Silver-plated dreams and dreams of heavy lead, dreams of silver, dreams of one kilo of gold that equals 999.9 grams; tidal dreams, dreams smudged with gunpowder, wearing a muzzle, like dogs that bite; philharmonic, philosophic, philanthropic dreams of gladness and consolation; dreams about Idi Amin conversing with the crocodiles. South African dreams of blacks struggling for their freedom; dreams in which the self becomes nobody and at the mouth of the cave you laugh at the Cyclops Polyphemus; coastal dreams, jet propelled, anarchist, and anachronistic; mastodon, chandelier dreams, transcribed from tape, literally about your fate and your generation; reptile dreams, in other tongues, of other races; waterproof dreams, plagal mode dreams; contraceptive dreams, cocaine dreams; lobed, cut in half, fragmented, lavish, porous dreams; purulent dreams that discharge their liquid as soon as you wake up, and other heraldic dreams. There are salamified dreams, eggplant and potato, tomato dreams, cucumber dreams (it’s the cries of the wandering greengrocer outside your window that make you dream); stud dreams, dreams that contain ammonia, dreams that put you in front of the firing squad and others that discharge you, but which, like the army, never really demobilize you; prison dreams, entombed dreams, propaganda dreams and utility dreams that you pay for once a month; expense dreams, all numbered, which the God/taxman wants validated. There are untranslated dreams, whose riddles remain enigmatic even to the best dream interpreters; consumer dreams whose wrappers you throw in the trash next morning, and others that stay with you, like the pear inside the bottle of kirsch or the branches covered in crystallized sugar, that make you wonder how they got in there. Autumn dreams, with leaves fallen from the large trees by the river; summer dreams on the rocks by the beach with the solitary swimmers; floating dreams, boat-people dreams, winter dreams by the fireplace, the snow outside six feet deep, blocking your windows. There are also dreams confined in cages and living in a stupor, like circus lions, and domesticated dreams — dreams of chickens, rabbits, ducks — the dream of the wild goose that you know from the fairy tale, and swan dreams, on which you cross the river Acheron with Hades as your boatman and get stamped like a cow approved by the county vet for slaughter; dreams of slaughterhouses where the blood of thousands of pigs flows into the same ditch; dreams of restaurants, their showcases decorated with wild boar and pheasant; stuffed dreams that are preserved as long as the ancient aqueducts in fields now irrigated mechanically, with water that spurts up in the shape of palm trees to the rhythm of a pacemaker; amphitheatrical dreams, in large halls where for centuries the same anatomy lesson has been conducted with interchanging corpses: in your sleep you become both corpse and anatomist. There are fordable dreams and unexplained ones like the galaxies, the ones they call universal and those that only affect themselves; dyslexic dreams, Flemish dreams, dreams with no batteries, malformed, hunchback, lame, on crutches, leaders of choruses, choirs with voice-overs because they’re only lipsyncing; compassionate dreams, with stomach ulcers; dreams that have settled on the plains of your sleep like the foreign military bases you’re not allowed near; exit dreams in which you walk upon your own Dead Sea; dreams as sweet as ice cream that melts in the cone, and mulberry dreams, both black and white, that fall on the ground because nobody wants them: they stain your hands, like walnut dreams with their fresh kernels, milky and not yet congealed. You break them and paint your fingers, while walnut preserves in your grandmother’s ancient jars hang from the eyelashes of your sleep like laundry hung out to dry with clothespins that remind you of swallow’s tails: panties that hide the dreams of adolescent girls; blue jeans dreamed of by young men from Eastern European countries; skirts dreamed of by the evzones of the presidential guard. Fugitive dreams, marble-worker dreams, trout dreams, long-lasting dreams, dreams that aren’t satisfied with just being dreams but aspire to become action, work; dreams of the prefecture, of the settlement, of the village, of the province….
