30 days of dreaming....

...a writing experiment inspired by the poetic exercises of Charles Bernstein and Bernadette Mayer. Inspired by prompt #27 from this list of 66 I recorded my dreams for 30 days- some days were blank and some were not actually dreams but first unfiltered waking thoughts. I have not edited or altered what I originally wrote in my bedside pad. Here goes from the banal to the terrifying…

Photo: my two favourite sleep-masks selected from a vast collection.

Eavesdropping on Irish friends discussing abortion,

Attending my friend Ariana's wedding in a former doughnut factory in Catford,

There is no more room for the flowers in the hospital we'll have to send them somewhere else,

Why is the spinach still not gone off, the best before was weeks ago?

The liners capsizes, me and David go underwater, once emerged others make out it was ‘no big deal’,

A pug on a lead tries to bite Stevie, my cat,

I am spooned by Christian Slater,

At an underground car-park party alone and very lonely, I find a catatonic acquaintance, then my cousin Millie, we buy beer, Sol specifically. The party gets better.

Do I have the energy for Le Crazy Coqs tonight?

A woman pretending to be my mother drugs me. Then we have mud baths.

Comparing our sexual histories in the supermarket,

Feeling tingling in my back organs. Is it kidney? Liver? Spleen?

Return to Royal Holloway University dorms and cafe for the night, I love it.

Party in a diner and I'm on table cleaning duty,

A man non-consensually watches me while I pee. A predator who won't admit it.

A literal demon grabs my throat. I wake up. Still feel where its hands were.

Ji-Ji, my deceased family dog, befriends an uncanny/unfamiliar dog in the park.

A man demonstrates a strange yoga move. I can't do it. 'I'm too dyspraxic,' I say 'sorry.'

See my other Bernstein and Mayer inspired experiments here, here and here. For something completely different read a personal essay I wrote about religion, cults, family and glamping, amongst other things, here. Thanks so much for reading!

Love,

Emma x o x o