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But in refusing to drown, you're choked into the shape of a sailor
That nightmare I mentioned. I was in a library, reading a picture book that I would ordinarily describe as nightmare fuel, except that I just got it as a nightmare straight, no chaser. It was not for children. It was a novella with full-color illustrations in a style partly reminiscent of Mark Tedin and partly of Alan Lee, written by a nonexistent genre author equivalent to N.K. Jemisin. I remember its title as Ghost Animals, because it opens in a future where humanity has begun deliberately hunting the animals of the globe to extinction in a desperately self-destructive attempt to reduce competition for resources; the same familiar short-sighted cruelty prevails among the different factions of humanity, which is how one of the passing details of an early chapter, amid the catalogue of terrorism, heat waves, and governmental brutality, is the loss at sea of a refugee child thrown overboard by authorities. Time goes on. The biodiversity of the planet dwindles. I remember for some reason the sentence which noted when all the white animals were gone, from the rest of the world as well as the Arctic. Humanity convinces itself against reality that it can breathe a little easier. And people start being snatched into the sea by strange black animals. It is horrifying when it happens, as violent and helpless as a monster movie; it is doubly horrifying in such an animal-less world. No one can identify the creatures. They drip, they howl, they leave nothing but blood behind.
I remember no human characters in this story, oddly enough: no one to root for, no one to blame. I remember almost nothing of the human side of the plot past scenes of chaos and destruction, which after the fashion of dreams I had to live through as well as read. My clearest memory is of the illustration of the monster, if that's what it should be called, full-page facing its reveal in the text. Standing skyscraper-deep among black and blue waters: a triple-bodied young man like identical triplets conjoined at the hair, which is a mass of tangling, spearing black cables that smoke like blood in the water for miles, each terminating in a proliferation of snapping, razor-thick jaws like the slick abyssal fusion of eels and dogs. They are all the same being, but each body has its own name, and each name is a variant of the name of the child who was flung into the waves to drown. They are clean-limbed as sculpture, vast as a cyclone, hydrothermal-pale; they stride abreast across the seafloor like a tsunami gathering. The first has its eyes open, the second its mouth, both gaping the same annihilating blue; the third has a heart in its chest of radioactive fire. If they ever broke surface, it would be like an island breaching. But all they do is stand like a silent, perhaps not even sentient effigy, so huge in the deeps that whales are tiny against their shoulders and fish mere glitter above their heads, and the danger that comes off that image is the heart-striking terror of a pandemic or chemical warfare. It is not possible to survive something like that except by luck. It might not be possible to survive it at all. It is nothing personal. It is only the result of actions taken. It may be all that remains of us in the end.
Awake, this nightmare has obvious antecedents: Pacific Rim (2013), Assignment 3 of Sapphire & Steel (1981), Skylla, Sedna, the nuckelavee. Current events. I did not realize until I had written it out how much it still upsets me and at the same time how much I wish I could draw that illustration, if only to get it out of my head. I don't think it's even the kind of dream I can do anything with. Mostly I hope it's cleared enough to let me sleep before my family's Hanukkah party tomorrow.
For what it's worth, it did not manage to make me frightened of the sea.
I remember no human characters in this story, oddly enough: no one to root for, no one to blame. I remember almost nothing of the human side of the plot past scenes of chaos and destruction, which after the fashion of dreams I had to live through as well as read. My clearest memory is of the illustration of the monster, if that's what it should be called, full-page facing its reveal in the text. Standing skyscraper-deep among black and blue waters: a triple-bodied young man like identical triplets conjoined at the hair, which is a mass of tangling, spearing black cables that smoke like blood in the water for miles, each terminating in a proliferation of snapping, razor-thick jaws like the slick abyssal fusion of eels and dogs. They are all the same being, but each body has its own name, and each name is a variant of the name of the child who was flung into the waves to drown. They are clean-limbed as sculpture, vast as a cyclone, hydrothermal-pale; they stride abreast across the seafloor like a tsunami gathering. The first has its eyes open, the second its mouth, both gaping the same annihilating blue; the third has a heart in its chest of radioactive fire. If they ever broke surface, it would be like an island breaching. But all they do is stand like a silent, perhaps not even sentient effigy, so huge in the deeps that whales are tiny against their shoulders and fish mere glitter above their heads, and the danger that comes off that image is the heart-striking terror of a pandemic or chemical warfare. It is not possible to survive something like that except by luck. It might not be possible to survive it at all. It is nothing personal. It is only the result of actions taken. It may be all that remains of us in the end.
Awake, this nightmare has obvious antecedents: Pacific Rim (2013), Assignment 3 of Sapphire & Steel (1981), Skylla, Sedna, the nuckelavee. Current events. I did not realize until I had written it out how much it still upsets me and at the same time how much I wish I could draw that illustration, if only to get it out of my head. I don't think it's even the kind of dream I can do anything with. Mostly I hope it's cleared enough to let me sleep before my family's Hanukkah party tomorrow.
For what it's worth, it did not manage to make me frightened of the sea.
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Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym and Lovecraft’s The Temple, too. But also—it’s not the same image, but your description of the illustration reminds me of a print by David Blackwood called Fire Down on the Labrador: https://curiator.com/art/david-blackwood/fire-down-on-the-labrador
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I don't think so—I've read much more about The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym than I've actually read it, and I have definitely not read "The Temple." But I appreciate the suggestion.
But also—it’s not the same image, but your description of the illustration reminds me of a print by David Blackwood called Fire Down on the Labrador
That's gorgeous. I can see why you thought of that.
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Really? It strikes me as something you'd appreciate: an early HPL when his Cthuhlu mythos was not at all fully-formed and was still mixed with Roman/Greek mythology:
http://www.hplovecraft.com/writings/texts/fiction/te.aspx
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Really. I haven't read a lot of things.
It strikes me as something you'd appreciate: an early HPL when his Cthuhlu mythos was not at all fully-formed and was still mixed with Roman/Greek mythology
I'll check it out.
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I dreamed of a quilt shop just back from a beach, where on admiring a delicate and shimmering fabric quilted with ribbons, I realised it was the groundsheet for a shop-sized tent. At least the happiest dream I've had for ages.
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Thank you, although I never feel I can take credit for my dreams.
I dreamed of a quilt shop just back from a beach, where on admiring a delicate and shimmering fabric quilted with ribbons, I realised it was the groundsheet for a shop-sized tent. At least the happiest dream I've had for ages.
That does sound really nice!
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You should take credit for the dreaming you. You are your own amanuensis.
I'm always amazed by your ability to recall your dreams. My dreams almost always evaporate like dew. Sometimes, I've had dreams that seem to stretch over nights, yet even then, I'm only aware of remembering them when I'm back in them, and I lose them again when awake.
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Thank you.
I'm always amazed by your ability to recall your dreams. My dreams almost always evaporate like dew. Sometimes, I've had dreams that seem to stretch over nights, yet even then, I'm only aware of remembering them when I'm back in them, and I lose them again when awake.
That sounds like two entirely different kinds of memory: one waking, one asleep. What are your dreams that don't evaporate like?
I've always been able to remember my dreams; it's a bad sign when I can't. Erzebet Barthold once talked about collecting a chapbook of my written-down dreams, but it never happened. I've been thinking of going back and tagging them here on Dreamwidth, just to be able to find them if I feel like it.
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I always wonder if the awareness, while dreaming, that I'm picking up a dream where I left off, means I actually am doing so, or if it's one of the illusions of the dream?
I've been thinking of going back and tagging them here on Dreamwidth, just to be able to find them if I feel like it.
I would do that. Also, your Boston-area travelogues.
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It might not be an illusion. I have been able to revisit dreams.
I would do that. Also, your Boston-area travelogues.
I will see what I can do. I feel weird about the concept of tags in general; I know they're useful to other people, but I don't want them all over my posts. (Also it will take a while.)
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*also gives A3 a stern look mcuh as Steel does to the guilty pillow*
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This and hugs most appreciated.
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No more absinthe for you.
(Seriously, that was brutal imagery and pretty unfair of your subconscious.)
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I do not believe it was the absinthe's fault.
(Seriously, that was brutal imagery and pretty unfair of your subconscious.)
It makes a change from more realistically nightmarish political dreams, but even so.
*hugs*
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Thank you. I think it did.
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My unconscious is way better at premises than I am.
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That gave me chills.
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Thank you.
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Thank you!
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I'm totally okay with it. Thank you for asking.
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That's incredibly kind. I would love to see whatever stages you're comfortable showing me. I don't mind if you want to post it to your journal, either: the dream is neither published nor friendlocked.
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(Link, in case of shenanigans.)
It's still a WIP but should give a general idea of things to come. Not planning any colour aside from the blue, just black/white. No lineart for the hair/smoke/tendrils, going to go with straight charcoal. You can't really see it, but there's a whale skeleton on the oceanic cliff. Sorry for the quality btw, it's a phone picture -- I do not currently have a working scanner.
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That's so cool.
Thank you. I am very much looking forward to the final drawing.
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I love it. Would you mind if I linked it in my own journal?
I'd be totally happy to send you the original and/or a properly scanned version, if you want.
I would love that also! Thank you so much.
It is both beautiful and frightening, as it should be.