two dreams in manhattan

Last night I had a dream. There were a few dreams, I am sure, but this one I remember. There were about a handful of us, but most meaningfully there was me and the two of them. They came to Manhattan and were staying at my apartment. I thought it curious that they had come together, but I let it pass without mention, too willing to see him in any sort of way and under any sort of circumstance. It was nighttime. The time when people go out, but I was not. Opening up the bathroom door, I found them with her arms around his waist as they were getting made up. I did not call attention to this either. Instead, I punched him playfully in the stomach. That was the first time we came in contact with each other, since his being there. Immediately, I thought myself not charming. I do not hate many things, but at that moment I knew I hated how my flirtatious tactics were always aggressive with him. They left and exchanged no words with me. I tried to fall asleep in my bed, all the while thinking, this is my bed! why have they been sleeping in my bed? this is my bed! why have I been sleeping on the couch? if I just fall asleep in my bed tonight it will eliminate any chance of them being or becoming anything. I woke and asked my sister if she had seen them at our home. She said yes, they were sleeping on the couch. I told her I was not asking for a fact check, but that I wanted details. She said she had walked in and they had been holding hands in their sleep. I could not believe it, but I had to believe her, at least. She had seen it. I internalized my bitterness: why had they come to my apartment, why could I hear him calling her “baby” through the bedroom walls and why was I alone wandering through my mind to find impossible answers I hoped could conclude things? Then in the dream I thought, because none of us communicate has it been so impossible to understand.

I woke and pressed snooze on the alarm five times, just to see if I could find out whether they ever kiss. I believed that would give everything more clarity. But of course it would not and of course, once I woke, I never would see them again. Instead, I slide into another dream. I was in my same apartment building, but I had moved down the hall. For some reason living at the end of the hall came with another set of setbacks. Homeless people wandered into my living room and when I walked out of my bedroom, I saw college boys finger painting and others with their eyes rolled back. My sister was flushed and droopy eyed, so I asked her what the hell was going on. Passively she answered, they took LSD. I was the only one that did not laugh. I told her she was disgusting, but as the words were coming out of my mouth I remembered that placing attention on the decision to do drugs was the last thing anyone was suppose to do while someone was on drugs. So then, knowing everyone knew this rule, I just turned and told them all they were disgusting. I looked at my sister and told her the boy she kept bringing around was a terrible influence. I want him out. I grabbed my camera and an extra long lens and left them to themselves in their own little lala land. I was in the subway taking pictures, while they were on LSD in Candy Land. I wondered which of us was making better use of our time. I was not convinced whether it was them or myself, so I kept wondering.

My alarm rang through my dream and I decided it was time to come into clearer consciousness, so I did. My first waking thoughts were: I need to do the laundry to make my sister happy, my breath tastes like peanut butter, why did I eat all that peanut butter, I have so much to write for my final week of classes, watch me end up spending more time in the morning writing about my dreams than a fiction piece on Manhattan, I have no willpower to read another bland contemporary novel for this course especially not one on cocaine.

I went downstairs with my hair smashed up around my face and silver shadowed eyes last night. I thought about my first dream and how ridiculous the idea is that dreams are not real. I wondered whether there was any way to prevent daydreams becoming night dreams. I want to escape my ruminating imagination, not live through it longer during the night. My dreams are never far off from my waking thoughts. In fact, my dream scenes usually confirm my day scenes. There is imagination in both and they are also close to reality.

I use to never retain my dreams. I would wake and remember blackness. Soon enough, I found this to be a waste of time, so I rarely slept at all. I thought it normal for me, but was repetitively told it was not normal not to sleep. I received a prescription for Ambien. I told her I could not sleep. She asked me why. I told her I was up thinking. She kept refilling my prescription anyway. My intention was never to use it for sleep, but for its hallucinogenic faculties. I took it and was overcome with its ability to relax me. I believed and still believe it was the only thing that was capable of relaxing me. With no longer smoking for a year now, wine no longer seemed to work its magic as well. As a result, I became less addicted to wine and unrealities and more addicted to awareness and being productive. It exhausted me but I could not sleep.

I felt I lost a boyfriend in his dreams. As he slept, I watched them steal him from me. I was dreamless. I was awake when I saw we were becoming different. He slept through the reality. We left each other: me to a city and him to a dream. I wrote a play in the fall entitled Sleep less Shadows. It dealt with two drugs: Ambien and dreams. There was a philosophical undertone and was compared to Sarte’s No Exits. I wrote it because I wanted to continue a dialogue with my ex-boyfriend. I also wanted to continue living suspended in time within the unreality of relationships. Therefore, I explored the relationship between dream and reality, the unreal and the real and the artist and the muse. It dealt with appearances and persona. One character was a painter and poet. The other was an actress and model. The play did not end on an answer. It was left for the imagination. I did not have an answer. I believed less in realism.

Now all my work deals with dreams. But I define dreams differently than the assumed definition. Simply, dream is synonymous with the ideal being. It is something or someone separate from the sober self. It is something outside of one or someone that is one’s other that is trying to be attained, lived in and proved to be credible. It continues to be a motif of mine because I still do not have an answer, nor am I necessarily interested in finding one. I am interested in taking myself closer to truths.

I feel like I am continuously being asked, why write? The question never makes any sense to me. I think over the question, I stare at it and am left with the thought I started with: this question is about as stupid as why breathe? Lately the comments are: your philosophy has been keeping me up at night (a laugh comes after and I am not sure if it is there to remove the truth) and but really Chelsea, what is the writing for? I never can fathom why it seems people are cornering me. Writing is extremely straining on the self because there is no denial in its exposure. No one repetitively asks why someone paints, writes a song, performs surgery on a heart, reshapes a nose. Less people find those acts mysterious or strange. But somehow with writing, people that don’t do it, that don’t work on it, also do not seem to “get it”. It is a shame and it is no fun feeling like you have to explain yourself as if it was your ploy to prove you are truly without any neurosis.

I just need to be moved. Unfortunately, the six hundred and plus people on my Facebook stream leave me indifferent. This does not speak for or mean much. It is neither good nor bad, just a whole lot more like nothing. A boy told me this was depressing. How is it that at eighteen things seems to have lost their novelty. He was not asking a question. He may not have been musing either. It could have just been him believing he was stating a fact. I told my sister what he said and she disagreed with him. I told her I just want to be riveted and captivated by someone. She used to always tell me that I expect people to be beyond their age. She tells me that less now and just listens. Recently, interrupting me to inform me that I have to take a breath and stop using the word “like”. This can be extremely distracting when I’m in the middle of a thought, so I play music for her instead and I can see she understands what I was trying to say. Everyone wants to be riveted and captivated by someone though. I am not different.

This is the final week of the intensive writing program. One minute it was before me and now it is almost entirely behind me. I know that even when it ends, it will not be over. Yesterday I handed out a bit of mind and half of my soul. Tomorrow I will sit and listen to it being discussed and pulled apart for more than thirty minutes. Those minutes may seem to stretch on forever or they could feel like less than five. On Thursday I will read some of my work aloud in front of many faces. I hope my voice can give the words poetry, as I intended.

Yesterday one writer—the most conventional, knows the rules of writing, the guidelines, etc—said that the professor was trying to shape our writing into a format. He said that she was especially trying to edit out my and another writer’s voice. That it was obvious she was doing this, terrible too and that our voice should not be changed. I took this as the greatest compliment, especially since he said she was doing this to me and this other male writer in the class whose work I admire. Workshops do not inspire me. Philosophy influences the content of my work. There is a big difference and this speaks for the dichotomy I will have to decide for graduate school.

I need to write a Manhattan piece by Thursday. There really is no time, but there is no doubt that it will happen. Manhattan is a dream, but not the dream I dreamed of having. Still it has the effects of a dream and the consistency, as well. Each morning you wake up to Manhattan with an imprint of your being there. It has an effect on your mind. You are conscious of it being a dream and become increasingly aware that each experience has minor differences. This leaves you waking each morning with a newly developed impression of it. Manhattan is a dream, but in the morning it is vague.