Five Waking Dreams
By M.V. Montgomery


actress friend

I had moved from the suburbs back uptown. Riding the bus, I noticed a pageant sponsored by city neighborhoods—the long windows framed each passing street scene like a work in an urban art gallery. The driver allowed a young woman to take her bike aboard after hearing her tearful story about being late for an audition. I was a pushover for the story, too, letting her stash the bike in my apartment. Much later, we appeared on a talk show to tell the story of our friendship—the bike she had been schlepping around when poor and out of work, and how the streets had seemed alive that day.


bitter blue

At a church art fair, one man came up to me and sadly asked for more “bitter blue.” I was startled; this sounded like a melancholic art project indeed for such a bright day! Curious, I gave him some paint for his picture and followed him out for a look. What I saw was a cheery picture of a park with a pond and some cartoonish ducks. So I suggested that he might try some sparkles for the sand.


dukkha

In England, arriving at a difficult-to-get-to estate that belonged to a family I once knew. A funeral service was in progress. A man staying there might have been a grown son. He showed my daughter and I around briefly, then vanished. There was a girl passing through who lacked a pair of sandals, so I asked my daughter to give up a pair, and she agreed. I could not have been grieving overmuch; on the drive from town, I had made a mental note of an Indian restaurant to try later with some friends. A friend soon arrived and gave me a card expressing his condolences (though it was he who looked depressed). I recycled the card by signing it over to someone else within the same dream, who in his turn tried to sign it over again.


quick copies

I was staying in a hotel full of guests. They were all blocked off in a suite downstairs. I had set out to make copies of a dramatic scene that I thought would make a good discussion tool for my next Screenwriting class. I asked an employee where to go to make copies and was directed to an office downstairs. Just as I was leaving, an acquaintance came in and whispered to me that my father was dead. I was crushed and began sobbing. But thinking that I could also call home from the office downstairs, I continued on with my errand.

The lobby below was crowded. When I entered the office, several others trailed in behind me. All of them appeared to be in high spirits after rounds of conference parties. I found the copier and began fumbling with it, my eyes once again welling with tears. I asked a woman about whether to load the paper in face up or face down, and she said, Of course, face up! Face up! as if trying to cheer me up.


witchy woman

On a bus tour of a foreign land. I was just able to cram into the front before the doors closed, but once the vehicle started moving, everyone settled back and the seating was not particularly uncomfortable. Later, I disembarked and walked through a city square. Here there were vast porticos and walkways. Small people in theatrical costumes kept coming up to me, a little too friendly—not keeping their distance. I didn’t know if they were trying to rob me or just make contact. I started to gently push back, then extricated myself from the scene and walked along another street. Here I noticed everyone was in pairs, adorned in matching costumes, blissful to the point of appearing lobotomized.

They told me they were “mates” and that a woman there would help me find one, too. I said I wasn’t interested, but they insistently steered me toward a gypsy-guru woman’s shop. Regarding all the mindless Munchkins surrounding me, I told the matchmaker that she probably couldn’t help me. She hushed me and said let her do the matching. She ran a kind of scanner over me and a perfect diagonal row of lights appeared. Then she turned to a figure standing nearby—a nasty witch whose job it had been to keep the Munchkins in line. She had streaked black hair and lumpy clothes. She took my arm and led me out into the street, where she shed a few layers of her costume and transformed from severe to smiling. I had to admit: the matchmaker had made an interesting choice.


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M V Montgomery will have two books of poetry published in 2010: Strange Conveyances (Plain View Press) and Joshu Holds a Press Conference (Conversation Paperpress). He is currently at work on a book of flash fiction.