M Kitchell

  TWELVE DREAMS IN THE WHITE VILLA


 
 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 
 

 
 
 

Prolegomena: The white villa in the forest. Over three weeks, twelve dreams haunted sleep. I recorded them in the small notebook sitting on the side table. Small script, clear, a desire for permanence. Rain would run ink, but inside it is dry. The narratives called in my head lead to something, perhaps an answer, but more likely a larger question. Looking for something, perhaps the dreams have something to say.

°°°

FIRST DREAM

The man who wears a pressed suit descends the spiral staircase from the third floor of the building to the second. As he reaches the landing he extends his hand and beckons to me, saying “come here young man, come here.” When I approach him I realize he is holding a small silver bird. I reach to take the bird, but it flies away. He laughs and tells me that no one can be young forever.

SECOND DREAM

I'm walking around the reflecting pool of the building's gardens when I see the nude body of a man gliding back and forth beneath the surface. I kneel to the pool's edge to feel the strong contours of his back as he swims past. The moment my hand feels his flesh I hear a tree fall behind me in the forest. I turn to look.
     Returning my gaze to the water, I am confronted with my own reflection. My reflection mouths the question, “Is it true you still believe in god?,” which I understand with perfect clarity. I shrug and the dream ends.

THIRD DREAM

A line of nude men are lead by an elegant woman in a full-length gown to a large & freshly dug pit. At the bottom of the pit there is a box holding an archive of illicit sounds reproduced via mechanical interactions. One by one the men jump into the pit.

FOURTH DREAM

I'm in a room with a large glass fish tank in the center. The tank holds an underwater forest, carefully sea-scaped to become a self-sustaining ecosystem. The tank's illumination is the only light of the room. Aside from foliage & micro-organisms, the tank is filled with sleek black eels. A deep sense of sexual energy fills the core of my body as I watch the black worms dash about in the deep. The intensity begins to make me feel dizzy, so I lie on my back on the floor. The light, shadowed by the contents of the tank, creates a Rorschach flickering of the dark skies of weather. This calms me. I smell the burn of fire and hear a voice chanting the secret of eternity. Upon waking, the scent is forgotten.

FIFTH DREAM

There's a field of wheat in the distance that holds strange clumps of fluorescent colors. I see a figure cutting through the field, the wheat laying down in his path. The indentations create a repeating pattern that dulls my sight. My pupils wash over with heavy gray. I feel metal tips edging into my body as I float into the air, as if an invisible machine is lifting me from stupor. I can hear someone other than me screaming. Upon waking, I find strange bruises covering my skin.

SIXTH DREAM

In this dream I can see nothing, only darkness. Screams populate my ears, and I cannot discriminate whether they are sounded in pleasure or pain. I attempt to push all possible fluids out of my body. A gigantic boom of a woman's voice proclaims that night will arrive soon.

SEVENTH DREAM

The nude body of a woman writhes in silence upon a bed of furs deep within the bricked exterior of a crypt. The faintest hum of tape static plagues my vicinity. As the woman fades from view I'm presented with a man holding a glass sphere who asks me questions. To each question asked I answer with the name of a stone. As our dialog goes nowhere, I see the man become increasingly frustrated. In turn, the man's frustration makes me feel ecstatically complacent.

EIGHTH DREAM

Positioned so as not to be able to move inside of a smooth, wooden cube, I feel something stretching the muscles of my rectum in a way I haven't formerly experienced. It is a pleasant, albeit alien sensation. The feeling fugues vivid visions of viscera in front of my eyes: the slough one would see on screen as a colonoscopy scope probes base tunnels. The visions recede to memory & I begin to feel overwhelmed with fluid. It is as if I desperately want to ejaculate, but cannot. My only desire is to turn into a puddle of white fluid, my entire body a come-shot, an offering to some black god I'm not familiar with.

NINTH DREAM

In this dream my vision seems to be that of a bird. I view the sky from a never before considered perspective.

TENTH DREAM

The room I'm in is octagonal and a window is positioned at eye-level on each of the eight walls. I can see something different through each window. Four of the windows, which sit in line with the cardinal directions, reveal crashing waves. Each view is hued with a different secondary color, though I'm not sure if this is a symptom of tinted glass or some complexity of atmospherics. The remaining four windows reveal islands, and there is something inarticulately terrible about each. I find the evident height of my location comforting, despite being able to feel the structure I inhabit shaking in fierce winds.

ELEVENTH DREAM

In the dream I catch sight of my face in the reflective surface of a dark pool and am shocked to discover that my face is not one I am familiar with.

DREAM TWELVE

I'm presented with the view of a large warehouse from a position nearing where the rafters of a structure would be situated. I have the illusion of weightlessness. The warehouse is stuffy and I consider whether or not I am positioned so as to be able to open a window. There are a number of individuals in the warehouse speaking about their children. I have no interest in their conversations. My body sways in modes that I imagine resemble flight. I do not question my resistance to gravity because my air feels natural.

°°°

Closing Hypothesis: In a state of confusion, waking every morning, a continually growing pool of nocturnally emitted effluvia. The idea that this could be a place for growth, tumescent nascence. I'd expect the newborns to glow in the dark, for to find oneself in the head-space of the White Villa is to only hold the night.





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M KITCHELL is a writer, photographer, designer & editor living in the Bay Area. His work investigates routes toward the impossible, the space of the book, Georges Bataille's ensemble of "apparently sovereign behaviors" & the construction of a heterogeneous queer erotics. His critical interests most often consider post-genre cinema, the artist as shaman & French écriture of the 70s & 80s.