Letter to Jerry Crawford

And so I wondered why you appeared in my dream this morning, naked, preparing food at a counter. Yes, each dream being is a manifestation of the self, and nakedness does not necessarily connote sexuality, but, the uncovering of the self, of the soul.

And so you prepared lunch (feeding yourself) and so, I wanted to ask you why you were here again in my dreams, but I was doing something else, you were on the other side of the room, maybe it was the teacher’s room and I know, sometimes, we are all linked on a deeper level than we allow ourselves to speculate upon. 

And, so I know things I’m not supposed to know, why I saw the Challenger blow up while in the parkinglot at Mark West the day before it happened, or why I wrote about earthquakes, dreaming segments that seemed so real, so mundane over and over, months before it struck.

And remember Wildcat Beach? Well, something was happening, the earth shuddered, that poem is more than just about kids and an event. 

Dreams of you introducing me to someone, his name in Cyrillic, it didn’t make sense at the time, and so I wrote it down, and only put the old men in the poem. 

What isn’t there is the real stuff, the dream landscape I return to over and over, and who are these dream people we meet, and what does it mean that I travel to the other side of the earth to meet a man I already knew in dreams, and you were there so what was the connection? Besides Russia.

And so, your free-write unleashes an avalanch of images I feel that have a foreknowledge of, it feels like something I sensed, dreamed last year, everything hauntingly familiar. Just yesterday I learn that admonish and premonition come from the same root word, to know. Knower’s ink.

And did you know how many kids wrote about the earthquake last Tuesday before it struck? So, I wasn’t the only one. And maybe I should leave well enough alone, but I was never very good at that. I am the archer, after all. Usually I respond to the style, etc. of writing, not the emotional content, unless there is something I need to respond to.

So, when I sensed an issue coming up in your writing, I did not respond to the emotional content...but I’ve seen it in your face, asking you if you’re tired, and that’s not what I see there. Even in my own pain—and it’s been exactly a year since John and I broke up, it took a 7.0 for me to even talk to him—I could sense yours. Also seeing that it hadn’t made itself cognizent yet. Maybe these things take a while to manifest, but I was getting the information in dreams and harranging myself, saying I’m just imagining things.

And so, as I write these words to you, am I violating some code, should I stay removed, the teacher of writing? 

I try my own hand at freewrite and that’s what this is, no censors. And I like what you’re doing, it’s exciting writing because you’re revealing another side that I always suspected was there...so, accept this for what it is. Nothing more. 

I want you to continue writing but I don’t want you to feel inhibited (by writing this I worry if I’m invading your privacy) and if you want, you don’t have to turn in your journal, you have that right.

I love reading your work, I think you should write more. Every day, if possible, write as if your life depended upon it, because it does. You’ve left the realm of ego and are writing from the gut (& heart...but that’s a trickier place to write from) and I find it exciting, a breakthrough, and you’ve leapt across the chasm, or through the door, whatever metaphor you choose... 

You’re beginning to take risks, that’s where the real writing comes from. The risk-taking. Good shit! as they say. Let that music drip from your fingers!

10/24/1992