The Monkey's Head.

Brion was there and I pick up the monkey's head and prepare to make a wish. I felt it move, I tell you, like the bulkhead in Lord Jim.

It will give way at any second and wishes will gush out and it will be... "Sauve qui peut." Every man for himself! ...when the wishes spurt out and they all have validity unless negated by counterwishes, which puts all the wishes into furious deadly, and often suicidal competition.

--William S. Burroughs

EDITOR'S NOTES

Burroughs's dream is referring to a classic horror tale, The Monkey's Paw by W.W. Jacobs (1902). The Paw is cursed; it grants three wishes, but always in the worst possible way. You'll get that promotion, since your friend will die; your lost loved one will live again... just slightly decomposed.

For Burroughs, a war between wishes is no mere metaphor. Like most long-term dreamworkers, he'd experienced enough synchronicity in dreams (and in Burroughs's case outside them too; he'd studied with shamans) to conclude all creatures live in a shared field of entaglement, not just sensing others but affecting them--and the supposedly inanimate world, too. Wishes have real power--but that's usually masked, since others' wishes constrain them!

Burroughs seems to see willing and wishing as being in a Darwinian equilibrium. The cheetah's speed is amazing, but most hunts still fail, for antelope that do escape breed still faster ones; neither gains a lasting advantage. Relative stability creates an illusion that evolution is inherently slow. Yet put a cheetah in a new environment, and both predator and prey change a million times faster. Punctuated equilibrium.

A similar standoff exists between the infectious agents and immune system. "Study the immune system and you'll wonder that we ever get sick; study diseases and you'll wonder we survive at all." Until a disease crosses into a new ecosystem...

Here, Burroughs dreams of a third such uneasy balance, in the psychic realm. And anything that destabilizes it, like a cursed Monkey's Head, just triggers a war of wish against wish.

--Chris Wayan

SOURCE: My Education: a book of dreams by William S. Burroughs, 1995, p.58. Passage untitled; I added "The Monkey's Head" to aid searches.

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-Sh - Si-Sz - T - UV - WXYZ
Email: wdreamb@yahoo.com - Catalog of art, books, CDs - Behind the Curtain: FAQs, bio, site map - Kindred sites