Dream Notes & Fish Boxes

Dreams I haven't recorded

Last night I realized that the goddess of green light came to stand up my bed it wasn't just the dark menace. Once I saw myself there, I was no longer afraid.
When I put my hands out to touch her, they went through the grass green substance. I slept better the rest of the night.

That night, I realized I never told my dream self that I had sold my ponies in real life. That's why they never appeared in my dreams of horses. So many dreams of horses.
Sometimes I ride them
Sometimes I can't find them
Sometimes they die in my dreams

I dreamt my horse dropped out from under me, having pushed himself too hard, and he died. I was afraid to tell the doctor who owns a horse, that I had killed him, because I didn't pull him up to rest, as we went to the top of the hill to the spring.

John says write your dreams always – they hold the keys. I've done little writing other than revision and art projects. It seems hard to write poems when I am revising or making art.

I've been making fish boxes out of Morilla Board watercolor paper. Tropical fish rendered on cubes suspended from fishing line from the ceiling. So far, I have five boxes. The turn in the breeze and remind me of the sea.

I also made two valentine fish heart postcards for the Sonoma State Valentine Art Auction, and signed them With love from the Tropic of Cancer. I scribed my poems on the surface like cuneiform. Years from now, someone will puzzle over it. (William Babula, the Dean of Humanities, bought it.)

I played around with poem and visual art with plastic typewriter ribbons. I took a red light bulb and wrapped it up in the Canon Typestar typewriter ribbon upon which I thad typed a poem of mine, Lighting the Electric Fire. You can unwind the ribbon and read it too. 

The second poem/art piece was Merwin's Inlet also typed on typewriter ribbon film wrapped around a broken conch shell. 

The third typewriter ribbon piece, Ascent of Man, was wrapped around the bleached leg bone of a cow. I hung all three pieces from the ceiling like a mobile. The ribbon was like a black mummy shroud. 

I don't know the significance of it all, but it pleases me to see the poems on the plastic tape. Something that would otherwise be discarded.

January 21 1986