“Now here I go again, I see the crystal vision
I keep my visions to myself
It’s only me who wants to wrap around your dreams and
Have you any dreams you’d like to sell?”
Lyrics: Dreams, Stevie Nicks
Not realizing these were actually powerful drugs that could have some far-reaching side-effects she took the prescription from her doctor thinking she’d found an easy fix for a lifelong problem.
She didn’t really expect a lot. Supposedly the effects were boringly subtle, took a long time to work and didn’t seem to work at all for some people. And she didn’t notice much difference when she took them…except for her dreams. After a few weeks, something about the pills caused her dream life to change from flat, 2D black-and-white with static to vividly detailed HD technicolor. Her dreamscapes were switched from minimalist, THX 1138 film sets to gaudy, lush, Fellini flicks…on acid.
Sometimes her dreams were just detailed and colorful.
One of the first dreams she had during this time was of being in a sort of huge labyrinth with intricate artistic features and detailed lines and designs. Later she realized that the patterns she explored in the dream were not unlike the large mandala paintings that some Buddhist monks paint using colored sand.
Other times her dreams were meaningful and encouraging.
Once when she was feeling particularly low she fell asleep under the skylight in her living room. She liked looking at the stars as she drifted off but even that was not bringing her much joy. Her life was falling apart, or so it seemed. It was a very lucid type of dream where she thought perhaps she was awake, lying there in the room, but she was not, and she felt a presence up near her ceiling. There, hovering a few feet above her was a winged female. Not your usual classic-style “angel” by any description but a rather rotund, friendly looking woman who smiled at her quietly. The energy around the woman was sheer love and as the woman beamed down at her she felt her energy and love surround her.
She didn’t believe in angels nor did she really believe in anything, but here, in her room, was this Irish washer-woman looking creature with big fluffy white wings just suspended there. She was round and naked and her skin had that pink glow that really pale skinned people sometimes have. Her auburn hair was up in a bun and there were a few stray, wavy hairs loose around her round, smiling face. She didn’t know who this being was or if she was real or just her imagination but when she awoke she felt better.
Then other times her dreams were downright strangely erotic and just weird.
Like the tree she dreamed of one night. She saw it from a distance and the many twisting branches spread out in an umbrella shape and the growth was multi-colored. Every bright color she could imagine in every configuration covered the crown of the tree and it quivered slightly as if in a soft breeze.
As she got closer she realized that the colored “growth” on the tree was not made of leaves and flowers. It was made up of a huge cluster of exotic butterflies and birds who were perching and then fluttering and flying from branch to branch. They were not like any butterflies or any birds she’d ever seen before; even Amazon rain forest species would pale compared to them. She continued to observe and moved in closer to get a better look at these creatures and then noticed they were really not insects and birds at all.
Instead of a body, between each butterfly’s wings was a comically exaggerated human vulva, swollen a bit and as colorful as the wings were. And the exotic birds were similar except between their wings, instead of a body, each had an equally exaggerated version of a human phallus and scrotum with the phalluses in various states of arousal. Some were flaccid, some at half-staff, some fully erect and kind of bouncing and jiggling around to the beat of the wings that flanked them. All were as equally colorful as the butterflies.
Some of these birds seemed to be chasing the butterflies around and poking at them, she imagined in an attempt to penetrate. There was no sound except a faint flutter and swish of wing and feather.
She woke up thinking that the whole thing would make a hell of an art installation.
She even created one of the birds out of newspaper papier mâché meaning to paint it colorfully but didn’t get any further than that on the project. She left it perched on top of a shelf in her living room and seeing it resting there gave her some kind of strange satisfaction.
Once when a potential roommate came to see the apartment and saw the bird sculpture standing at attention on the bookshelf she visibly recoiled and asked whether she, “Could expect more things of that type around the house”.
The search for a suitable roommate continued.
“The search for a suitable roommate continued”, lol. Indeed. The dream state is to no end a fascination. Are the pills still in effect or been left behind?
No more pills. No more Rx meds at all these days. Drugs get SOOOO boring after a while. I about bored myself to death, truth-be-told.