Dream-Quest of 2001
Then the resplendent aura of my brother of light drew near and held colloquy with me, soul to soul, with silent and perfect interchange of thought. The hour was one of approaching triumph, for was not my fellow-being escaping at last from a degrading periodic bondage; escaping forever, and preparing to follow the accursed oppressor even unto the uttermost fields of ether, that upon it might be wrought a flaming cosmic vengeance which would shake the spheres?
—H P Lovecraft, 1919
Abstract
When William Burroughs wrote about the enigmatic Hassan-i-Sabah he did so in response to his sudden knowledge that the pursuit of desire does not necessarily mean that one submits to ecstasy; that for one person to exercise their will may be of worldflash significance, but that such significance may never emerge except in another’s story; that fanaticism is perhaps the least extraordinary facet to humanity, which is why fanatics engender ultimate external favours. Extremity may be encountered on the most mundane of journeys—even that from youth to mortality.
Whereas J W Dunne perceived the analysis of dreams as a useful materialist exercise, Howard Phillips Lovecraft wondered whether the majority of humanity ever paused to reflect on the occasionally titanic significance of dreams, or of the obscure world to which they might conceivably belong.
A sympathetic viewing subject may now be seeking certain wavelengths—indicators of placed emissions—that access the monstrously significant in the dreams of a wealthy Saudi exile, whom political legend has it sought to materialise a dream of personal utility by way of informed tourism.
Play such ideas in parallel with a critical trawl through Orientalist popular fiction from early postcolonial times to disclose chiming threat referents.
Quick. Even now the live object of combined international intelligence analysts’ desires grows older by the day, practising a wretched husbandry in the fierce cold wind of the Hindu Kush.
Neil Palmer, 15 September 2001
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In the dark a palsied dreaming hand reaches for a drink of water.
It cannot reach the metal cup.
And tended fingernails tap a rhythmic response to an urgent desire to quench a thirst.
Dust motes in the water in the cup reckon a tally of light for what it is.
Keening sounds, like the voices of distant alienists pursuing a local history,
a familial case, chase through caverns fast towards each surface.
Chords and weird lyric melodies.
Two heads droop awkwardly, lulled by the breathing of one healthy, one dying person.
Some time later, blending in with, and supplanting, the ecstatic sounds of found music,
glimpses of wide plains and graceful valleys, high mountains and inviting grottoes.
These images are not felt to be those that a stranger would envisage.
Each sight and sound seems familiar.
There is perceived to be a slight blurring and fading of the objects all around.
Viewers experience some force recalling them to earth, where they wished to go.
A voice intervenes and announces that it is a brother of light who has been forced to accompany them
throughout all earthly time.
That same evening apparent voice would become
free to wreak just and blazing cataclysmic vengeance upon the oppressor.
Check scientific journals:
New star recently seen? First bright, then fading visibly during the past few months.
Passing by villages in Afghanistan, Russian tanks were often met with fire,
but not with incense as their horseback grandfathers may have been.
Sometimes lighted embers were thrown under the tracks of the soldiers’ vehicles, with the words,
“You are welcome.” Other times, explosives were detonated in a form of farewell.
In latter days Afghanis eat a kind of porridge, then chosen men take their weapons outside
and set to work loading and firing till their ammunition is exhausted,
while all their neighbours in nearby regions are similarly employed.
The next day is spent in rejoicings.
An impression, as if awake but working towards sleep: a tall pile of black-haired heads.
Single heads tumble at intervals, and robed men rush to gather them back.
The periodic collapse of this tall pile of human heads is as chaotic as the collapse of a sandpile
in either of the two best-known Cambridges.
Books, books, instruction manuals, technical guides. Viewers comprehend an immediate sense
of having difficulty remembering. Then a feeling of thirst.
Feeling of head swimming in the centre of pale converging lines.
Eyes held by two violet pinpoints of light which are so bright they seem to hurt.
Viewer gaze averts towards a dead fire. A great lethargy, or sickness.
An intolerable light seemingly burning into eyeballs and soul, all at once.
Repeats, “Yes”. Like life beginning with no past or memory.
Voice seems to belong to an alien gramophone. Limbs weak. Sleep returns.
In the dark, two hands brace against carpeted ground, down on all fours,
like a dazed handmaiden, forced to imitate the actions of a dog,
made to retrieve a knife from the other side of an underground room.
Afterwards, with waking dreams of fly-kiting, hunkered down, a man waits to be spat at in the face.
Perception: at a particular time of life a man sees old age as not too far distant.
The nearer to the end of the journey he gets, the more he recalls his receding youth.
It is clothed in a happy radiance.
Freshness and wonder order the historiography of experience.
Such a man may treasure stray sounds, scents and corners of a landscape,
which for a moment push the door ajar,
(all men surely seek their proper place in the past)
for his futurity is following a sighted course.
Two men as it were face to face. Images formed as if painted by a talented mimic.
Both figures have the brow of Shakespeare and the face of Satan.
Together, chained to the wall, two mediaeval captives, living mockeries of our boasted modern security.
This could be US, UK, Cahors or Old Baghdad.
One spoke: “You have presumed to meddle with a world-change. Poor spider!
Caught in the wheel of the inevitable! You have linked my name with futility.
You are an incompetent murderer. I am sorry for you!”
He rested one bony hand on his hip —it was entirely untheatrical.
Then, from darkness: “Our deaths will not profit you”.
Then, as though cast up by a volcano, the landscapes, the walls, the sprawling figures,
the dark itself, shoot upwards.
As if a trap is released beneath the feet.
Keen will fixes action. A methodical mythopoeical plan raised against the most highly organised
groups of strangers in world history. Locations already marked on maps.
Co-operators all invisible.
It seems the immediate surroundings are almost identical to the dream pictures.
Tended fingernails tap on cold metal to ring the alarm.
The darkness is not silent, nor does its texture afford mystery to the poor carpeted room.
Nor is the outstretched hand a catlike limb.
Chilled muscle tensions. Radio net chats. Cleanness of vision expectorates.
Neil Palmer, 2001
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