More Bad Dreams Lead To Good Ideas

This from Thanksgiving night,
no doubt abetted by gluey stews &
gastrointestinal discomfort.

I'm in a gymnasium
very much reminiscent of Martin E. Young
Elementary School.
I'm standing on a heavy, nondescript desk
& painting? the egg-white walls
very reminiscent of the office in Oak Square apartment.
I'm one of a half-dozen janitors
dressed in ill-fitting grey jumper suits.
The others prattle on in Portugese,
they are dark-skinned w/ unkempt thick black hair.
There is a cry, then a scream
as the man next to me loses his balance on the desk
he's standing on...
he falls back and lands on a trident of up-raised spokes,
corkscrew-like forks of rusted ironwork.
The man's stomach is punctured
and a brown seeping fluid (gravy) foams out of him.
It is violent and horrible and I wake up.

Yesterday, I'm working...
5 1/2 hours of keeping-my-head-above-water
taking pictures of billboards in Brockton & Taunton.
I'm ruminating about the dream.
What if whenever a person slept
and dreamed of such an accident
someone in real life actually had that accident?
What if the person realized this
and fought against sleep?
What would this tug-of-war of conscience &
eventual exhaustion be like?
So there you go-- either a short story
or segment #4 in the revolving door of the "Night Gallery" script.

99.9% of my ideas comes from dreams
either visuals or some crystalline-like plotlines
that have me wondering
how the heck did I literally dream up that?
The opening image of Lil' Moe singing the anthem
in full spacesuit attire from "AERO"
came from a dream circa 1993 Chicago.
Maybe that was the year that kicked it all off...
I even kept a dream journal during those months.
Sleeping all the time then
when I wasn't working on Sunday mornings in
the Mercantile Exchange
called in at the last minute...
or clubbing @ Neo no matter what the night.
Just to get out & be among people,
even if I never talked to anyone
even if they were always going to be strangers.
Crying myself to sleep on the apartment floor,
hypnotized by my sheer spectacle...
like let's see if I can create a pool of tears on the
waxed floorboards.
And I'd fall asleep or if I'd been drinking
pass out...
and dream these horrible, rending dreams.

And since I didn't have a TV at the time
and was extrememly broke...
I'd jot down everything & from there
type type type on my old electric typewriter
the same one that got me through college
before laptops or even a word processor.
I didn't even have a table
so I'd put the typewriter on a trunk
and bent over
I'd manifest my inner head.
It was acutely back-breaking.
Nothing comfortable in the position
but the scripts needed to come out.
The earliest drafts of "April Land" (then "Wasteland")
came to me that way.

I haven't been that fevered since
as if my life depended upon it.
And this year has been exceptionally terrible for writing.
But the dreams still come
and I always note the good 'uns.
I maintain my reservoir of ill illusions.