I think that I must be having nightmares. Not just ordinary nightmares either. These are the kind of nightmares that seem to drain one of energy, instead of replenishing it. It's as if I've been cast into the void of nothing in my sleep. Or else the imagery is so horrifying to think of that I immediately repress it upon awaking. I'm perhaps also dreaming vicariously thour the dreams of others. Someone who comes to mind suddenly is Henry Miller. At once, this man who lived in New York between the times of the two Great World Wars of last century, is suddenly endeared to me. I've been reading Plexus, devouring it really. I could not put it down after my customary busride today. I was so close to finishing it, that I had to go on until the end, even by the light of a lonely streetlight south of downtown. So ironic, his life seems to parallel mine in so many ways. I seem to be a bit more fortunate and of course I live in a different time. But the lessons we learn from our experiences are relatively the same, for we draw the same conclusions. Expressing the meaning of life as an exercise, mentally and spiritually significant as well as physical, in which we realize that suffering exists only to demonstrate that we are in a perpetual state of freedom, we have only the responsibility to recognize this fact and it is so. The experience of suffering serves only to preserve in us a confirmation and explanation of our true nature. To stray from this path is to take a backwards, or as Miller puts it, an oblique view on life. Fatal to artists and geniuses, this looking askance, instead of courageously, into the open jaws of destiny, (a fire breathing dragon, according to dear Henry) may be the only real cause of suffering and evil. Let me share with you now, the dream of horror that I have inherited from my "real father".

It opened with a nightmarish vertigo which sent me hurtling from a dizzy precipice into the warm waters of the Caribbean. Down , down I swirled, in great spiral curves which had no beginning and promised to end in eternity. During this ceaseless descent a bewildering and enchanthing panorama of marine life unrolled before my eyes. Enormous sea dragons wriggled and shimmered in the powdered sunlight, which filtered through the green waters; huge cactus plants with hideous roots floated by, followed by spongelike coral growths of curious hues, some sullen as oxblood, some a brilliant vermilion or soft lavender. Out of this teeming aquatic life poured myriads of animalcules, resembling gnomes and pixies; they bubbled up like gorgeous flux of stardust in the tail-sweep of a comet.
The roaring in my ears gave way to plangent, verdant melodies; I became aware of the tremors of the earth, of poplars and birches shrouded in ghostlike vapors, bending gracefully to the caress of fragrant breezes. Stealthily the vapors roll away. I am trudging through a mysterious forest alive with screaming monkeys and birds of tropical plumage. There is a quiver of arrows in my gidle and over my shoulder a golden bow.
Penetrating deeper and deeper into the wood the music becomes more celestial, the light more golden; the earth is carpeted with soft, blood-red leaves. The beauty of it is such that I swoon away. On awakening the forest has vanished. To my beffuddled senses it seems that I am standing before a pale, towering canvas on which a pastoral scene of great dignity is depicted: it resembles one of those murals by Puvis de Chavannes in which the grave, seraphic void of dream is materialized. Sedate, somber, wraiths move to and fro with a measured, haunting elegance which made our earthly movement appear grotesque. Stepping in the canvas I follow a quiet path which leads towards the retreating line of the horizon. A full-hipped figure in a Gecian robe, balancing an urn, is directing her footsteps toward the turret of a castle dimly visible above the crest of a gentle knoll. I pursue the unlulating hips until lost in a dip beyond the crest of the knoll.
The figure with the urn has disappeared. But now my eyes are rewarded by a more mystifying sight. It is as if I had arrived at the very end of this habitable earth, at the magic fringe of the ancient world where all the mysteries and gloom and terror of the universe are concealed. I am hemmed in by a vast enclosure whose limits are only faintly discernible. A head of me loom the wallsof a a hoary castle brisling with spears. Pennants blazoned with incredible emblems flutter ominously above the crenellated battlements. A sickly fungus growth chokes the broad sweeps leading out from the terrifying portals; the gloomy casements are bespattered with the remains of great carrion birds whose foul stench is unbearable.
But what awes and fascinates me most is the color of the castle. It is a red such as my eyes have never beheld. The walls are of a warm bloodlike hue, the tint of rich corpuscles laid bare by the knife. Beyond the frontier walls loom more spectacular parapets and battlements, turrets and spires, each receding in rank steeped in a more awesome red. To my terrified eyes the whole spectacle takes on the proportions of a monstrous butcher's orgy dripping with gore and excrement. (to be continued...)