Bad Magic

Superstition threatens me. I can't ignore it & I can't not think about it though I try. The notion that there are as many reasons why my pen or whatever falls the way it does as a certain planet or star is in a certain place or state relative to the others makes me all the more sure. When I lived in Harlem, I was obsessing about a now sort of old-fashioned telephone bill that wasn't available on the web. I could have called the phone company, I suppose, but no; I was sure that the bill was in my room. Those nights got phenomenally dark, and my window opened to a sort of three foot space that ended in the brick wall of the next building. It was a good spot.

I, for one reason or another, had a fishing rod in the room. I placed my cell phone on the hook, precariously, and allowed it to spin. It swung the line into a twist and then began to spin the other way. I waited. Eventually, the phone slowed to an average oscillation on a line that passed at the edge of the window. Behind the dark curtain, when I stood there staring at nothing on the windowsill, the edge of a white envelope appeared. The divination was a success!

Well, all these things are fine, but what can I do about dreams? I wrote a name yesterday, a name I rarely picture the face that goes with it, and in my dream she appeared. My rational mind has rules but in my dreams it feels like something is out to get me -- namely, myself. Even recently I could remember the content of dreams that weren't at all bad or stressful. Still, the vast majority of nights are haunted by one ghost or another, and if I'm thinking only in the monkeyworld I'm left to believe it's a psych thing.

So I wonder, "How much of my dreams did my own mind create?" All, none, some, whatever. I can remember things better if I'm hashing them over before I fall asleep, and there have been a couple, if not a few cases where I became lucid for a few seconds when I was dreaming, or woke without realizing the dream wasn't real. This evening I will come up with something nice before I fall asleep. I'll think of Richard Attenborough telling me all the things I didn't know about life. I'll pretend I'm on a private aircraft circling the antarctic with an amazing bed inside, where I'm given to dissolve into the hum of steady jet engines and Attenborough's voice. If I don't get greedy and make myself laugh, or feel compelled to get up and write a play or something, then maybe I'll have better dreams.