From Alice Notley’s zine Scarlet #1. Digitized by Nick Sturm as a part of Alice Notley’s Magazines: A Digital Publishing Mission.
“We requested our contributors to ship us their goals; most didn’t. A couple of did. One despatched us some & then withdrew (“censored”) one. Desires have gossip worth—containing what didn’t occur that was so salacious. We provide this column as a random sampling of occasions within the night time world; if you wish to use it to comment on the character of the poet’s (or the painter’s) soul, that’s your concern. We’re afraid that dream happenings are mere extra of what goes on,” wrote the editors of the primary Scarlet zine, Alice Notley and Douglas Oliver, introducing their new column, Dream Gossip. The primary one featured goals by Joe Brainard and Leslie Scalapino; a later column was illustrated by Alex Katz and prompted an essay by Notley on what we are able to and may’t study from goals. (Dream Gossip ran between 1990 and 1991, within the 5 problems with Scarlet, all of which have been digitized by the scholar Nick Sturm and can be found right here.) This spring, Hannah Zeavin interviewed Notley for our Writers at Work collection. To mark the event, we despatched an analogous immediate to a few of our contributors and employees, and are reviving Dream Gossip this week solely. Welcome to our sampling of occasions within the night time world!
—Sophie Haigney, internet editor
Dream, April 9, 2024: I’m consuming hen wrapped in cabbage at a desk in my condominium. A e book is open, probably Middlemarch. The cellphone doesn’t ring however I choose up a landline with a coiled twine, and as I stare on the strains of textual content a voice on the cellphone says, “Good place, however do you at all times simply go searching into different folks’s flats?” Muffled however distinct, Beethoven is taking part in in somebody’s automotive down on the road as they wait on the gentle.
—Dan Poppick
I used to be strolling with C., deeply conscious I used to be operating late for dinner with my mom. She mentioned, “Simply stroll me a bit additional.” I did. We should have been in New York, due to the best way the road checked out night time, prefer it has rained even when it hasn’t. Finally tried to beg off politely, wincing, pointing to a watch that wasn’t there. Then she tied a black truss round me, and from the truss was a leash, which she tied round her waist. I attempted to activate my heels and make it to my dinner. Inconceivable, clearly.
—Hannah Zeavin
We are attempting to make it throughout city. There are a number of of us and I who am within the dream know that I do know them however the I that’s dreaming has by no means seen them. We’re shifting from place to put, attempting to not get caught within the crossfire, however the half gentle by which we transfer from place to put, from cowl to cowl, is lit by laser hearth. There are sides right here and they’re combating however neither facet is from this place, which is my reservation. Neither of the edges are from this place and we don’t know who they’re however they don’t seem to be from this place and we are attempting to get someplace. The grasses of the plains are gone and what has come is sand. There’s sand all over the place and a scorching wind blows and drifts the sand and we transfer throughout sand drifted like snow throughout streets and we conceal within the shadows of wreckage and await an opportunity to maneuver whereas the edges battle and laser hearth lights up the sky which is not any completely different in colour from the bottom. The wind is fixed and onerous and drifts the sand and we transfer and it’s night time. We’re going throughout city for some cause. The pink-and-blue neon of a gasoline station cover lights the space.
—Sterling HolyWhiteMountain
Yet one more method during which I’m insufficient: I don’t dream, or barely, or if I do I don’t keep in mind it. However certainly, I believed, if I’ve to … To attempt to induce a dream I did some edibles. I used to be sitting round with pals. “What’s an important high quality for an individual to have?” I mentioned, stoned. One mentioned integrity, the opposite mentioned generosity, I mentioned bravery. Then I went to mattress, wakened, nothing.
The love of my life to date—he will get to maintain that title till I discover one other one, as it isn’t in my nature to pretend it—used to get up each morning and inform me his goals. Initially I’d actually watch him whereas he slept, and he appreciated to fuck me a lot that he would ask me to get on high of him in his sleep (please?). By the top his loud night breathing received so loud that I couldn’t sleep beside him anymore, and he dreamed largely about me fucking any individual else.
Final week, I slept with a person, after which as an alternative of leaving spent the night time. I believed, perhaps within the morning he’ll inform me certainly one of his goals, and I can steal it. No luck.
—Holly Connolly
I just lately dreamed I’d made an ice cream cake to look precisely just like the face of Karen Black, introduced it to a celebration, after which grew to become distraught when folks tried to chop into it (the purpose was to let it soften!).
—Kate Riley
I dreamt I used to be in highschool, at a statewide convention of the California YMCA’s Youth and Authorities program; in Fresno, I assume, as a result of that’s the place these conferences are held. I used to be standing in a big conference corridor the place an Irishman was making an impassioned speech. The lady standing to my left referred to as him a faker. “That’s not an actual Irish accent,” she mentioned to me. “You’ll be able to at all times inform.” Regardless of her suspicions, I used to be doing this factor referred to as spirit fingers, a gesture I keep in mind from California Youth and Authorities which symbolizes enthusiastic settlement with no matter is being mentioned. Spirit fingers is the place you make typing motions with one hand whereas elevating it within the air. Upon waking I put my arm down and located it was sore, after which I puzzled for the remainder of the day what the Irishman had so completely satisfied me of.
—Owen Park
My dream was a e book that doesn’t exist. It was learn aloud to me by a male narrator and illustrated with photograph slides. Known as August Is Again, it was an autobiography of a glamorous Jewish Italian lady, written in previous age. Her passions have been meals and intercourse. She was voracious!
And for a cause—rising up, she’d had a pricey sister who died younger. This made the creator of August Is Again lean into residing fearlessly and sensually. Whereas she was clearly fab, her writing was so abruptly erotic that I felt embarrassed. She described at size the moisture on linen sheets after intercourse, the winking drip of overripe plums on the department, and the satisfying mouthfeel of the phrase “climax.” Even in my dream, I discovered it a bit a lot.
The ultimate picture was of her along with her husband, holding fingers of their backyard. It was proven to me in black-and-white—one of many vignettes. I can’t keep in mind if he was nonetheless alive or had already died. She herself was near loss of life, I understood. She wore a rumpled, plaid skirt over massive calves. I wakened considering, Huh!
—Rosa Shipley
He was sallow, aristocratic, fats. Half at the hours of darkness, his face appeared on the reckoning, festive. “You’ll really feel a flatness,” he mentioned to me, his pores and skin an ashy blue. “Eat the fruit. You need to … eat the fruit.” Had I gotten one thing unsuitable? Was I too impatient for knowledge? Did I abandon my commitments? Was I ungrateful for magnificence when it pale too quickly? Was my hospitality conditional? Was I made lazy by the lengthy summers? Did I develop grasping for epiphany? Did I ask for mercy once I had withheld grace? Did I conflate freedom with narcissism? Was I caught delighting within the shame of others? Was my empathy self-serving? Was I frugal with forgiveness? Was I unmoved by violence? A muffled animal wail ripped out of me, however I used to be not aware of creating it. No sound got here out. Strobe lights flashed, as if we have been in a nightclub. Up till my reckoning started, I had deliberate to reside life unrejected in love, and I assumed I’d be envied by multitudes.
—Geoffrey Mak
I dreamt I couldn’t discover my method again to the workplace as soon as I had stepped out into the hallway. The hall was no wider than a big desk, with dizzying spiral staircases, one thing straight out of Gaudí’s thoughts: pink partitions fabricated from clay, doorways with drooping frames in bloody maroon. After hours going round in circles, I noticed I did know methods to get again in from the surface and turned within the course I believed led to the exit …
—Nikita Biswal
Gene and I have been in rehearsals for a stage adaptation of Batman. I’m unsure which episode. It was a musical, and we have been instructed by the choreographer that we must always fly, though Batman doesn’t actually fly—solely Superman flies. Perhaps we have been purported to be bats. Anyway, I’d by no means flown earlier than, however I stood on one leg and leaned ahead till my torso and my lifted leg have been parallel to the ground, like in yoga. Then I picked up the opposite foot in order that my entire physique was within the air and began cruising across the stage. An enormous triumph.
—Jane Breakell
Dream. The police commit me to a psychological hospital. A yr goes by. I’m standing close to the entrance gate when a person in a brown safety uniform tells me that he’s a time traveler despatched again from the long run to torture and kill me, and that the screams I’m about to listen to from contained in the hospital shall be my very own as I’m dying, and that this truth of my different self dying would be the excellent cowl for my actual self, me, to flee this hospital and be a part of the time-travel police, which, he says, has been the plan all alongside. He’s smiling. As he tortures my first self to loss of life contained in the hospital and I hear my screams as I urge for mercy, my different self finds the hospital supervisor. I ask her what sort of plan that is. Why is it so convoluted? Why did it take an entire yr? She laughs at me.
Dream. James has a black cow that loves me. It stands up on its hind legs to hug me, sing to me, and dance with me.
Dream. I’ve pursued a hen to the rooftop in a inexperienced leafy neighborhood of an enormous metropolis. A well-known cult chief sporting sun shades approaches, shifting from roof to roof. He calls out: “I prefer to promote medicine, and I additionally prefer to steal birds.” An eagle lands on a department over me. I’ve by no means been so near an eagle earlier than. I’m knocked flat on my again, transfixed by surprise. A jaguar leaps into the treetops. I await the hawk to assault the jaguar. Now a second jaguar struts up and sits on high of me.
Dream. Trepanning, beheading, vivisection, amputation, serrated knives. I’m pursued down unfinished picket stairs right into a muddy basement. Upstairs, there are two great golden owls.
Dream. Scott admires my “sphinx implant.”
—J. D. Daniels
