World Dream Bank home - add a dream - newest - art gallery - sampler - dreams by title, subject, author, date, places, names

Before Bed

Dreamed ca. 1995? by Mary Ruefle

I bathe at night. I dress in white. The sheets are clean,
for sleep is an important occasion.
And since I cannot bear a tick, the small clock
is placed under the bed
like a carefully lost invitation.
I am going to a coronation. And I'm not just
one of the crowd, I am walking down the aisle
of a great church and somebody carries my head
on a pillow. When we reach the end I pick it up,
hold it high, say a few words of farewell.
Then I put it on somebody else's head.
And though you could say I've never worn it
myself, I play an important role,
I plan the details that allow the rest of the country
to sleep, to dream of the day they'll be the one.
But I keep the secrets of how it is done.

--Mary Ruefle

EDITOR'S NOTE

What amuses me here is how quietly and elegantly Ruefle's unconscious upsets an axiom shared by most dream-theories for a century: that the dream-self is always the ego, the conscious 'waking' I. Doesn't the viewpoint of Ruefle's dream seem more like the unconscious--like dreaming itself? She's given up her head (and what better image for that patronizing, negative label "unconscious"?)--yet she's the quietly competent Jeeves who knows how it all works, though never donning the crown of nominal self-awarensss! The power behind ego's throne.

--Chris Wayan

Source: Cold Pluto, © 1996 by Mary Ruefle, Carnegie Mellon University Press, Pittsburgh.



LISTS AND LINKS: holy places - initiations and rites - royalty - heads - letting go - inheritances - transformation - I'm Just Not Myself Today! - weird dream careers - dreamwork - dream-poetry

World Dream Bank homepage - Art gallery - New stuff - Introductory sampler, best dreams, best art - On dreamwork - Books
Indexes: Subject - Author - Date - Names - Places - Art media/styles
Titles: A - B - C - D - E - F - G - H - IJ - KL - M - NO - PQ - R - Sa-Sk - Sl-Sz - T - UV - WXYZ
Email: wdreamb@yahoo.com - Catalog of art, books, CDs - Behind the Curtain: FAQs, bio, site map - Kindred sites