere inhabited by living transparencies: there’s a beginning of the unknown. But beyond it the Possible opens out, immense. Other beings, other facts, are there. No supernaturalism, only the occult continuation of infinite nature…Sleep is in contact with the Possible, which we also call the improbable. The world of night is a world. Night, as night, is a universe…The dark things of the unknown world become neighbors of man, whether by true communication or by a visionary enlargement of the distances of the abyss…and the sleeper, not quite seeing, not quite unconscious, glimpses the strange animalities, weird vegetations, terrible or radiant pallors, ghosts, masks, figures, hydras, confusions, moonless moonlights, obscure unmakings of miracle, growths and vanishings within a murky depth, shapes floating in shadow, the whole mystery which we call Dreaming, and which is nothing other than the approach of an invisible reality. The dream is the aquarium of Night.
— Victor Hugo, Travailleurs de la Mer

Another guest contribution

This time it comes in the form of a grave warning from my older, wiser sibling Le Olde Sasefina:

My fingers hurt. My guts hurt. Spend the majority of your time ignoring or tending to the needs of your body, but what are ye doing for your minde? Aye, youngling kith and kin, when do ye stop to consider what it is good for thy head? If it groaned like yer belly and shook like yer knees and ached like that wounded arm of yourn from the previous eve's worm-dancing revelries, would ye take better care?

Aye, goodly youngling. Haven't ye thought about the contents of your withered and transmogrified psyche spilling out, leaking all over cyberspace like the gangrene ridden blood dripping out of the veins of a slaughtered olde goat ye sacrificed to make room for a soulless new cloned little chicken plumpkin? Be careful lest your soul travel without ye. Media will steal yer minde ere ye even realize ye have been taken. But a split second and ye've gone galaxies deep into the blackest abyss.

Hark, youngling kindred of mein! Ere ye lose thine owne precious being, that which maketh yourn life yourn! Sew up thein head ere ye lose it and experience reinfleshment in the form of a lowely rodent or some other manner of foulness. Take heed, good sons and daughters. The demons abound.

It, my friends, it, and gentle scumbags

Guest post courtesy of Youngling #2. Check him out:


It pulls from the recesses of the dark and cavernous hollows we call our souls. It taps the murky, milky, putrid sewage from the well of our rotting hearts. The mind is not elastic, but when it comes to This, we can stretch it to limits. The mind becomes frayed, torn at its edges, trying to wrap itself around the idea that we are not alone, that we need someone - but only when This, this gross and filthy and undeniable Thing presents Itself. For when This comes - the shadow, the specter, the revenant that left us, and itself, for hopeless dead - the mind, heart and soul turn desperate and tasteless and listless.

This It is whatever you suppose It to be. It is your inner-most fear. It is the demon that haunts your dreams. It is the devil to your god. The love to your hate. The reality of your love. It is pain rather than joy. So why do you - we - regard the latter?

It is because we are fools. We are the demons. We are the fears. We are the hate. We are the reality. It sucks us dry and makes wrinkled and withered our passion. It creates Us.

Fly away dreary torment. Fly away ghastly dream. Fly away cadaverous and wretched nightmare. Fly away.

Mayhap a demon will possess your "sole"

Turning it over in my head, over and over. Can't get it out of my unstable mind. But the doctor says that is can be removed. There is a way. There is a light. But it will take intensive surgery. Chloroform. Sedation. Incisions.

The gentle touch of a beautiful Persian hand. Suit cut Italian style and the smell of sticky white lye hanging limp in the air, invoking the pause of an executioner's hew. Just one more little huff. Remembering is not safe, they tell me, as I pass into relative crypt-sleep. Or so it feels.

I wake, naked in the dark. Alone and tattooed, aching and blistered. Caked blood and dried spittle. My breath fills the void with a pungeant, bittersweet odor. Rank are the coils of steam drifting through contaminated consciousness. I can see my reflection in the blackness. Though my eyes find no skill in this stupor, it is there. Staring back at me smiled and poised. Knowing. Believing. Yet something is not right with this still frame. All is silent.

My feet begin to dance. One two, one two, one two. A waltz? No, just a short rhythm, abbreviated from its full desirous release. Just a little motion that sways like an Atlantic current, rocking, lulling. Mimicked at every pace by the image in front of my drifting constitution. The image of me. Just a fluttering profile, glistened with a moist, cobalt aura. Laughing at me. Romancing the darkness.

I twitch to the left, it slides to the right. I duck, it ducks. A reddening glow shines in the blackness, as everything slows. This is surely the end. The end of the way it was. Now my aping cohort smirks back, inviting. He, no I, wave back and beckon. My biology shivers. The body heat releases into the ether a faint mist, a dullish violet. Tiptoeing, I follow. Colder than fire. Down this slickened path, subatomic light particles directing my mind like chalk arrows. To the center.

Sprightly visages cavort and dangle in the fading shadow sun. A grand feast of devils and impish lovers, twitching and echoing one another. Happy to see this new visitor. This man, this pseudo-creator, this sleepwalking mark. It's me at whom they snicker. I'm far from home now, but I already understand. My dread has receded. The subtle tunes, rich in temptation and merry, resonate with irresistable welcoming. Hello and goodbye. Be with us, they seem to sing.

I throw down my hands, transparently. I capitulate. I sway, and my motion is drunken. It is time now. It is time to dance. Two feet are my escort. It is time now to dance. And I dance. A pyre dance, a birthing dance. All is new and fresh with...