The Iceberg Ver. 2.0

To start with, let me post all the September dreams from my last reincarnation.

September 2004

# 1

I was talking to a woman in a dark blue dress who told me I was going to find my first kitten in four days.

I already have a kitten.

No, no. What you have is a cat pretending to be ignorant.

This kitten, this one's the real deal.

This will save you, this will make you feel again, not that you can't feel now, it's just that your body's become stone, nothing excites you anymore, not even that wiry mass of hair curling from the base of his navel to the ...

How will keeping another kitten increase my libido?

Do you wonder why you never dream about water anymore?

My subconscious is bored with it. Oh, you're boring me.

Find the kitten. I'll set you free.

# 2

take a conch shell,
she purred,
put your thumb in it
sing a starlight song
to call your syokoy
to shore

wake up,
her tiny tongue curling round
the lobe of your ear,
wake up,
the world won't stop spinning
and neither will you.


# 3

She'd had enough of the cockroach men sleeping on the roof, so she asked her boy, Jesse, to hand them their eviction notices that evening.

He was afraid, pleading, no, ma'am, ma'am, they'll kill me!, but this woman feared nothing, so she expected the same of him. Of everyone, actually. That trait did not win her many friends.

At first, the cockroach men seemed to take it rather well. They nodded their black ball-heads and rubbed their wings lightly, just like they did on hot days, when the bath water evaporated and even the humans walked around naked, or else with clothespins on their noses and nipples, to distract themselves from the heat.

But soon all their legs began swarming, scratching the air, their antennae stabbing, all of them hissing and baring their sharp fangs (who knew roaches had fangs?), pouncing on him, this poor, poor child.

It was a riot of dirt, dead leaves and broken insect legs. The landlady watched all this from a safe distance, from the grotto below, screaming, panicking.

She, for all her fearlessness, did not know what to do.

Ma'am! Help me!

Save me, I'll never eat cabbage again!

Hoow daare you - chirp chirp buzz buzz - cast us out!

It's not me! It's not me!

Jesse whimpered, shielding his face from their roach-breath, and decided right there and then that if he ever survived this, he would write to his mother, to tell her where he'd been living for the past four years, to tell her that, yes, he was finally coming home.

When the creatures saw that the boy had two small brown wings growing out of his back, they stopped. Smiling as best as they could, which was not very much - they were abominations of nature, after all - they settled down, packed their white roach egg-bags, and flew away.

# 4



He was shooting me with that camera.

We were in a cave, where the Father of Wind lived. Tall, coarse-bearded and always laughing, he also helped us by blowing my hair in all the right directions.

Look a little to your right.

There, there.

That's my angle?

But don't smile.

Why can't I smile?

You look better sad.

That can't be right.

Put your hand on your throat, make like you're on the beach.

How does putting my hand on my throat make it like I'm on the beach?

It just does.

The tattoo on his hand, between his thumb and forefinger, distracted me, so when I took off my spelunker's swimsuit I accidentally fell on top of the Father of Wind. He blew me away just in time.

I'm not mortal, dear. None of that.

Yes, yes.

But I am.

We walked out of the cave, and my hair was so big, several wrens mistook it for a nest. Then we had a long, lovely picnic beside a bubbling brook of pink champagne. Between kisses and bites of strawberry sandwiches, we drank so much wine, we passed out on the bank, then awoke to rain falling on our entangled bodies. It was the Father of Wind, taking a piss.

# 5

I was afraid.

I was on top of a cathedral, clinging to its long, thin steeple. The air smelled like fish. When a flock of seagulls flew towards me, making for my head, I escaped by climbing down. There, the gargoyles were perched, smoking cuban cigars, staring at me the way old men in the park stare at people passing by, caring but not really, wanting to help but unwilling to move.

Help me, and I'll feed you.

Digging one free hand into my pocket, I fished out cherries, which as we all know, are loved by baby gargoyles. The smallest of them crawled towards me, enticed by my fruits. These were almost as big as fully grown peaches, minus the fuzz. The little beast began gnawing at the stem, but before he could reach the pit, he gave up. His winglets had turned from gray to unripe banana green, and soon he began expunging undigested chewed cherry over the side of the cathedral. These dropped like giant bird turd on the pedestrians below, all of whom were wearing clog shoes and fruit-bowl hats.

What have you done to him?!

Its irate mother began flapping her bat-wings, stretching out her stone arms, so she went craaack creak craack. She growled and flailed as menacingly as she could, but because her Maker had rooted her with super cement to that spot, I was saved from what would have been a most unpleasant gargoyle beating. I apologized, throwing the cherries up in the air, and as they came down they turned into purple dragonflies.

They flew into formation, making a bed for me with their iridiscent insect bodies. Waving goodbye to the angry monsters, I let my new friends carry me off to Spain.

There, I made a good living writing horror stories about men who claimed they feared nothing. I learned how to make churros con chocolate using very little flour. I fell in love with a bald race car driver who was obssessed with my 14th toe. We bought an island off the coast of the Eastern seaborg, and there we studied the native creatures, had a child named Emily, and invented our own language, which we used to tell each other we were running out of tissue paper, won't you go to the drug store on the main land, dear, I'll watch the baby.

#6

We took to the streets in nothing but earmuffs and snorkeling masks.

There were four of us, two women, one gay man (made identifiable by his disco ball earmuffs) and one presumably straight boy, who was most probably only 19, but he was muy guapo, very, very hot. I would have hit on him, if it weren't for the pet mouse he kept in his pocket, which he liked taking out at the most inopportune moments.

Want to see my mouse?

Again?

He likes you.

I think we're seeing too much of each other already.

We were protesting the destruction of a national monument, a 200 year old tree shaped like a hand, thumbs and all, to make way for a new apartment complex being built for retired tigers and the manangs who own them - Striped Soho.

# 7

Why are you wearing banana slippers?

I want to be comfortable.

But why bananas?

Because everyone here is gay.

I saw you kissing one of them!

Yes. That's what made him gay.

Things remembered in dream, fuzzy around the edges, nothing smelled or felt, only images and vague stamps of the familiar.

Rouge corsets, a supermarket, cereal boxes, a tall man with fish tails for arms, longtitudinal spinning, jump rope stretching the perimeter of a room by 6 more inches from each side, mosquito swarming, cold climate, not-Manila, bakers dressed like they've just migrated from Drury Lane, two-toed mammals - camels, mostly - and Saahib, telling you to wear mango shoes to soften your toes.

# 8

In a few hours I'll be going to Bilibid, Muntinlupa.

I have strange butterflies in my stomach - and everywhere else - at the thought of stepping in prison, to talk to a high-profile celebrity convict and his family.

I'm so nervous.

Even my dreams were fraught with tension.

I dreamt I was interviewing a giant starfish, who had a red red mouth on the underside of its belly. I was asking him what it felt like to be so different from all the other wildlife, and wouldn't he like to be just like everyone else, then it wouldn't be so hard to find a mate or a meal.

My starfish said," no, I love myself just the way I am, I'm happy with the way things are, and I'd really appreciate it if you started asking pertinent questions about my new business - Prickly Palm-o'-Wars - instead of how I feel and what I am".

Then in the next dream I was in a banca, floating down the wide wide ocean (finally, a water dream), and all around me where beautiful Italian boys in striped blue-and-white shirts. Of course, they were all saying, Ciao, Bella! Come here baby we want you so much!. When I looked at my reflection in the water, I wasn't who I am now - it was me with shorter hair, I was 30 pounds lighter, and I had an orange ostrich boa coiled around my long, swan-like neck.