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HUGH DUNCAN |
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HUGH DUNCAN |
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03/01/05 #2699 MUSIC IN THE ROCK I am in a dormitory-like building worrying about a final exam that I have to take for a class which I have neglected. I remember attending the class once and disliking it but now I can’t remember where it meets or who teaches it. All I can remember is that it has something to do with teaching. I feel shame at having let this class slide for a whole semester, at the waste of money and opportunity. Suddenly I can see the interior of the classroom and I realize that I hate the idea of being a teacher, of being trapped for the rest of my life in a room like this. As I walk with an old friend from high school along a rocky outcrop by the ocean I am mulling over my realization about teaching, trying to decide how to tell my friend about it. We sit on a rock which angles down into a small inlet and I think about the things in school that I have enjoyed and have been successful at, opposing them in my mind to the antipathy I felt in the classroom. As I haltingly explain this my friend stands and walks toward the inlet. I know he is considering wading through it to get to a point of rock on the other side and I draw his attention to a shelf of rock further up the shore which we could cross to get around the end of the inlet. As we are walking toward the shelf I notice a large hole in the rock on which we have been sitting. Piano music is it coming from the hole. I deduce there is a hollow space under the rock and that the waves, washing in and out of it, make a piano-like sound. Marveling, I point this out to my friend. |
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04/07/05 #2724 LIVING IN THE LAST HOUSE ON THE BLOCK I am driving what I know to be my car through an older section of a modest sized, southern city. The streets are narrow and run at odd angles, seemingly never perpendicular or parallel to each other. My wife is in the passenger’s seat. She is telling me about a house which she has found and into which we are about to move. We are in this house. It is of pre-WWI vintage, small by the standards of that time and architecturally modest -- I reflect that it probably was built to be someone’s summer home. The exterior looks okay but the interior is utterly dilapidated. In many places the plaster has fallen from the walls, exposing the lath beneath, old wallpaper hangs in shreds and the doors and window sills are warped. I become increasingly uncomfortable in this place, my discomfort rising to the verge of panic as the conviction grows on me that it is haunted. My wife and I are back in the car. We drive past a row of very old shops in a crumbling, brick building. Beyond this is a small white house, an empty lot, then another white house. As we near the end of the block I see the second house has been gutted by fire. I reflect that, since it was quite old and undistinguished, it not likely anyone will try to renovate it, thus it is certain to be torn down. We are driving on the same street in the opposite direction. I notice the house nearer the row of shops is being demolished. I wonder if the owners are pulling it down because its value, now that the other house has been destroyed, is compromised. Then I recognize it as the house into which we were planning to move. I ask myself, "How long are we going to have to live in the last house on the block?" understanding the question to mean. "How long will we keep occupying houses which are doomed to be demolished?" |
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05/11/05 #2749 FROM THE UNASSAILABLE TO THE ANCIENT, DOWN TO THE DEPTHS AND HOME I am driving a large, grey car uphill. My wife is in the passenger’s seat. I know we are on our way home from a trip to the grocery store. I follow a narrow, winding ledge until we come to a rock cliff face where I stop and we get out of the car. I take a bag of groceries and start climbing but, being nearly sheer, the cliff soon proves too steep for me to scale. I explain this to my wife who is waiting beside the car and tell her to follow me as I start climbing at an angle along a much rougher rock face which takes me away from the road and out over a deep ravine. I notice many thick vines dangling around me and see below that some very large rocks are caught in and hang like pendulums among the vines. Then I realize what we are climbing across is not a natural formation but a rock wall so old it has become almost entirely integrated into the landscape. I climb to the top of the wall and peer over into a huge, roughly square enclosure. I wonder if this was once a walled garden, an animal pen or if it might have been the basement of a huge tower. I glance back at my wife and beyond her I see our car which reminds me that there are still bags and bags of groceries needing to be toted home. Since while climbing I can carry only one bag at a time I will have to negotiate this difficult route over and over before I am done. I climb down to the valley floor, hoping to find an easier way home there. Once my wife joins me I realize I am completely lost. Nothing here looks familiar. I consider going back to the car but I know there I will only face the sheer, unassailable cliff again. I turn and am relieved to see several wooden masks hanging among the trees. The masks are pale yellow, the color of newly carved wood, and the area around them is littered with wood shavings and sawdust. I am familiar with this site, in fact I have had a hand in carving some of the masks, and realize now that I have not been lost -- I’ve merely been facing in the wrong direction. In our dream group we tried an interesting experiment -- making a poem out of the dream but turning everything in it into its opposite. CLIMBING ROCKS is the results using this dream. |
CLIMBING ROCKS I am chasing a tiny, orange butterfly, and though I fear we’ve pitched our tents for the night I amble and meander, though we live in the ocean, across a featureless plain. I drop everything and start digging a foxhole too shallow to hide in. I lie perfectly still, face down in the dirt ignoring birds wheeling overhead. That all this is natural and new and rapidly separating itself from the earth I cannot fathom. I press myself tightly as I can to the dirt and squeeze infinity behind my eyes. I used to be a walled garden but now I am an animal enclosure or the basement of a huge tower. Is that our car? Am I reminded of bags and bags of groceries needing to be toted home? Will I have to negotiate this difficult route over and over? Or can I fly into the clouds, escaping eagerly, hoping for harshness. Once the preacher is gone I know where I am and everything smells familiar. Hiding my eyes I am appalled to see a face in pieces scattered on the ground. A grey face, the flavor of old metal and no slag or scraps anywhere to be seen. I know nothing about this. I have nothing to do with it. I am right and everything else is wrong. |
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06/16/05 #2771 THE RISE OF AN ACTRESS AND THE FALL OF A MAN I am standing in a parking lot in what I know to be southern California. Nearby a number of young women are clustered beneath the awning outside a long, one-story building. The attention of the group is centered on a dark haired girl. After a moment I recognize her as a young Elizabeth Taylor. The girls are very animated, chattering among themselves so I only catch snatches of what is said but I gather Taylor is talking about a cousin of hers who is also an actor in movies. I hear her say breezily, "he’s handsome and he’s gay but he has no luck". At this the giggling and babble rises, drowning out whatever else is said. A young man, blond and handsome in a leading man sort of way, dressed entirely in black, a "Zorro" shirt and over-the-calf boots approaches. The girls fall silent, turning their attention to him. One of them takes him by the arm, saying archly, "You look so ranchero". Glancing down I see a sewer grate clogged with sticks and debris. I begin threading a thin strip of leather through the sticks intending to lift them out of the grate but before I can finish doing so I hear a man’s voice screaming and sobbing hysterically. The voice sounds too distant to be in the building where the girls are gathered but near enough I should be able to locate him. I am about to call to the girls to ask for their help when I spot the man. He is falling, screaming and weeping, "Help! Help me!", from the empty sky. I look for but can spot no airplane or nearby tower from which he might have fallen. I am horrified and crushingly aware that I am utterly powerless to do anything for him. |
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| This is one of several Images which have no conventional dream report to go with them. I was instructed by my shaman to frame my dream journal in poems rather than narrative for a while and to make pictures trying to capture the energy of the dream rather than its contents. |
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07/06/05 #2779 SELF-PROTECTION I’ve never been there do not know the place but in a Rolling Stone’s summer I crossed the bridge where dog brown waters run and by the back way came there regularly. Why do they let so many children loose to run in such a place? When can I move and not run over one? The broad-shouldered cop handing out a boxy Kevlar vest sez "Put this on and sell yourself." |
