DANIEL

This is your silver little dream:

There is a baby boy who is really a scorpion. You carry a handgun because you hitchhike. There is a river that runs only in daylight.

So you look for water. Bullets skip across a swimming pool like stones. You switch your holster from your right leg to your left leg. You have a female cat named Mayflower.

This land is desert. There is a spring, up a hill, from which water can only come in daylight. It starts as a trickle in the morning, but by afternoon a river forms. Is this because you seem to be able to sleep only in daylight? Are your nights long, and do you find it difficult to sleep in the calm darkness?

And so the little witch checked your finger to see if it was fat. You gave her your finger, and it was fat; and so she put a purple robe on your back, and a staff in your hand.

You interpret dreams for the President. The President has a little wildness in him left, don’t you think? The President could end up naked in the wilderness eating grass like an ox, don’t you think?

This is a big dream:

You go out hunting. You see a great disgusting beast. This beast is blind: it has no eyes: it arose out of the caves, and is used to darkness. But it has a thousand hands: these hands reach out and grasp at things constantly, it is constantly grasping at things. It has ten thousand mouths, and these mouths are always speaking arrogantly, and eating. It reaches out with its hands and stuffs things into its mouths; it doesn’t matter to the beast what it eats: it grasps, and it eats, blind, indiscriminate. And you look, and suddenly in each of this beast’s thousand hands is a gun: and so you flee. But look!—a meteor suddenly comes, and strikes the beast dead. And the nations celebrate, everything in the world but the dead beast celebrates, for this is a great day: the beast with the thousand hands is dead.

This is the nightmare you interpreted for the President. The President awoke very disturbed, saying to himself, "What can this mean? What can this mean?" And so he summoned you, and you interpreted his dream. He was angered at your interpretation, and threw you in prison. You eat only carrots and lettuce and tomatoes: you are healthy.

You are big. Your hands stretch out over the whole of the land; your legs are tall as the tallest towers; your head is up in the heavens when you stand; and your arms are thicker than a thousand tree trunks put together. You are big, and you go on getting bigger; and your dreams too are big, and your dreams go on getting bigger. This is your world: you are big.

What did you say once in your youth? "The cow’s intestines are sweet, especially cooked over cow’s dung." But in your bigness you still have your youth, and you go on getting younger.

You draw pictures out of stars: they are encrypted messages from the heavens.

And you can break two sticks with two fingers, or you can kill a chicken with the sharp bones of its mother, or you can cook cow’s intestines on the same cow’s dung; but you are fine with yourself, you are fine with being yourself, you are fine with being one being younger, one being bigger, always being one being dreaming, constantly dreaming.

What are these notions of dreams you have but a kind of occultism, a kind of mysticism, a kind of Satanism? You are dreaming dreams that come from angels; you are dreaming dreams that come from devils; you like to be one pleasing to your angels; you like to be one pleasing to your devils; you like to please devils as well as angels; for the devils send you the best dreams, the biggest dreams, the youngest dreams. This is a record of your dreams. These are your little stories that shall be written on gold leaf, and passed on from dreaming man to dreaming man, from dreaming woman to dreaming woman, until we are all dreaming the same dreams; and then you will be even bigger.

You shall be a dreaming thing, a dancing thing, a singing thing: you shall be a big thing, a young thing, a loving thing: these are the words of the little mouth that speaks to you when the north wind blows: DREAMS ARE A TASTE OF THE ABODE OF FIRE; DREAMS ARE A TASTE OF THE IMMORTAL HEAVENS; DREAMS ARE THE PROOF THAT REASON SHALL NOT PREVAIL IN THE END. And this is the end.