The howling of the stray souls of heaven

[sovay]

I dreamed of a dead man with gold crusted in his mouth, like too many filled teeth. He had been made to drink it, like a realization of Crassus defeated by the Parthians (although my favorite story about his death is the one where his severed head is used as a prop in the final scene of the Bacchae, which if it were to be the true history would make me wonder what god he had met and failed to recognize at Carrhae), but the setting was modern, the walls industrial green, the pathologist's table reflecting thinly in the fluorescent lights. I was meeting with his family to discuss burial arrangements, in which no one said revenge and everyone thought it. I don't think I was expected to handle it. Just the style of coffin, the wood, the colors of the winding sheet. He was Chinese, his family wasn't. They wanted knots of red silk to hold down the lid of the casket. I didn't make the connection in the dream, but I started to wonder as I woke if they were trying to bring him back as a vengeful ghost. I'd have done what they asked if I'd stayed asleep much longer. I don't imagine that would have ended well. That's the sort of thing that's in my brain these days.

Comments

[ap-aelfwine.livejournal.com]

I thank you for sharing this, but I'm sorry it happened in your dream.

There's something very powerful about this, especially the family trying to bring him back as a vengeful ghost, and you stuck in the middle of it.

I have some vague memory of reading as a child about a Chinese alchemical potion for long life that had molten gold in and was more likely to shorten the patient's life, but that might well have been a Western misunderstanding in some old book I read. Then again, I have some feeling there's a Chinese tradition of parodying quack alchemists, the which I wish I knew more about.

[sovay]

I thank you for sharing this, but I'm sorry it happened in your dream.

It wasn't a nightmare in the usual sense. I'd just really like to get a break from images of decay and frustration even when I'm asleep.

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

The knots to tie down the casket seem ominous, somehow, as if they're either expecting or fearing or demanding more of the now-dead man than they ought to.

--the radio tells me that it's national moth week. If you return to that dream, tell them moths will hold down the casket lid. Let the moths decide whether to stay put, securing the lid, or to fly away, which, perhaps, will leave the dead man free to do the same.

[sovay]

--the radio tells me that it's national moth week. If you return to that dream, tell them moths will hold down the casket lid. Let the moths decide whether to stay put, securing the lid, or to fly away, which, perhaps, will leave the dead man free to do the same.

I haven't dreamed the family again yet, but I like this image very much.

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

After the Readercon panel on Tam Lin I was going to earnestly recommend that you read Donna Tartt's The Secret History. I still do - but after that dream, I think I'd leave it a bit.

[sovay]

I still do - but after that dream, I think I'd leave it a bit.

That makes me curious!

[ungemmed]

I can't presume to read steepholm's mind here, but yes - IIRC, The Secret History has its share of vivid, hallucinatory death imagery. It sounds like you've enough of that in your life already & that adding to it is not a goal of yours.

(This is Betsy, by the by.)

[sovay]

vivid, hallucinatory death imagery. It sounds like you've enough of that in your life already & that adding to it is not a goal of yours.

Eh, I don't think it would make a difference as external, fictional input—I've been re-reading M. John Harrison's Empty Space and various short stories by Gemma Files. It's just when it's all the inside of my head generates that I don't want it.

(This is Betsy, by the by.)

Hello!

[edited for awkward possessive]

[ungemmed]

Ah! Okay! Then you should definitely read it, it is relevant to your interests as-I-understand-them.

(I had a mixed reaction to the book. I sometimes wonder if I ought to read it again. Early on, the director of the horribly-staged Ionesco I was working on at the time commented favorably on it to me. By that point I'd grown to dislike him on numerous personal and professional levels, and it's possible that my immediate mental reaction of "Of course you like it, you pretentious twat" may have influenced my later reading.)

[teenybuffalo.livejournal.com]

Seconding the recommendation. I loved and hated that book in about equal amounts, and I'd be eager to see what you'd think of it.

[sovay]

I loved and hated that book in about equal amounts, and I'd be eager to see what you'd think of it.

Did you love and hate it equally for the same or for different reasons?