Nearly midday, the Saturday after Thanksgiving. Up since six, as I do nowadays, because in this period I am sleeping immediately and well. Night before last I fell asleep to a Youtube lecture by Gary Snyder at a Berkeley féte in his honor. Last night I slept to one by Robert Hass on Czeslaw Milosz. He preceded it with some tangential remarks about Tomas Tranströmer, who had won the Nobel Prize that day (“His poetry is drenched in Swedish weathers,” Hass said).

Ah! Husband is awake. The water runs in the upstairs sink, and now the TV comes on: horseraces are in progress. An announcer shouts with adrenalined urgency as the horses approach the wire. Next, the post-race commentary and analysis, a lower pitch and more considered velocity. Then a repeat of the race or maybe another race from a different track, narrated in excited chantrhythm as the animals pound the turf and vie for position around the turns.

He’ll want coffee. I’ll put the water on. But then I must turn here to last night’s dream. These dreams anymore seem like increasingly severe writing assignments, the challenges greater and greater - now see whether you can put this one into words, or make any sense of it ...

***

Okay, so here it is. Sort of cleaned up.

It was like several dreams stitched together badly, with figures common to each segment. I lived with a character played by turns by John Malkovich, by my most recent ex, and by a local poet of comically humorless and perfectionist personality who was briefly an acquaintance of mine when I had my bookstore. Mostly by Malkovich, though, channeling his sadistic dilettante persona from Portrait of a Lady.

After a single sexual encounter with him I become pregnant with a son. He became very excited about it and insisted I stay with him in his mansion. There was a dicey moment when it occurred to him that the child might not be his - why should he take my word for it? I was desperate to convince him I’d had no one else in many years. Because it was true.

The Malkovich man had an older friend, played by someone like ArminMueller-Stahl combined maybe with OssieDavis, kind, mature, concerned. This friend was always nearby to correct or repair or soothe anyone or anything that might have been harmed by the impatient Malkovich character’s outbursts of violent temper.

I was intimidated, almost cowering, terrified lest I trigger Malkovich's rage or even his disapproval. (In this respect it actually was quite like living with my ex ...)

There was at this point quite a bit of bleed-through from a simultaneous dream about Cleopatra. She was pregnant by Caesar and was confined to a slab-bed where she lay gestating a child while keepers watched. She was kept drugged lest she escape. It occurred to me that the historical Cleopatra had given Caesar a son against her will.

In the dream I was trying to resume my freelance writing career - was working on several articles and finishing them in good time. I was happy that my mind, no longer buffered and baffled and wrecked by kidney ailments, worked well and thought clearly. A woman phoned to give me further instructions about an article I couldn’t remember having been assigned. There were adjustments to make in my approach to the “dissection article," she called it, and how was it coming along? I thought I dimly remembered starting such a piece, but I’d forgotten all about it. I lied my cheerful response and then hung up. Panicked, I began a search through the premises for unfinished pages that might provide some clue. The work was due the next day.

An older woman servant or friend who stayed near and assisted me made a good-natured joke. The Malkovich guy turned on her and demanded to know what she meant by it. I cowered quietly, sensing the unfairness and grateful I wasn’t the victim this time. I almost spoke to defend her, but his angry glance silenced me. Then, to shift the energy, I abruptly handed him a pen. He became angry with me for interrupting him. I tried to defend myself, but he wouldn’t hear it.

He kept two monitor lizards as pets, one of each species - Komodo dragon and Nile. They were permitted to run freely in the house, and I was always trying to keep my bare feet away from them. At one point we rode around town in Malkovich’s fancy car, all of us, plus a housecat and the two dragons. M parked the car and left me alone in it with the animals. I tried to keep the reptiles from eating the cat. I tried to keep my bare feet out of their sight. The Nile monitor was very black and leathery and primitive looking, like a small fierce hungry T-rex wearing alligator skin (nothing like a real-life Nile monitor).

We returned to the house, where some children had left the back doors open, and I feared the lizards might run away. What I actually feared was Malkovich’s anger - at me. The older Armin-Ossie man quietly collected the reptiles, who hadn’t escaped after all, and closed them up in a small room. He carried the creatures lovingly in his arms, like babies.

Source:www.travelblog.org/Photos/245895.

It had been raining for days, the area flooded, chest-high in freezing gray water. The Armin character went out to explore a protected place near the standing foundation of a washed-away building, a sort of porch. He leaned to look underneath, and I called out to him to see whether my missing pages were there.

Two fat ruddy beerboisterous shirtless older men swam and hollered happily in the floodwater. One had forced his two small children or perhaps grandchildren to swim with them there. They were miserable and cold and frightened. The boy was hardly more than an infant, just able to walk. He was naked in the icy water, splashing and gasping in panic. I pleaded with the oblivious granddad to let me bring this one inside, and he finally agreed. (I stopped myself from feeling concern about the little girl, who was maybe 5 or 6.) I leaned from the back step and gathered up the naked baby and held him hard against me. He sobbed and shivered. His flesh was slick and cold in my arms. I found a puffy white blanket to wrap around him, and soon he was quiet, and I could feel him relax against me in relief.