Friday, August 21, 2009

Dream - The creatures in the basement

On April 7 or 8, 2009, I had a dream in which I apparently killed something that turned out to be a baby dragon, and when I tried to escape I went into a basement filled with strange creatures.

The first part of the dream, except for some vague impressions of driving back and forth doing pickup and delivery, is largely forgotten.

Then, at some point, I came to a place like the front parts counter of a local Chevrolet dealer, as it was back in the 1970s and '80s. There was someone behind the counter and also someone outside it. There were also a few other people nearby. It was sometime in the morning.

After a while, my mother showed up. I think she went there to tell me something, perhaps to remind me to come home for lunch, though I'm not sure. I talked to her for a while, and sometimes to a person or two in the area. We started slowly drawing away, then, preparing to leave, but though she took a step or two away, my mother kept on talking to someone at or near the counter, her body turned partly back toward them. I waited, not saying much myself, and getting a little impatient.

While waiting, I noticed a dark, roundish, hazy-looking thing, like a large bug, near the counter along where a small side wall was, where the floor met the wall. It looked like a small dustball, with a long, thin, neck-like structure sticking out of it. I threw something at it, breaking the neck-like structure off. It was brittle, like a thin piece of meat that had been burned almost to ashes. My mother objected, too late, saying, "Ohh!...," disappointed. It was going to grow up into a dragon. Well, too late now.

There was some question about the dragons getting mad, and something else was happening where the thing was, something growing out of the dustball, a small totally black dragon, looking two-dimensional, like a dark, impenetrable shadow, except for an eye, like a cutout in the shadow, looking mad.

Some things were coming, somewhere out there, somewhere to the west. Someone came and told us and some others. Looking out, you could sense them, feel them coming, though nothing was visible yet. The day seemed darker, as faint clouds partially obscured the sun, which seemed to be getting low in the sky. A faint, slightly cool wind blew in from the west, the direction from which they were coming. I'm not sure exactly what they were, but we were told that the dragons were notifying a lot of the other strange, fantastical (and generally large) animals, which had then notified others, etc. They were now headed our way, converging on us. We had to get away before they got here.

There was a narrow doorway beside the counter, with old chipped paint on the door frame and short hallway beyond, light blue paint showing though the white outer paint so much that it was mostly blue. It led down some old grimy short steps to a dark sunken room, maybe six to eight feet down. Some boxes and things were in the room, mostly near the walls. Strange things hid among the boxes, fantastic creatures.

I went a little down the stairs. A wizard, standing outside near the doorway, told us we needed to hide, to go to our secret places as planned, as we had rehearsed. A bunch of people, some outside and some inside, did as instructed, disappearing, going under the layers of reality, like burrowing under layers of cardboard, disappearing like bugs scurrying away from the light, and the place was suddenly almost empty. I went away too, going through layers that were like stacked cardboard, reaching a place beyond like a little niche.

The creatures were surprised, puzzled, not sure what to make of the sudden activity and then the emptiness. I came out, though, and went through the darkened sunken room, the things watching from the shadows, interested but still slow to move, slightly cautious after the strange happenings. They were generally not very large, probably mostly in the two to four foot high area, but they tended to be on the thick side, particularly their upper bodies and heads, and could be very dangerous. They started to get a bit more bold, slowly coming out of their hiding places.

I went up the stairs on the other side of the room and out to the back yard, which appeared to be the back yard of my grandmother's house in Arizona, although her house there didn't have a basement. There were more strange creatures out there, different from and not connected with the creatures inside, like they each had their own dimension or universe. There were various objects in the yard and back by the house. It was night now, out back, though when I had killed, or apparently killed, the bug creature it had been morning, perhaps near lunchtime. Now, out back, it was late at night, perhaps ten or eleven, and the creatures were sleeping, not expecting anything. Someone came up the stairs after me, perhaps my mother or maybe another relative, I'm not sure now. Some of the creatures from inside were starting to follow us, heading for the stairs to come up after us.

I went to the right around a corner, to where part of the house was set back a bit. There was a stack of the creatures there, sleeping. I woke them up. They were a little slow to wake, and puzzled at what was happening, surprised too. Some of the things from inside were getting in the yard now. There was an old round piece of cardboard, like an oversized plate, that I half tossed, half pushed toward a creature or two. There was also a largish crumpled ball of old cardboard that I rolled and tossed.

The creatures were slowly murmuring to each other and milling around, dim forms in the darkness. We all started playing with each other, like children, a kind of slow motion playing, and the mood became happier and lighter.

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Tuesday, June 02, 2009

The papier-mache dragon

A long time ago, probably in high school though it could have been late in grade school, I made a dragon out of papier-mache, probably as something for art class.

The dragon was probably around a foot and a half or so in length, but was fairly skinny. I think I made it out of newspaper and masking tape, maybe with cardboard in places, too, and then covered it in plaster cloth. I painted it in poster paints, kind of a slightly creamy pastel green. It had an open mouth with white teeth and a red interior. The teeth were just folded over strips of plaster cloth on the top and bottom jaws, so it didn't show individual teeth, just a continuous white strip representing them. It stood on its hind legs and had two arms bent in different positions, with hands with stiff skinny fingers and thumbs. The wings were a bit of a problem, as they tended to sag some because of their weight and the narrow attachment area. The plaster cloth crumpled there and broke the plaster at the attachment joint, though the cloth remained intact and the wings were in any case in no danger of coming off.

It's possible I still have it somewhere, but I'm not sure.

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Monday, May 11, 2009

Forgotten dragons

It was 1961, and I was in the second semester of the second grade, with three months, maybe a little more, left of the school year. We were going to move again, going from the second house in Las Cruces, New Mexico to Phoenix, Arizona.

Before we moved, I had been playing in my mind with dragons, with a whole complicated storyline involving even generations of them. It had been going on for weeks or months, but was particularly intense the last week or so we were there.

Then, just before we moved, when the rooms were mostly bare, I suddenly forgot almost all of it. I still had a lot of pictures of dragons I had made, but almost everything about them was a blank. I was very saddened and disappointed by the forgetting, feeling somehow betrayed by it.

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