Innocence and Experience - Dreams and the Telling Thereof

I enjoyed Adam Fieled's post about Dreams in which he looks at poems by Max Jacob (French Prose poet and friend of Picasso writing mostly between the wars) and Anne Boyer.

((--Adam's post caught my attention because dreams and how you tell them (or make them) are really on my mind right now. I'm in the final revision stages of a chapbook entitled "Dreaming" which will release from Scantily Clad Press in the next month or two--))

Anyways, here are the two poems Adam's talking about:

Max Jacobs - 1914

Doesn't lightning look the same to a foreigner? Someone who was at my parents' home was commenting on the color of the sky. Was that lightning? It was a pink cloud moving toward us. How everything changed! My God! Can it be your reality is so vibrant? The family home is there: the chestnut trees at the window, the prefecture right up against the chestnut trees, and Mt. Frugy right up against the prefecture, only its summit visible. A voice called out "God!" And there was light in the darkness. A huge body hid most of the landscape. Was it Him? Or Job? He was poor; his pierced flesh was showing, thighs covered by a scrap of cloth: what tears O Lord! he descended...How? Then couples larger than life descended too. They came from the air encased, in Easter eggs: they laughed and the balcony of our family home was littered with black threads like gunpowder. We were frightened. The couples set themselves up in our house while we watched through a window. For they were evil. There were even black threads on the dining room table where my brothers were taking apart Lebel cartridges. Since then, I've been watched by the police.


Anne Boyers (untitled I guess)


Fairly clear the end of the world had come or the end of the world as we understood it had come or the end of the world of humans in a civilization had come and this end had come through some water-borne contagion or at least a backed-up broken-down water and sewage system.

Knowing all this, we went to a large clean building in the middle of a city for an ART SHOW. This building was a hotel or convention center and on the fifth floor or so a woman who may or may not have been Kiki Smith had organized the ART SHOW before it was clear that the world was at its end. Many people at the show were vacuous or self-absorbed or on drugs or whatever so that they did not know it was the end or did not pay the end much notice. Very pale, thin, and glamorous people who were part of the art installations strode in threes naked or half naked and the other half cloaked in fur. Even at the end of the world I was envious of their beauty and furs and paleness. And in one room, there showed an ART FILM. This film was about WHAT YOU COULD BUY to prove you had been at the ART SHOW.

At that time three backpackers entered the room with backpacks. These backpackers knew it was the end of the world: they had put all their things in backpacks and decided to take off, to travel, as it was the end of the world and staying put, i.e. STAYING AS NORMAL, would only mean the end. Other people noticed the backpackers and maybe started waking up to the seriousness of the event of the end of the world, and fearing a panic, my companions and I decided to leave the ART SHOW and take the elevator to the top of the building.

We stepped in the elevator. I started to worry the sewage-contagion problem would damage the power grid. Would we be stuck on the elevator for all of time? Would we die on the elevator we took to escape the ART SHOW? My companions tried to calm me, to tell me "It is too early in the process for the power to go out," but I could smell the stink and contagion, and asked to what purpose is going to the roof of the building of the ART SHOW.

I said- Shouldn't we be doing something other than going to the top of the building at the end of the world?



These dreams are certainly different. And the ways of telling them are different too. Adam claims that the Jacob poem has an "edge of innocence" while Boyers' has an "edge of experience."

(note: Boyers' poem, Fieled maintains, has "more gravitas" because it engages in satire, tackling "real-world issues directly." Okay. Sure. Why not?)

But, I'm not sure I understand exactly what Adam means by edges of innocence and experience. For me the difference in the poems seems to be a matter of detachment or immersion (inside the dream or outside of the dream - a matter of whether you're lost in the moment or not). And perhaps that's a kind of innocence and experience.

Let me clarify (thinking this through as I go I guess):

Jacob's writing embodies emotion. Is drenched with it. His speaker is feeling deeply. Is not watching himself. Is not detached.

Boyers' speaker is detached. Reports on her emotions like she's another person:

"I was envious of their beauty"....."and fearing a panic"...."and asked to what purpose...."

The words for the emotions are there (envy and fear) but the emotions are not really embodied in the writing. But with Jacobs they are. His speaker is lost in the dream. And lost in the telling of it. And the writing surges with that same sort of energy. Is charged with it.

Boyers' speaker is detached, it seems, inside the dream and outside of it. And so the telling, in her case, is flat. (and both these ways feel valid enough to me. I've dreamed flat. And I've dreamed surging. And, regardless, one can certainly invert the truth in the telling...)

Perhaps to be caught up (lost) in emotion is to be "innocent" and, conversely, to be detached and almost 3rd-person in the telling, is to be "experienced." If so then I guess Adam and I are kind of on the same page with Innocence and Experience.

Adam also says that "Jacob uses an edge of whimsy, that brings out a kind of comedy in the darkness." Again, Adam and I are kind of on the same page. Jacobs is often whimsical and comical. But just as much he is deadly serious. The comedy is a bit of veil or icing. So, I like that Adam said "a kind of comedy."

The Jacobs poem certainly does has something of the ridiculous or hysterical about it:

Our family was littered with black threads like gunpowder. We were frightened. The couples set themselves up in our house while we watched through a window. For they were evil. There were even black threads on the dining room table where my brothers were taking apart Lebel cartridges.

I'll end this post with some trite uncle-ish advice:

Writing poems about dreams (real or invented) is tricky.

Like anything, of course, it's all in the telling.

Actually it's not all in the telling. The dream needs to be interesting. Compelling. Blah, blah, blah.....

Everything's a new opportunity to lie.

Stroking the long stem of the cala lilly (Dreaming Ron Silliman)

I'm sad. I don't have any full-blown Silliman dreams to report. Some fragments, yes. But they make me even sadder. Like finding bits and pieces of the bible.

1-- I walk into my bedroom and Ron Silliman's jerking off on to my pillow. "Relax," he says. "I'm just spelling the alaphabet."

2-- I'm called into a room to identify Ron's body. They pull the sheet up--It's my dad. His eyes open. He stands up. We hug.

3-- I'm on a park bench next to Ron. He's duck-feeding. A big goose walks up. A very mean looking one. "This is it," Ron says. "This is it."

4-- We're going to hear Ron read. But what's this? We're on a safari jeep and we've snuck up on an okapi. Shhhhh, a voice whispers.

5-- Ron's in a kitchen making a peanut butter and jelly sandwhich. He's in his bathrobe and slippers and he looks so humble. I feel as though I'm intruding on a scene in a novel. "It's the only way," he mumbles. "It's the only way."

And then there's a really fuzzy fragment involving Shane Jones and his Light Boxes (i think.)

All these weeks in bed exhorting with all heart Ron Silliman into my dreams and this is all I have to show for such devotion. (sigh)

Ron Silliman Dream (an old one, but new to this blog)

Ron Silliman approaches me in a bar.

“I like it rough,” he says. “I like it really rough.”

As quickly as we’re talking we’re rubbing up against each other.

“I want you to shit in my mouth,” he says.

At first I was turned on, incredibly so, but now he’s saying things like “I want you to stick a steak fork in my shoulder while we’re fucking” and “baby, you can rub vinegar into my asshole while I’m blowing you——and don’t let my screaming stop you.”

“There must be some sort of mistake,” I tell him. “I’m not interested.”

He looks baffled, then really offended.

“But I heard you were cool,” he says. “Zach Schomburg said you were really cool.”

I’m puzzled.

“Yeah,” he continues. “Zach Schomburg said you were tough. Really tough.”

He’s right in my face now and his breath smells terrible.

“Zach Schomburg,” I mutter, almost incoherently.

“Yeah, Zach Schomburg,” he shoots backs at me, almost spitting through his teeth. “The kid you went to high school with. The kid whose dog threw up over everything.”

“O,” I tell him, remembering a poem I read a long time ago, “You’re talking about David Berman.”

“I am not talking about David Berman,” he growls. “I am talking about Zach Schomburg, and Zach Schomburg’s never steered me wrong.”


(note: this dream first appeared in Blake Butler's Lamination Colony)

to view all Ron Silliman dreams just click on the "Ron Silliman" label below, or more easily, go to the Dreaming Ron Blog

It's been a while since I've had a dream about Ron Silliman. Perhaps they're done. But, I must say: I sure do miss him

New Silliman Dreams

To Follow are a new batch of Silliman dreams I've had. As you will see these might be the last. Quite bittersweet. But, you never know,....

Ron Silliman Dream #1 (3rd batch): Seven More!

I’m in a conference room with Ron Silliman. He leans back in his big red-leather chair, creaking.

“We’re done, Rauan,” he says, and now he’s up at a chalkboard.

“Well, almost done,” he continues. “You’re going to have seven more dreams about me, and that’s it.”

“But, why Ron, why?” I plead, hot tears gushing down my cheeks. “Hasn’t this been good for you?”

“Yes, yes it has, my darling,” he replies softly. “Lately I’ve got an extra bounce in my step."

"It's like...It's like..." he mutters, "It's like I’m permanently on Viagra. I’ve never felt better.”

“But then why, Ron, why?”

“I’ve started to wake up in the middle of the night,” he says (with a tortured look on his face, like a frightened dog), “and I’m covered in sweat and I know you’re dreaming about me and I’m filled with an impending sense of doom.”

Ron pauses, looks down at the ground, trembling all through his body, and then he continues——

“...Other times I’m making sweet love to my wife and that same corroding-poison floods my mind and heart. Rauan, I want to. O how I want to! I swear on a big fat Buffalo’s head: I want to! I want to! But we just can’t go on.”

It's quite obvious he's a broken-man. A used-up old coal-horse.

So, “Fair enough,” I tell him, resigned.

“But seven more dreams, huh?” I add, looking up at him coyly.

“Yes!” and he’s perked up right away.

“In the first one,” he says. “I’ll be licking your toes.”

“In the 2nd we’ll discover the North Pole together...”

“In the 3rd, boil potatoes...”

“In the 4th———”

Ron’s glowing, ecstatic, and he shouts out:

“Christ!! Why did I ever learn to count to seven ??!!”

And, then, like a King or a Clown or a Magic-Lizard, he rises up in a cloud of swallows.

Ron Silliman Dream #2 (3rd batch): The Mountain

I’m waking up slowly and I’m stretched out against my red and purple sheets like a cat and I am sighing, like the sun rising and setting, and, as I crack my one good eye open, I see that Ron Silliman’s sucking my toe. But my toe’s much bigger than normal——It’s the size of a really big banana, or perhaps more accurately three big pomegranates stacked on top of each other.

And, hell!——this is heaven. And hell!——Ron’s a pro. He must have done this a billion times. But then, all of a sudden, he hops up and walks into the bathroom and——O My——standing there in the doorway he’s young Paul Newman in “Cool Hand Luke.”

“I can’t do this any more,” he says. “I’m bored.”

So, I’m helping him pack up his stuff. All his Bee-Gees and Lionel Ritchie LPs. His hope chests full of Lalique nudes and Wild West Chia Pets. Kimonos covered with African Art (all bought, he told me, from the royalties from his first book).

We’re sitting on the grass together. The sun’s setting. It feels like Creeley and Olson in a diner after talking all night.

“How does the mountain die?” I ask.

“It dies,” Ron intones. “It dies.”

Ron Silliman Dream #3 (3rd batch): Whaling

Ron and I are watching “Whale Wars” together.

The best part’s when we’ve finished up the popcorn which Ron’s prepared in his adorable little French Maid outfit (wiggling his ass the whole exquisite time) and we’re cuddling together on our snow-white bear skin.

Meanwhile, our heroes are hot on the Japanese tail—— maneuvering beautifully and dangerously through the floes.

But the screen goes all white-fuzzy and Bob Hass, a young Bob Hass, comes on, and announces: “Now I am going to read some Haiku from my new Harpoons-Book “Killing the Big Fat Blubbering Ron Silliman.”

Ron, in my arms, has gone stiff as a roach.

“Whalingly Black Macho Ron O
We’ve come so far damned wrong———
Puked up Ice—Glass—Shattered Black-veined God.”

“Wow!” I exclaim, “He sounds like Aase Berg.”

But Ron doesn't answer, because, I see, he's frothing all through his body like a stomped-on roach.

“Ye Old Black Time-Heart Sky
Blubbering Ron Whale Swimmingly
Swooooooosh——Fat Bob Hass Death!”

I can’t see anything at all now except for Ron’s roach-froth which has spewed out and dissipated into and around everything: a kind of mist I’m walking into, bellowing out, like a foghorn--"Ron, Ron, Ron”

And I bellow and I bellow and I bellow but all the fog offers back to me is one final Death-Throes verse:

“Whale-Musk-Puke Spouted Love
Ass-custard bright-green Death
Soups and statues, slurp slurp slurp.”

And nothing. Nothing. Nothing. Just fog.
And my grief.

My lonely foghorn's grief-cry


“Ron, Ron, Ron.”

Ron Silliman Dream #4 (3rd batch): Burger King

We’re at a Burger King shoving down french fries and Ron looks up at me, all forlorn. When he does this, like Bambi's eyes in a snowstorm, I always want to cry.

“I’ve done it,” he says. “I’ve taken the job.”

“What job?” I ask.

“I’ve thought about this long and hard and, really, it’s the opportunity of a lifetime.”

“What the hell are you talking about?” I ask again and by now children, thousands of children, have gathered around us.

“Can’t you see,” he says. “It’s fate.”

And, now, all the kids are droning like zombies.

“All of time,” he continues, “every bit of it has been pointing into this moment.”

The droning’s getting higher and higher and they’ve hoisted him——my Ron!!——up on to their shoulders.

“Adieu, mon ami, mon chere ami,” he waves, cavalierly, as the horde, disappears——still shouldering him, My Ron!!——into a bright red cave.

Ron Silliman Dream #5 (3rd batch): The Center

“In the center of time there is a black hole.”

I’m alone, drifting. I can see nothing, feel nothing. It’s as though I’m in a kind of giant universe-womb and I’m in thrall to this queer and wise voice, which, it seems, is delivering me.

“In the center of time there is a black hole and everything——your love, desire, the beaks of egrets in the river, monkeys and sunflowers, the blackheads on your face, everything, everything——points into this one true center of time.”

I feel so relaxed. Like I’m getting a massage. But terrified also. Here, I think to myself, the blood gets stripped away. Here, I think, the mountains sway.

“Here in the center of time,” the voice continues, “you must stop kicking. Here the fire and the ice twist together like a DNA coil.”

This feels like pre-coitus, in-coitus, and post-coitus. This feels like everything.

“Here everything in the center of time is created and destroyed. Here, my love, I am making you, and I am loving you.”

“Huh?” I think to myself, “This is stupid. This is so damned fucking stupid.”

...I’ve dropped out of a hole. A woman’s screaming. A man in white’s slapping me on the back. And I am filled with breath-light. I am burning. I am alive. I am dead.

“Go forth into the world, my love. Go forth!”

Ron Silliman Dream #1 (2nd batch): Japan

Ron and I are in a plane. An old one. A bomber, and we’ve got a bomb in back, and we’re headed for Japan I guess.

“Ron,” I say. “Shouldn’t we talk about this?”

“Listen, you prick,” he says. “This isn’t a little Haiku joke or sitting down to blog.”

“Yes, that’s what I mean,” I reply. “That’s exactly what I mean.”

But Ron’s shaking his head like a frustrated ape.

“You don’t understand a thing, do you,” he spurts out, and he’s all red and purple and he’s practically foaming.

“These people don’t even write poetry any more,” he fumes. “All they do’s sit around and watch Robert Hass movies.”

“You know,” he continues, choking up, “they don’t even know who I am. A recent poll showed that only 4 people in the whole of Japan know who I am and in the fullness of time you know that’s only going to get worse. Much worse.”

“In 30 years what is my legacy going to look like?” he continues, whining. “O, Bob Hass. Bob Hass. Bob Hass”

But then, suddenly, he snaps out of his funk violently.

“These bastards need to die,” he screams. That’s all the fire he’s got though——and all he manages, now, between fits of sobbing, is “need to die, need to die” in a very low, eerie murmur.

I roll down the window, and float out.

I’m coming in towards my house and I’m wondering if my Love Birds’ eggs have hatched yet. I’m suddenly really worried about them.

Ron Silliman Dream #2 (2nd batch): Dolls

I walk into the game room and Ron’s on the floor playing with dolls.

“Do you know,” he says, as he glances up, “that Chaucer played with dolls. Coleridge too. Basho and Ikkyu. And when Berg translated that crazy monk he played with dolls too. Sometimes all night.”

Silliman pauses and stares at me profoundly and then adds, “A kind of method acting, ya know.”

“You’re making this shit up, pal,” I tell him, as I softly punch his shoulder. (and I’m thinking how nice it is to be so chummy.)

“This’ll prove it,” he says, passing the phone to me——and it’s a voice as though on a loop, repeating over and over

“Stevie Berg here.. Stevie Berg here.. Stevie Berg here.. Stevie Berg here.. Stevie Berg here..” etc etc

Finally, I interrupt: “Do you play with dolls, Steve? Ron says you do.”

“Come on over,” another voice replies (different from the one on the loop). “ And I’ll show you.” And it hangs up before I can say anything else.

Ron and I are trudging along a beach. There are beat-up dolls everywhere.

“These are all Stevie Berg’s,” Ron says, beaming.

And sure enough when I pick one up, and look closely, the proof’s right there on its ass in still-shining blue ink

“Stevie Berg’s.”

Ron Silliman Dream #3 (2nd batch): Cactus

I’m sitting on a rock with God. Below us in a field of cactus a naked Ron Silliman is scurrying after a rabbit.

Again and again it looks like Ron’s about to nab it but he either mistimes his final leap or the rabbit’s too slick and he ends up in cactus. Usually face-first.

But, a couple of times, tumbling over, it’s ass-first. All credit to Ron, though, he’s diligently and painstakingly removing all the needles (sometimes with the help of a mirror he’s produced from who knows where.)

I look over at God. He’s blank-faced.

“Are you upset, disappointed, disillusioned...?” I ask.

“O, no,” he says, “I’ve seen much worse.” And for a moment it looks as though a smile’s flickering across his tough face.

Meanwhile, Silliman’s back in cactus.

“Ouch!” I exclaim. “That was a bad one.”

“You know,” God says, “he really does have a very good heart.”

“You’re probably right,” I mumble, “but the problem with Ron is that he has absolutely no f-cking sense of humour.”

And now, I am sure, God is smiling.

Ron Silliman Dream #4 (2nd batch): Core Strategies

The crowd all around me’s going nuts and I climb into the ring. Ron’s in my corner, and he’s screaming:

“Remember what I told you, son, remember what I told you.”

Yeah, yeah, I’m thinking. This is going to be a piece of a cake. A piece of cake. A real piece of cake.

“Just go East,” Ron’s booming. “Just go East.”

My opponent’s entering the ring, the crowd’s gone silent, and, damn, he is f-cking enormous, with a Mohawk, earrings and studs. And he’s leaping around the ring like a jack-hammer.

And, O no!——the crowd’s started chanting “The hammer.”

“The hammer. The hammer. The hammer.”

And now the ring announcer, a fat version of Michael Buffer, introduces my opponent as the “All-Time King, Bill ‘the hammer’ Snakely.”

I’m getting pummeled. Snakely’s all over me. Nothing helps. I even try reciting the opening to Chaucer’s Tales:

“Whan that April with his showres soote
The droughte of March hath perced to the roote” etc etc

No help.
Ron’s screaming, Bill’s hammering, I’m bleeding.
I am going to die, I think. I am going to die.

But then a tiny little voice comes to me like a water-lily: remember the core strategies of abstraction, son. remember the core strategies of abstraction.

And I am expanding. I am burning. Nothing can stop me. I am all-powerful. Snakely is nothing !!!

Ron Silliman Dream #5 (2nd batch): Tolstoy's

My wife and I have been invited to dinner at Tolstoy’s. We arrive two minutes late and I’m concerned.

Ron Silliman, the butler, answers the door, and he looks a bit pale.

Approaching a huge, bear of a man, Ron the Butler squeaks out: “Senor Tolstoy, may I present Rauan and Edith Kl——“

But before he can finish, Tolstoy, who’s lurched forward at least 10 feet in one giant bound, slaps him in the face.

“You impertinent bastard,” he growls. “In this house you will learn some respect... Yes, sooner or later you will learn some respect.”

At dinner while trying to reposition my wife’s butter knife Ron knocks over a wine glass and Tolstoy’s grabbed him and thrown him up against the wall.

“You filthy dog,” he’s screaming. “You filthy dog.”

“I like these two, “ my wife says. “I want to see more of them. Buy them for me, darling. O, please, buy them for me. O, please, please, please say you will!”

When, finally, I look back Tolstoy and Ron are dancing to a slow Big-Country song and Ron’s burrowing his head into Tolstoy’s chest and he seems to be sobbing.

“Old woman Time and her slaughtered chicken,” I pronounce gravely.

“F-ck you, Charles Simic,” Ron blurts out, and they’re both glaring at me quite ominously and now I feel like I’m The Little Prince and I need, desperately, to apologize to my 9th French Grade Teacher for calling The Little Prince an idiot and tell her I didn’t mean it though I did mean it.

Ron’s sobbing even harder now. And I’m feeling very guilty.

“I didn’t mean any of it,” Tolstoy assures him. “I didn’t mean any of it, Ronny. None of it at all, my boy.”

Ron Silliman Dream #6 (2nd batch): Gorgeous

I’m walking through tall, dry grass and suddenly Ron Silliman’s whispering to me:

“Remember when the days were long
And rolled beneath a deep blue sky”

I look around but I’m completely alone and, so, I keep on shopping. But when I reach for a carton of eggs

“But I know a place where we can go
And wash away this sin”

Again I look around——but, alas, nothing.

Then, while I’m unpacking, reaching deep into the sack for a bag of asparagus

“We’ll sit and watch the clouds roll by
And the tall grass wave in the wind.”

Again I look around and this time I notice a note on the refrigerator: “Come upstairs”--- and there are candles all the way upstairs and then down the corridor and all through the bedroom. I knock on the bathroom door:

“Come in, baby. It’s Ron. It’s Ron.”

And, there, rising out of a mountain of bubbles is the most gorgeous woman I have ever seen——a bit like Botticelli’s Venus, but so much greater...

Stepping into the steaming hot bubbles I take her, giggling, in my arms...


“Who knows how long this will last
Now we’ve come so far, so fast
But, somewhere back there in the dust
That same small town in each of us”

Ron Silliman Dream #7 (2nd batch): So Much Fun

..


Ron comes running up to me over the dunes. He’s had his hair braided and, Christ!, I had no idea his hair was so long and so exquisite and so shimmery (maybe’s he’s got extensions?) and it’s billowing and bouncing and he’s getting closer, and closer...

“My God,” he says, panting. “I thought you were lost. I thought I was never going to find you.

I drop him off at his hotel and he throws his arms around me and kisses my neck.

“I had so much fun,” he sighs.

I walk into my office where a fax’s unfurling——

“I am so happy, Ron” it reads, and below that a couple of confidently drawn
heart-shapes ——

The phone’s ringing. It’s Ron:

“I need to see you. Where are you reading next? St. Louis? Chicago? Borneo? I don’t care, wherever——I’ll be there with bells and whistles on.

I’m feeling giddy. It’s so nice to be pursued like this. And Ron must be able to sense this. This is what the phrase “meant for each other” must mean I think.

“O, Rauan,” Ron purrs. “I just want to make you happy. I’ll do anything you want. Anything at all. Just please don’t kiss and tell,... O, hell, I don’t care——go ahead and kiss and tell... I can’t sleep. I can’t eat. I am obsessed. You are my North, my South, East, my fcking West. My working week. Damnit, Rauan, I have stopped all the clocks, Rauan. I have cut the dog. I have silenced the pianos. And love, my love, Rauan, is not going to die! It will last forever. It will last forever. I am the stars, Rauan. The packed-up moon, Rauan. This mantled sun, Rauan. These circles moaning. Public doves. Black cotton gloves. O, Rauan!”

Ron Silliman Dreams (and one vision)

..

A little while back Ron Silliman started appearing in my dreams. At first this bothered me. Then I took it in stride. Whatever the case, for a week or so the dreams kept coming. They have now subsided.

(on a different note: last night I dreamed that I went to the 4th Obama/McCain debate. When I arrived I was notified that McCain couldn't take part and that I'd be taking his place...I shook Obama's hand and we walked on stage...From a center seat in the front row McCain flashed me a smile and gave me his cute little thumbs up...)

I'm not sure why this happened (the Silliman dreams), but they did start up just after the whole forgodot.com's Issue #1 release and excitement.

One thing that really amazed me about that whole thing is that on his blog Ron Silliman suggested that legal action was possible. And even, it seems, encouraged it.

Anyways,
To follow, then, are accounts of these dreams (and one breakfast vision).
(and in some instances, "Illustrations."

Ron Silliman Dream #1: I am Going to Bury You!

..



My wife tells me there’s a call for me.

“This is Ron Silliman"-- and, before I can say anything: “Where do you get off making fun of my weight?”

He's really upset and I’m afraid.

“What are you talking about?” I manage.

“On your blog and in your posts you’re labeling me as “The Big Man.”

“O, God,” I reply, laughing.

But Ron’s not amused:

“Listen here, you little punk. I am going to bury you. I am going to fcking bury you!”

I want to say that I’m referring to his internet presence. His on-line stature.

Want to say that I’ve never met or seen him. Not even a photo of anything but his face. But he’s in a zone and he just keeps on at me.

I was afraid before, but now my anxiety's through the roof.

And, so, while Ron rants on (like a fire, really) a vision comes to me:

A big lumbering man’s carrying my lifeless body into a clearing. He tosses me off like a bag of concrete and goes down at the ground, digging. He looks so strong, muscled and beautiful——and I think to myself. “He’s not fat at all.”

Ron Silliman Dream #2: A Brain Shot

George Orwell, Ron Silliman and I are walking into a village that looks like it’s been hit by a hurricane. Silliman suddenly chirps up in a kind of screech: “There it is! There it is!” and he’s jumping up and down like a boy at his first circus.

And, yes, he's spotted the elephant--off to the side, grazing quite peacefully. It looks so relaxed and so wise.

A lackey steps forward with a gun.

Silliman grabs it. I try to wrestle it away from him, and we fall, locked, to the ground. As we struggle, panting and groaning, I notice Orwell’s sitting down, drawing.

He's drawing the elephant and he's drawing it all in blue, except for the eyes for which he's using a kind of intense emerald green.

Silliman gets the upper hand and knees me in the nuts.

I’m next to the Big-Man in a helicopter and we’re coming down at a herd of elephants.

Silliman smacks the pilot’s back and shouts out “lower! Lower!” and he leans out and he’s firing.

A baby elephant, perhaps 6 months old, slides right down into the dirt. Red dust flares up.

Silliman’s screaming:

“Did you see that? A brain shot. A perfect brain shot.”