Two Dreams

by my own head

I know that hearing people talk about their dreams is boring, but I haven't had much time for reading lately so these will have to do.

Dream #1:

I had this one several months ago. I was at a seance featuring the ghost of Rainer Maria Rilke, who read us an epic poem accompanied by a slide-show of the afterlife. I woke up right at the end of the poem and wrote down what I could remember of it, although I had to fill in some blanks and I'm pretty sure the original wasn't in iambic pentameter. But anyway, here it is, brought to you from beyond the grave, a fragment of Rilke's final opus:

If, when you have reached the other shore,
You see a figure standing on the bank,
Small, dark, alert and radiant with welcome,
Be comforted, and know that years from now
You may awake to find yourselves still here,
Leaning back to back in the soft grass.

Okay, I can't vouch for the poetry. But in case you were wondering, according to the slide show the afterlife is a very pleasant place. It's quietly sociable, it's always late spring, the light is pale yellow and everyone takes a lot of naps.

Dream #2

My mother-in-law took me aside at a party and told me that I had to live my life as though it were always the first day of a long vacation. Then she told me that I was "born under the sign of paper and ambergris". This was about three weeks ago. It was a nice dream.