Sacred Geography Headwear

A great atlas lies spread all over the table in front of me. A map of the lower and central Norrland, with creamy yellow fields and bright green lines. I study the map with interest, almost aware of its fleeting nature. I look in vain for the name Cat Sand, which I think is either the name of a city or a mountain. Instead, I make a completely different discovery: a few tens of mil east of the Great Lake in Jämtland lies a lake which has remained hitherto unknown to me. It is about the size of the latter, and according to the map it is called Ural.

The map turns into reality in front of me. Now I can look out over Ural from a location at its closest beach, while the lake imperceptibly must shrink; for a black Volvo car is emerging in the growing forest silhouette on the far shore.

Two male persons get out of the car. One has a head which consists of the flame of a candle, the other's head also emits light but is white and round as well, like a snowman's head. Recognizing them as my brother and a friend of his, I wave at them.

Right then I hear a voice from out of nowhere:

The eyes are washed by a new water, from outside, from the air.

The lake between us is gone and I can talk to my brother and his friend who owns the car. By now they have ordinary heads. We are in a forest of tall pines, which are so thinly spread out that they could drive through with their car and park there. Patches of snow lie between the pines which make me think that it's April. They tell me they gather the snow and build pyramids of it around the pine trees. I doubt it, but a look at the nearest pines and I can confirm that it is true: each bole really has a snow pyramid around its foot, about as high, wide and sloping as an ordinary snowball lantern.

I ask them if it is not difficult to build these pyramids.

"No, it's similar to blowing one´s nose," my brother answers unassumingly and looks away.

"Yes," his friend agrees, "or to a dog covering up its excrement."

For some reason or not, my brother takes up his driver´s license and shows it to me. It is a "dual" license: on the same piece of plastic there are two different names with different photos. The first name and photo is my brother´s, but the second photo is just a black box, and beneath this box it is printed:

Robert Frost: The Mending wall.

This is an American poet and a famous poem by him, which I recall having read in an anthology a long time ago, but I do not remember more than the title right now. In my hands the driver´s license is then transformed into a LP record sleeve. A blue pyramid and a blue face against a star-strewn night sky. The band name, or disc title, which I have never seen or heard before,

Jxploited

makes me associate to a quaint blending of cultural styles : New Age and Punk. I contemplate the picture on the cover, especially the head. Could it be, I ponder, that the face of this image in some emblematic fashion is using the rock-crystal-topped pyramid as a wig or a hat? And I think:

"The face is interestingly crafted, since it neither looks entirely male nor female, neither entirely European nor Oriental or African ..."

Then the voice from nowhere is there again. It feels closer this time, as it takes up my train of thought and embroider upon it with kind of enigmatic lyrical stanzas, of which I am only able remember the last two lines:

The judge before his sword
Smiling before the last water

/ NN

Diagnostics at the waterline

A seashore, two friends and I. Further away, there's a man working in a garden or an orchard. He is far away enough for us not to ask him where we are. We have been suddenly transferred to this place while reading aloud and discussing a text depicting that very gardening activity; in a children's book, perhaps, or some publication concerning food.
We don't know where we are, and we can't ask the man. The landscape is restless and varying, with great contrasts in altitude, and a rich, unfamiliar vegetation which indicates we're not in Scandinavia (not even the Norwegian coast, despite the steep cliffs). I look at the sea.
"What if this is the Mediterranean", I say.
The others become silent and ponder the possibility. In my head I try to picture the coastlines of France and Spain, because if the sea is the Mediterranean, this place surely would have to be within that region.
I think of a combination of three characters that would be diagnostic:
1) To confirm this is a sea at all, we'd have to taste it. But for some reason I don't feel like tasting the water.
2) If this is the Mediterranean, its surface should have a distinctly green hue. It does, partly, show a blue-green shade, but I'm not convinced it's enough.
3) I feel the temperature of the water with my hands.
"It's warm", I state. "That means this really could be the Mediterranean."
But I'm not yet thoroughly convinced. I think it feels warmer than the Atlantic would (and that's the only alternative sea), but my experience may not suffice.

/ IÖ

Sinusiniri Bay

I’m living at a hotelroom by the coast and I’m just about to go to bed. Kalle and Mattias look by, and point out that it’s full daylight outside, and it would be nice to take a walk in such a bright night. We start to do that. The news reach us that there’s an attack on an American naval base at the “Sinusiniri Bay”. The name comes from the fact that the bay is formed like a sinus curve. We want to go there to see what’s going on. Mattias gets his Mac up and starts to do different searches. We use a searchprogram where one can place out different ships etc to search for their specific formations. We are, however, a bit uncertain as to what should be included in the American naval base. A square platform, some battleships? The search program suggests different areas: A map over London (with a possible sinusformed bay), Venice, a map over the “solar observatory” in the middle of Africa. Nothing suggests the place where we want to go. Niklas joins up and we go to a restaurant to eat. The food portions are too small, everyone returns them, except for me who is happy with ham, ananas and rice.

JE

Iceland

I was on a quiz show with an American youngster wearing hip-hop style clothes. He got a map of Iceland and looked at it. The island was almost completely covered by glaciers on the map. The game show-host asked the young man what he knew about Iceland. He answered arrogantly: "Iceland? It´s like the icepole of the world." With that answer he won a trip to Reykjavik. I was also going to Reykjavik to take part in an exhibition outside the town hall.

Onboard the plane I read about Icelandic architecture and common Icelandic phrases. I noticed that there were a lot of starving children on the plane, on field-trip or maybe on their way to the exhibition. The children were being entertained by some people skydiving with polar-bears. Town hall in Reykjavik looked a lot like the opera house of Sydney, fronting a large futuristic piazza.

The night before the exhibition I was walking through town. I discovered that a lot of the small wooden houses where public baths, maybe the city had been built by perverted Romans? The streets were full of dirty water and I had to watch my step. Back at the hotel I studied a map of the city and saw it was divided into two districts. The old part of town had the structure of a wagon-wheel. A large church represented the hub of the wheel. The new part of town was called Bergen, had a grid plan structure and was about five or six times as big. A wide river separated the two areas and I came to the conclusion I was looking at a map of San Francisco.

How do we shape our inner cities in our dreams? Picture postcards, memories, atmosphere etc.

/C D

dream travelling in august

During the past week or so I have had a series of dreams elaborating some of the dream geography themes often covered here. The dreams were very long and full of details so they were hardly blog-suitable. As my friends were reproaching me for this, I have now picked some of the central geographical highlights and am presenting them piecemeal here (Surrealist headquarters 1-4, Travelling with surrealists 1-3, Yet another strange route to Göteborg). I'm adding the important disclaimer that the major part of the dream accounts and most of the detailed descriptions are left out and for any purposes whatsoever much of the significant content may lie in parts here excluded.

/MF

Surrealist headquarters

1
After long waiting, I am being let into an apartment in Marieberg, Stockholm, where there is some surrealist activity going on. I had been walking around in a suburban shopping center with a visiting foreign surrealist, whose name I can't remember, and as my surrealist friends here have been taking apart and only halfway reassembling my computer, I can't search for the name in my files.

2
I am walking through the city at night, in a very good mood. If I am in such a good mood, why don't I go into a pub and mingle with the other nightwalkers, isn't there a place that I like so much around here? But of course going into a pub is usually quite de-enticing and perhaps it would be too much of challenging fate anyway. Nevertheless I keep thinking about this place, perfect for meetings as well as for social hanging out, its details are just like the famous "Harlösa Grand Café" in a small village in Skåne, but it lies within reach of the big Stockholm Northern Cemetary, and looks out over the trainyard north of the Central Station.

Inside I find Erik B sitting there having his lunch, entertaining the other customers with paranoid political comments, as if he was of the ordinary local alcoholic character gallery. I sit down at his table, and at first I try to make him lower his voice, but then I realise that some of the other customers are actually far more into his monologue than I am. So instead I start flirting with the waitress, who is also the owner, and the only member of the staff. She gives the impression of being a stranded spy from another planet or dimension. I offer her my help. She says she would much appreciate if I would come by during her lunch break to have sex with her.

At that point we all go out to see the sunrise from the Barnhusbron bridge, and a big confusion reigns.

3
The thing I actually enjoy about lucid dreaming is to attentively look around in fantastic landscapes. And on the other side of the narrow sound there is a beautiful islet. In fact it is the islet facing my childhood bathing place near the family summerhouse, but much more dramatic. It is actually so dramatic that I don't think more about lucidity. The islet is just a big granite rock in the sea, the higher parts are exposed rock, surrounded by ordinary "hällmarkstallskog" (again that word with no everyday english equivalent: a semi-open granite bedrock scots pine forest with lichens and lingonberries). The open area, like a bald crown, has two buildings, one ordinary archipelago house (early 20th century two-storey red-and-white villa with a glass veranda and many carpenter ornaments) but one house which looks older and sinister, it must be a chapel, in the shape of a cross with a semicircle, it looks like a ruin from an alchemical engraving, it could be an elaborate columbarium or something even worse. Some steep but not high cliffs, interesting vegetation (very much like Fredhällsparken in Stockholm). It looks like this would be magnificent new headquarters for the surrealist movement. We would go climbing there, in the sunshine it would be like "Picnic at hanging rock" and if it rains it will be "Wuthering heights".

I have to get there immediately. I somehow launch myself swimming in rocket speed, and when I quickly reach the eastern tip of the island I realise there are houses there, and a lot of people bathing, hidden under the weeping willows leaning over the water. I slow down as I turn westwards to follow the shady coast of the islet, and there I find a small pier. I go ashore and find myself in a huge open barn, with large containers of stuff, and various computer and surveillance monitors.

4
I am taking the westbound train the southern route from Stockholm. I am impressed by the dramatic primeval forest. We are climbing a hill. I am told that this is such a wild area, and the rise is so steep, that only some trains make it, the others have to turn back to Stockholm. The mountain we are climbing is the famous "Södermanland's watershed" which is symbolically and geographically the divide between western and eastern Sweden, western Sweden being drained through Vänern-Göta älv-Göteborg and eastern Sweden through Mälaren-Stockholms Ström. (In fact, I am making this up. There is a geographically important hilly region in this direction, but that is further in, namely the Kilsbergen hills of Närke, representing the border between the hilly Norrland terrain and the south-swedish plains; but there are no larger hills in Södermanland.)

We make it up the hill. It is extremely beautiful, with this wild forest and the vast view. And we just keep rising. Eventually I see a vast sea, with some big islands. Somebody tells me it is Hjälmaren, and for some reason I accept that (even though Hjälmaren is actually a completely unimpressive shallow plains lake). Everybody gets off at the summit station, where there is a small tourist café. I think this is so great. The whole national park that we are in should be proclaimed the terrain of the surrealist movement, and we should have all our meetings there.

Travelling with surrealists

1
There is a surrealist taskforce in postcatastrophal New Orleans. What the taskforce is for is not clear, we are mostly snooping around, occasionally finding abandoned children or taking beautiful photographs. Not only is it dangerous because all flooded areas are full of alligators, there are also several sites and buildings discovered to be full of human skeletons, seemingly in ancient roman armor. Johannes and Chris are frustrated and insist that no irrational explanations can be allowed. I, on the other hand, am getting convinced that it really is a matter of a chaos nexus opened by mathematical-magical manipulation. It seems to have to do with the swedish pension system. If I can just calculate when the people born in 1965 will reach pension age, I might be able to solve this. But I fail to do the simple calculation before waking up.

2
I keep walking astray, and I find myself again only in Bucuresti. It resembles Uppsala, I only find dull residential areas, and no good place to spend the night. Because now my entire travelling company catches up with me. It is a fairly big group, including people from different surrealist groups I've been in over the years. Anna and Emma, both hardly taller than a car in the street but extremely hardboiled with leatherjackets, chewinggums and sunglasses, reproach me for having rushed ahead, and especially for still not having been able to arrange lodging. Fredrik knows what to do, he calls an anarchist friend back in Stockholm and asks him to call the swedish information service and have them book a hotel room for us. But during this, all our children, who are mostly Fredrik's responsibility, sneak away. One of them hides under the car, and threatens to rush out into the street at any moment.

3
On a biking tour with a large group of surrealists, going through a small town (english or hungarian), taking shortcuts over vacant lots (nice atoposes). I am getting lucid and trying to make people react but in vain. It rains and reminds me of Ludvika in Dalarna, Sweden or of Tromsø in northern Norway.

MF

Yet another strange route to Göteborg

I keep seeing a strangely shaped balloon in the distance. Spying from the bedroom window of the apartment where I grew up, I notice that the balloon is shaped like a grand piano, and it is moving fast. The fact that it is not an ordinary commercial balloon makes me interested, and I realise I can fly with my boy bedroom, so I take off with it. It takes some effort to gain height, and I am surprised how hilly this part of town is, I have to steer away from colliding with mountain sides and tall buildings all the time. Soon I lose track of the balloon, and I land at a table in an outdoors restaurant, on a hill in Göteborg, next to a big hospital. I ask the guy who already has the table if he minds, and he doesn't, so I pick up the menu and study it.

MF

bus #7

To the subject of public transport:

In a rural landscape we are waiting for the bus. It is a late spring afternoon with a setting sun and the air getting chilly, the place is a small-scale agricultural area, with a typical rural main road, cattle-grazed pastures with sloe shrubberies and invading small inlets from the sea with alder forest.

Bus # 7 arrives, it is our bus, I climb onto it, but Jonas, who is the tour leader, keeps waiting, holds people back, I don't know why, and eventually the bus takes off, with me but without everybody else.

I realise that what I need to do is just to get off the bus at a good spot and wait for the next one.

But we are in Göteborg. There are few nice places and I don't find my way very well.

It is however remarkable that the bus will pass through a normal house, descend the stairs in the house, and emerge at a patio facing the sea. That is a good place to wait. But it takes such a long time, it becomes night, several buses go in the other direction and a few with other numbers in the right direction. I start talking with some seamen/drunks hanging out there, and eventually with the old couple living in the house.

comments:
(the group may be the cormorant council or some other group. The setting for the opening scene resembles very much a place on Ljusterö in the Stockholm archipelago)

(Somebody said there was a popsong about Göteborg tram # 7, which I can't remember having heard.)

(I just noticed that in my novel about "Art and the Deathstar" there is a dream from approximately three years ago which is partly similar, where I am waiting for an evening tram in a rural landscape outside Stockholm (in that case one of the big Mälaren islands rather than an archipelago island) and instead gets a ride with a car taking me into Göteborg.)

(The unexpected and undesired shortcut to Göteborg from the outskirts of Stockholm is obvious, but what i find most interesting in this dream is the the fact that the dream bus route has no respect for private property and the sacredness of the domestic sphere, it goes through somebody's house when it needs to)

/MF

Piccolo

London has become the latest capital to introduce a one-way system across the whole city.

This type of traffic system is known as a Piccolo.

MFl

geobiographical dream

The introduction to this dream was an awake reflection, which I have posted on the icecrawler instead, uncertain how narrowly to interpret the dream geographical focus of this site... So go there for an introduction. The dream went as follows:

Midnight in the suburb where I live, I am trying to intervene in people's lives with supposedly scandalous revelations, for example shouting that someone's red car is actually red. But I also have far to walk along the edge of the residential area towards the forested hill. Only a small fence keeps me from walking in the forest instead (a normal "hällmarkstallskog" semi-open lingonberry-lichen granite bedrock scots pine forest), so I cross it, and soon reach a beautiful vantage point by dawn.

(Next step is in a student corridor not far from where I grew up, I am breaking up with an old girlfriend in a sleepingbag on the kitchen floor. She is less angry than I expected, she is talking about how much time she will now have to rehearse with a theatre group. I fear this theatre is going to keep haunting me for the rest of my life.)

On the actual street where I grew up, I see a lot of old entomologists, and the reason is that there is a conference in our old apartment. I join them on the way up, but some jokers bend up the floor of the elevator, so we are all looking down into the shaft. I am afraid of heights, and I yell at them furiously. They don't care, but somehow I manage to save myself into the attic. The attic is a huge hidden place in certain horror movies, in a haunting light of dawn. It is divided into two parts. The northern one is like one of the attics at the natural history museum, and I particularly remember a stuffed sea turtle lying on top of a cabinet. It takes me some time to find the passage to the southern one, where the sea of pillows is, and I throw myself jumping in there with the children.

But someone's calling me, I am wanted down in the apartment. Unwillingly I comply. It is now a big apartment from the upperclass city parts. An ex-friend, apparently living there, says he wanted me to meet someone who came on an unexpected visit, namely the comicbook character Olle Ångest (≈ Ollie Angst). The apartment is huge but horse-shoe-shaped and rather narrow, there are doors leading out and to different staircases in every single room. But the whole apartment is furnished to be a surrealist apartment, meaning that it looks like a cramped old antique shop, with musical instruments, anatomical models, and old clocks stacked everywhere. My ex-friend, and his ex-girlfriend now chambermaid, have had to move around a lot of stuff to open the door where I came in, and the door where Olle Ångest was knocking. But the apartment is full of people, mostly teenagers, some in their underwear (like me) but most in ugly suits, looking like 60s mods from a documentary, and like in a documentary they explain to me: "We modern youth like to do the new thing. We want to surprise you. For example, we come on social visits early in the morning!" Can one of these people actually be the real Olle Ångest? None of them look angst-ridden.

Vertical Geography: Afterlife

Dreams of the afterlife, heaven, hell, rebirth, are the most profound dream-experiences I´ve had. Sometimes we wake up in fright when we die, but in some cases we can keep on dreaming to see what comes next. Sometimes we dream of a place we know is the afterlife, or maybe before life.

Some years ago I had a dream I was walking along a river in a neighborhood where I grew up. By the river I met a girl from my school and her parents and sister. It was dark and the company was illuminated by a hovering lamp-post. I asked if they wanted to join me for a walk, but they said: "We can´t speak to you, we are dead." I figured that I had to die too and asked how. They looked at me with strange eyes and said nothing.

I started walking around the neighborhood. I found all the houses deserted and a grey mist was in the air. In one house was a radio I could remember from another dream but I just walked by, to the back of the house. I stood in front of a window through which I could see the backyard. I jumped right through the glass and when I fell into the grass outside I sunk into the ground.
I woke up in the underground, inside a long and damp tunnel made of green cloth.

It was very tight and the only way to move was to crawl. Outside the tunnel I could hear the sound of washing-machines. At the end of the tunnel everything went black and I woke up by the river without any wounds from jumping through the glass.

I walked over to my friend and her family again and told them that I now had seen what the afterlife is like. They looked at me with sad eyes and said: "That´s not the real afterlife" and walked away with the lamp-post hovering above them.

In another dream I found myself standing before a stairway somewhere in space. I could see a light at the the top of the stair and when I got there I could see a 20 meter high statue with its arms pointing straight out the sides. The statue consisted of yellow and red gems. I couldn't´ see the face of the statue because of a strong white light that covered the head. (I was reminded of the dream when I visited the Louvre, walking up the stairway to the Nike-statue). Some nights later I visited space again. This time I saw all the planets and everything in the universe as pieces in a jigsaw-puzzle and god a squirrel looking at it.

Recently a friend of mine died. I didn't dream for a week after I heard about his death. The first dream I had was about him. We were somewhere in the wilderness surrounded by yellow grass. The place was very peaceful and all my emotions were in a strangely perfect balance, faded in a comfortable way. We talked for a while like we had just met yesterday.

But I was curious and told him I was writing about dreams of the afterlife, and asked if he could tell me something about the other side. Right then, someone called him on his cell phone. He answered the call and talked for a while. When he hung up we chatted some more until I asked again. He smiled and told me he had to go but gave me some vague instructions how to write this text.

Are there any ways to prepare oneself to get to the other side while awake?

Are there any common symbols, apart from what we have learned or experienced, in dreams of the afterlife?

What are your dream-experiences of the afterlife?

C D