The bed becomes an organ upon which I try to play. I
begin to play the Witches' Dance and there are not enough keys to the piano.
Again the keys are covered by a cloth or there are no keys. An organ behind
me is played and I see no organist, or I move the pedals of an organ and
music begins before the instrument is open. I try to play and the stops are
wrong. Often I search frantically for the hymn given out by the minister
and can not find it. Once I picked flowers in its place, drooping racemes of
sweet alyssum, which I gave to a woman. Oddest of all on the keys of a
piano I see a small boy who salutes me. Lastly, I play for children to
sing. At the top of the page of music are whole notes--easy to play; below
there are whole notes in groups of two, joined like confluent living cells.
There are several examples of punning to record--not brilliant, even
somewhat vulgar yet interesting as exhibiting varieties of mental action. I
dream that I am at a barn yard trying to hold the gate shut. In the yard are
two men, each with an animal, a kid, one light, one dark. The light kid is
unmanageable, pawing and shaking its head. Some days elapsed before the
interpretation dawned upon me but once noted could not be doubted. Several
weeks previously I had a business engagement and of two pairs of
gloves--kids--I hesitated which to wear. I was to do some writing
necessitating their removal and as one fastening of a light glove was
difficult I fixed upon the dark pair, as to ask help would under the
circumstances, have proved exceedingly embarrassing.
A friend had informed me of her approaching marriage. I dream of eating at
a table with her. I take meat but she wants me to do she does. So I return
the meat I had chosen and take spare-rib. This variety of meat I had neither
eaten nor thought of for months and the conclusion that the reference is to
the story of Adam and Eve is inevitable. I dream of eating at the table of
a friend. I am a little sick and cannot eat all that is given me. My friend
points smilingly to a package of stuffed dates on my plate. One date is
apart from the package. This dream relates unmistakably to a day when I had
a pressure of engagements and had not time to eat; when I did feel slightly
ill, and when one very significant engagement was made unexpectedly--a date
apart from the others. A kiss of her lover upon the lips of a young girl
becomes in my dream a piece of court plaster on her upper lip, and a woman
about whose prospective marriage some one asked, returns, in my night vision
to a university to obtain the degree of B. Ed., which in sleep I took to
indicate Bachelor of Education but which is open to a different
interpretation.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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