And in my Dreams

and in my dreams such shapes may rise

that shake the soul with much surprise.

I dreamed I was going back to teaching last night though I was not on the faculty list. Everything had changed. Curiously enough, Bill Poulos was with me and we went to Boonsboro High School.

The department chair was a black man named Joseph (make any connection you like) and the English curriculum had been radically revised. I was lugging a machine around with me as we were leaving and was stopped and asked to return it. I didn't know what the machine was for, so as I returned it I was told it was a reading machine. Sheets of paper with holes in them were passed in front of a beam of light and the text was projected as the words were pronounced. The machine was a cross between a light-brite and the SRA machines so popular in the sixties and seventies. I was also carrying a text that was being taught- a book I'd never heard of but promised to read. I recall that the text was thoroughly politically correct but being the compulsive reader I am, I fully intended to read it. I recall that the title seemed childish and the cover an abstract design of purple and green.

As Bill and I traveled back(wards in time) he left me at the corner of Eastern Avenue and Ponca Street. He was driving a Thunderbird and parked it right at the bus stop there. I tried to tell him that he couldn't do that- the car will be towed. But he responded that he was flying out of the country and was suddenly gone.

Make what you will of a dream- Freud suggests that the words- Mr. Joseph, Thunderbird, Eastern, purple, green- are the telling details- that the visual images are not necessarily key but that sounds and their relation to reality are more important- the reading machine (me) is important. The flight to another country takes on an interesting aspect. Every reader will infuse meaning according to the importance the words and sounds elicit.

To sleep, to dream, ah there's the rub

and in that sleep

what dreams may come.

Out, out brief candle

Man is but a poor player

that struts and frets his hour upon this stage

and then is heard no more.

It is a tale told by an idiot

full of sound and fury

signifying nothing. *

paraphrase and quote from Macbeth

Poor reader, I beg your pardon for the indulgence I ask. There are no pictures merely the phantom forms that came into my mind. Tense too is important as is syntax.