In my dream, a large yellow dog with very soft, ridiculously pillowy fur is playing chess against an unknown relative of mine--specifically somehow a relative, yet someone I've never met.

There is also a smaller mechanical device assisting the Yellow Dog against my Unknown Relative. The Mechanical Device is about the size of a shoebox, with two red eyes and a series of antennae capped with round red plastic caps (for safety, as in: "don't poke your eyes out on my antennae, but if you're three years old, and you absolutely must stick this in your face, I come with safety caps anyway").

In my dream, I'm a participating observer of this game.

It's actually not chess. The board has 9 sides to it. There are at least 3 different groupings of chess-pieces on the board. The object of the game is hidden to me. But the game is incredibly important--winning, not so much, but playing well, that's the real purpose. The Yellow Dog is concerned that his scrum of bishops (I counted maybe 8 bishops remaining of more than a dozen to begin with) are being poorly managed by the Mechanical Device's suggestions. My Unknown Relative is smirking behind her sunglasses. Beset with the Yellow Dog's impatient aspersions, the Mechanical Device buzzes and chirps peevishly. I am curled against the enormous bulk of Yellow Dog, puzzled by the game and distracted by shiny objects just outside my field of vision.

I don't know what any of this means, nor am I particularly compelled to assign any meanings. More and more I'm dreaming very vivid, very specific dreams with incredibly detailed characteristics, which I appreciate. It makes me look forward to sleeping (as if I didn't do so already). Once I dreamt that I was on a plane filled with cardinals, who happened to also be the Sikh bodyguards that assassinated Indira Gandhi in the 80s.

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The sky is a mirror, someone once said. By which I take it that they meant that the conscience is as expansive and all-seeing as the limitless sky.

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I can't stop thinking about the radio towers above downtown Portland, with their gleaming ruby aerial lights trickling like tears down the face of the night clouds. The tops of the hills and the arcing spines of ridges float on the thick banks of mist, counterpoint to the floating lights of the bridges, reflected far below on the dancing river water.


best,

paulmonster-refracted