Friday, February 22, 2008

A dream of Lyon.


The other night i had another dream, a very fragmentary dream. This time i was in Lyon, so i was told in the dream. Lyon is a city i have no connection to whatsoever, i've never even been there. I remember walking around in endless, vast, palatial marble halls, like those at the Grand Central Station in New York.
I got inside a house in the dense city and out on it's backside, then there was no trace of the city, there was an endless, verdant garden. The garden-facade of the house was completely covered in honeysuckle and boughs of wisteria, i walked in the tall grass and buttercups. In the grass lay scattred sun-bleached plastic toysm a ball, a doll and a watering can. I waded on through the grass and down a gentle slope, i looked out over the magnificent landscape. Fields of golden ochre interspersed by dense, fantastically lush woods and finaly in the horizon, the glittering, blue sea. But no trace of the city.
In the next fragment i was balancing on some railway tracks above blackened gravel between steep sides covered in lifeless grass, thistles and weeds. Then i was suddenly chased away and ran for my life.

Then i was going to a gala opening at the opera and i was going to escort this old countess, and elegant old lady with a shiny satin eveningdress and strands of pearls, her thick, grey hair in a tight chignon. I was also similarily dressed upp, we walked arm in arm through the grand marble-foyer of the operahouse, upp and down broad, monumental stairs. The countess' box was on the right side of the auditorium, had a gilt Louis Seize- sofa clad in a striped silk-damask in purple-stripes on ivory white, all other seats in the auditorium were in deep burgundy-velvet. The auditorium was packed, we sat down and the display commenced. My best friend sat on the balcony opposite, surrounded by her other friends, and waved eagerly.
It was a strange vaudeville with a 70s disco-accompanyment. Giant dancers in sequinned leotards on swings and trapezes, and with big, hysterical smiles in a bizarre mechanical dance, they changed size all the time, like soapbubbles or as if they were inflatable. The salon was also moving, balconies switched places, twitched and turned like a rubik's cube.

The next thing i remember we were bouncing gleefully down the steep, broad front stairs of the opera. Then it was snowing, as in the old day's winters, millions of little snowflakes fell over the big town-square outside. Then i woke up.

Monday, February 11, 2008

Beautiful etchings

I just have to share with you, these wonderfully charming seasonal fashionplates, etched by Wenceslaus Hollar in England in the 1640's:
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Sunday, February 10, 2008

A new, strange dream


Yesterday night i had a new "house-dream". I often seem to dream of houses, they often start pleasantly, but then take another, more unsettling turn. This house was a weird mix between a castle, country cottage and those beautiful 18th century houses near Drottningholm. There were old, beautifully worn wooden floors, beautiful stained glass and sash windows, old artifacts and furniture, and a soft, beautiful light falling through the irregular glass of the windows. It resembled the summerhouse of Helena Ekdahl in Bergman's "Fanny and Alexander". There also was a conservatory and and many poky, little staircases with chiseled wooden banisters worn by centurie's of hands.
It was such a vivid dream! There's so much i remember, plainly, as if i just seen it on film or even been there. It started at night and pale moonlight seeped through the windows and in sconces on the walls some candles threw their flickering, sparse light in the rooms, nooks and crannies. I was at the upper storey and chased by something or someone i couldn't see, i ran down the stairs and through a door with many intricate locks and barres, i hastily slammed the door shut behind me and locked it carefully. Then i found myself in a quaint little country kitchen, with woodpanelling painted in limegreen and coral, ancient copperpots and utensils. Then, suddenly it was day and the sun pierced through the foliage outside and further through the windows, spreading a golden-green flickering pattern allover the room. I was no longer chased and the door i had just locked so carefully was wide open.
The kitchen led further on to a little bedroom with old torn wallpapers with a rustic, yet elegant printed pattern in dark blue beams on bone white, there were a fiew rustic pieces of furniture, a bed with a beautiful quilt, a dresser, a fiew simple chairs, the same golden green flicker from outside. I went up to the upper storey again and found a large room with walls covered in exquisitely and intricately carved woodpanels, seemingly they had been taken from a much larger, much grander house, they were painted in a dark blue, with gilt carvings and thousands of little flowers painted all over, the panels were divided by columns with corinthian capitals, cut, in incoherent bits to fit in here.
I went downstairs again and out. It must have been about the end of august for the verdure seemed faded and the leaves had a chapped, leathery feel to them and there was a cool breeze. I lay stretched on a table with flaky white paint and surrounded by tall birchtrees. I looked at the house, it must have been mine. It was a strange anomaly, a cluster of little cottages with high, steep roofs and many chimneys, an ancient, crooked, farmhouse in an idyllic, rural setting.
I walked around the house.

Then i suddenly found myself on a huge parkinglot with different monstrous industrial buildings around it, it was dirty and garbage scattered allover the place. I never found my way back to the house and started walking and walking as darkness fell. Then i was in a town, a big ruthless city and below it's townhall mixed with the Chiesa di San Marco in Venice, i was barefoot and wore a nightshirt stained with urin, feeling naked and unprotected.

Then i remember climbing on the outside of a giant dome of terracotta bumps sprinkled with crushed glass, trying to get down, wich was difficult. When down i remember getting down the entrance of the subway. And then i woke up-

In another dream i had just traded my cosy apartment for a dreary, depressing one-storey suburban house in the middle of a barren field of asphalt with some lifeless shrubs adorned with plasticbags, junk and some beige sparrows chirping depressingly. The house was appaling and smelled like a hospital or day care center, an uninspiring, clinical smell trying to cover that of urin and vomit. In the drawing room stood a horrible, settee covered in parched, worn-out leather with revolting, unidentifiable stains. Criminally ugly curtains and a view through the windows of a dull playground with lifeless lawns and a set of swings. Ew! And in the bathroom i found some horrible copies of bijoux and perfumes with boxes, saying "Doir" instead of "Dior", i recall. Fie!

But what can these dreams mean?!