the "origami bug" dream

I'm at my parents' house. There's someone my mother calls my "boyfriend" and who is obviously gay, his hair died black, gesticulating wildly: my mother is charmed, my father is sitting in another room, disapproving, sullen. I flee the scene and go upstairs. In one of the rooms, there is a blue beetle hovering over the table. It alights on the edge. I recognize him: it's the origami bug. Its "shell" is an intricately folded castle, ship, and it's blue. Such blue*! ... The origami bug never stays still for too long, but when it pauses, it is as if time slowed down. He has something to say, he will speak to me. Now it reclines on one side, propping its head on its insect elbow, its black limbs with knobby joints. It's wearing a blue hat. ... My mother comes in, with the "boyfriend" trailing behind, their presence undesired. She tries to capture the bug. I protest: she must not touch it, it must be free. The beetle slips between her fingers. Now it lies on its back like a little cat ready to be pet on its belly. Now it unfolds its "origami": tiny delicate petals folded one over the next. Only the black "paws" are showing. The bottom petals lie flat. One can see a nearly translucent underside of the bug, with its little veins, like a blue membrane.

* It is recognizably, the Yves Klein blue.

dream

I was staying at a hotel. With a dog. I suspected the dog all along of trying to manage me. He gave me a bed in the center of the middle room, like an isolated island. With my glasses off, I observed strange movements taking place on another bed set against the wall, beneath a mirror. There were things crawling out from behind the mirror, from under the bed: tropical spiders, hairy, and swift if needed. Even on my bed, there were little furry balls, small as the breath of a bird. The dog would brush them off and tell me that these are dust bunnies. I think I slept in that bed, in that dream. When I woke up, I called the hotel service. Women in aprons came with buckets of antiseptic. Whenever a spider came out, they would grab it and inject it with poison. When they were gone, I felt relieved.

I started moving furniture around. That made me feel more "at home," and I thought it was ok for me to stay here for a while. As i was moving some shelves, a woman and a man came in, something to do with my finances, I think. I tried to maneuver a bookshelf around them when I noticed two insects fighting on top of a book. I had to bring my face quite close to them to realize that these were two scorpions.

[notes on the dream]:
The dog was a traitor. He was "managing" my myopia.
The hotel room was rich in colors, Indian decor: cushions, hand-painted wooden furniture, colored walls, floral rugs, green, red, sienna, chestnut, orange, thick colors. The insects had very distinct bodies. The furry things called "a bird's breath" made little squeaky noises as they scurried about. The scorpions were the color of dark sand. All insects were easily camouflaged in the patterned fabrics. The strange couple were stern and soberly dressed. The man in a suit. They carried on about my affairs without paying the slightest attention to my presence.

I was a wolf in this dream, escorted by others to an appointment at an old lady's house. The doorbell rang in changing sequences of repeated tones. I pressed it again, out of curiosity. The woman stood discontent in the doorway as the bell chimed its melodies till the end. The wall and the door were covered with szlaczki* and, trying to relieve the tense atmosphere, I mumbled something about the similitude of the doorbell tune and the repetitive graphic patterns.

The woman wore a scarf bordered with golden sequins over her head, and held a half-unwrapped gift in her hand. She reproached me for having emailed her only yesterday and added that the gift arrived only today. Indeed, I felt a tinge of guilt over my poor communication skills, but I explained that I wanted her to receive the gift before sending an electronic message. She seemed a bit placated by this explanation, and invited us inside.

Us included me and other animals. I remember an owl and a fox. We sat at a coffee table and had tea poured out of porcelain tea pot. I committed other faux pas, although I cannot quite remember what exactly infuriated my host. Soon, however, the tea party turned into a persecution as I was chased by the fox around the room. My limp was a great disadvantage. I must have limped for a long time. Yet, suddenly, cornered between the couch and the coffee table, I realized that the pebble -- or something that felt like one -- that caused the limp had disappeared. Free to run, I took to my heels. I swore to bring all other wolves from the forest, and shouted a parting threat: "This was the last party in the history of the Western civilization."

*) szlaczki are repetitive patterns used by Polish children to decorate their notebooks. The wall & the door in my dream were covered with rows and rows of such patterns, each row forming its own distinctive band, drawn in black and white.

serait-il possible que, après la saison de la mort, vienne la saison du vivant?

... saved from the censorship of a museum custodian at Maison européenne de la photographie, a shot through the negative of one of the three photos by André Kertész, exhibited, like the same model in different poses, in different contexts ...

*

*

i said, i will give you voice. i will give my voice to you, and i will have none. speech, let now speech flow from your lips, speech your tongue shudders, tingles with sounds not your own, sweet bitter fruit, peel it, speech under its skin. i will utter, my voice in your throat, speech pulp between your teeth, swallow, my voice in your throat. i said, and i had none.

fragility of sleep: a plastic bag, stretched to line my waste basket, collapses under the weight of orange peels, inch by inch, settles at the bottom, crinkling, rustling plastic bag, teases me awake

écrire à partir de rien. du rien qui m'habite. (le rien, c'est un vide d'émotion. soit que l'émotion habite à mon côté comme un petit animal mal-nourri. et cela dure. cela peut durer des mois. l'animal, c'est la peau et les os. surtout les os. je n'ose pas le toucher. il se meut encore, cet animal, mais je suis sûre qu'il ne me reconnaît plus.) écrire à partir du rien. pourquoi "à partir"? faut-il partir? un départ, est-il nécessaire? (on va saigner l'encre. l'animal le sait. une plume d'un oiseau inouï plonge dans les vaines de l'animal qui signe ainsi. écrire de la part de l'animal. et il faut encore, à côté, cet oiseau rapace.) on n'écrit pas pour se souvenir. on n'écrit pas souvent. presque jamais. on écrit afin d'oublier. l'oubli, l'oubli, un tendre lullaby, la houle, l'oublie, ça berce comme les vagues, comme le brouillard, ça s'oublie. ból, l'oubli. la douleur en polonais est comme une boule de neige. boule oubli, lullaby la houle. (l'animal mélange les langues. l'animal-émotion délaissé. il se nie dans cette boule de neige. il s'annihile. il se meut en rien. il a mal et rien. il s'écrie.) cette voix n'est pas humaine. mais elle n'est pas rien. elle ne se laisse pas prendre en piège ni en brouillon. elle ne se laisse pas prendre. ni au pied de la lettre, ni au bout de la langue, ni même par l'oreille. étrange animal. ce rien s'écrit. (il faudra déchirer les pages. leur blancheur de neige. les cris du papier blanc. couché sur la neige, l'animal se meurt, se meut. l'émotion, il se meut hors de soi, à côté de moi, presque oublié, mais, s'il aimait, aime-t-il toujours, l'animal, le même.) écrire rien. ce rien et pas un autre. celui-ci, précisément. lançant des boules de neige, ciblant la feuille vierge, écrire, blanc sur blanc. soit noir sur noir, perçant des trous noirs dans le ciel. si blanc soit-il, l'animal, il se meut. il ne parle plus. l'écrire. il faut l'écrire, cet animal. c'est sa dernière chance. (à partir de rien. à partir de ce blanc où il saigne. ce blanc qui se remplit de n'importe quoi, de la neige, du sang, de rien, du noir. à partir. écrire à part. solitaire. comme l'animal, chaque lettre. solitaire. chaque être qui s'écrie dans le blanc de la page.) impossible de le comprendre. l'animal ne parle pas. mais l'animal a une langue. des oreilles. une voix. il renifle le sang et l'encre. les aime, l'animal, et le sang et l'encre. il aime l'étoile. ce rien qui m'habite. trou blanc au sein d'une page noire. le poil de l'animal est lisse comme la page d'un livre. (cet animal, tu va le lire. tu va lui lire. tant qu'il y a la voix, l'animal se meut. il se meurt mais vit. les deux en même temps. il s'émeut. il aime les histoires. raconte-lui l'histoire de ce rien qui m'habite). écris. à partir de rien.