Amsterdam Journal: wrong dream 7/12

Being attracted to both Chilean poet Waldo Rojas and to Welsh poet Paul Evans is not a mutually exclusive process. I'm just not used to it. No sooner did I say goodbye to Waldo, did I meet Paul, with only two days respite in between. I met Paul at my reading at the Hotel Winston on Monday, the 24th. Charles McGeehan knows him, and I wouldn't even have come across his work, had I not gone to the reading, even though I”m collecting poems for the Mother Earth News issue.

But to meet the man first had a significant impact upon me. Each time I see Paul, it gets harder and harder to put him out of my mind. There is a moment frozen in memory where as he drank the orange juice offered, the long summer light illuminating his face, and we really looked into each other's eyes for an unguarded moment. I remember the green flecks among the brown, and his eyes, so like my own.

And I began to realize as we talked, he too was in my dreams before I came to the Netherlands. Only I mistook him for my brother. I kept thinking it was odd that my brother had a full head of hair and that there was such a sexual undercurrent. Not very comfortable. Ewww. I never been interested in my brother ever. And I couldn't seem to banish that element from the dream.

There's just enough age difference between Paul and I to keep a safe distance, to borrow a term, we”re good mates. My brother and I are closer in age, growing up. I put the man in the dream to be about age 28 and Paul is 30.

It was at the Hotel Winston Kingdom last Monday night, that the pieces began to fall into place. Our host and emcee Jacek Nichs introduced us. I need to look up the dream now but I do remember having a row with him in the dream about love, and he was chewing me out because I turned him down. And I was confused and devastated thinking it was my brother which didn't help I'm sure.

But then I wondered how does the identity process come upon in the waking world? What made me decide he was my brother in the dream? The way he looked? During the dream who was he? Did I use brother as a placeholder for whom I didn't know?

When I told Paul that he was in my dreams before I had met him, he didn't seem particularly alarmed saying that his mother and sisters were into the occult. He grew up with an Ouija board and séances.

I said this had nothing to do with the occult, I dream of the future. Precognition. It's an Irish trait, I don't particularly like it, it makes me uneasy, but that doesn't stop the dreams from happening. I told him I also dream of catastrophic events before they happen. The Challenger explosion, the Bijlmer plane wreck etc.

He laughed and said just don't tell me that I'm going to die, or something awful like that. I replied, no it has nothing it was nothing awful. I just don't remember the details. Now I'll have to look up the dream. Not wanting to give away anything in case I might sway or force the dream, I let it play out.

As he reached for his bag and leather jacket hanging from the closet door I passed close by him, marveling at his height. I never realized it before. That growing awareness of the other. Didn't give him ideas sitting on my bed like that? I was trying to act nonchalant sitting cross-legged as we typed up poems.

With both Paul and Waldo I am so at ease. Why can't I find someone like that in the states? I know that both are observing me constantly but I don't mind. Paul comments again that I'm hyperactive. I say coffee makes me even more so, I'm self-conscious about it, saying I'm trying to control it. I wonder what poems will come of it? If any?