{"id":172542,"date":"2025-12-22T09:28:43","date_gmt":"2025-12-22T14:28:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=172542"},"modified":"2025-12-22T10:05:52","modified_gmt":"2025-12-22T15:05:52","slug":"dream-diary","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2025\/12\/22\/dream-diary\/","title":{"rendered":"Dream Diary"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"

Dickens’s Dream, unfinished painting by Robert W. Buss, 1875. Public domain. Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.<\/p><\/div>\n

Dream. <\/em>All global financial markets have been crashed by a computer worm called the \u201cBe Interesting\u201d virus.<\/p>\n

Dream.<\/em> A long argument with J. D. Vance about clearance to fly on an airplane. Smoking grass with him and typing information on a medical certificate. \u2014 I hate dreaming of people named J. D.<\/p>\n

Dream.<\/em> A song. \u201cDoesn\u2019t anybody here remember I\u2019m alive?\u201d<\/p>\n

Dream<\/em>. I die and am reunited with my dead uncle Billy Joe. He is glad to see me but he can\u2019t remember my name. I don\u2019t care. The important thing is we are together again. I press my forehead against his.<\/p>\n

Dream<\/em>. \u201cWe don\u2019t need the code. We have the code.\u201d<\/p>\n

Dream<\/em>. My house was full of rats, snakes that ate the rats, and hawks and three eagles that ate the snakes.<\/p>\n

Dream<\/em>. A song. \u201cYou can utilize us, come what may.\u201d<\/p>\n

Dream<\/em>. A song. \u201cThe dragon sleeps no more.\u201d<\/p>\n

Dream. <\/em>Everyone I knew assembled to tell me the world would have been a better place if I had never been born.<\/p>\n

Dream. <\/em>Flying. Trouble at the airport. Never mind that. Flying home.<\/p>\n

Dream.<\/em> I found my mother\u2019s old dresser. Some of its drawers still had our things in it, a marble, some of her jewelry. \u2014 I woke up crying.<\/p>\n

Dream. <\/em>\u201cI feel like I could write such an important book about this, if I could just calm down.\u201d<\/p>\n

Dream.<\/em> Outdone. Weak. Hemmed in. Bullied. Threatened. Tardy. Polite, or cowardly? Impending doom.<\/p>\n

Dream<\/em>. \u201cThe best way to kill a cactus is to burn down the house it\u2019s growing in.\u201d<\/p>\n

Dream.<\/em> I can fly.<\/p>\n

Dream. <\/em>John Goodman won\u2019t read a book by J. D. Salinger. He says it inspired John Lennon\u2019s murder. \u2014 God, I hate dreaming of people named John or J. D.<\/p>\n

Dream. <\/em>Accusation or exposure. Ridiculous. You ought to be ashamed of yourself for being such a stupid, self-important turd. The negative fantasy that someone would attack you. No one cares about you.<\/p>\n

Dream<\/em>. The writing room, the writing judge. Now that your turn is over, scrape your words off, out of the tray, into the sink or toilet.<\/p>\n

Dream.<\/em> I saw my mother smiling, waving to me.<\/p>\n

Dream. <\/em>I died. Now I was an angel.<\/p>\n

Dream<\/em>. \u201cI was not always as you see me now.\u201d<\/p>\n

Dream. <\/em>\u201cThe immortal in the ephemeral.\u201d<\/p>\n

Dream. <\/em>A man with knobs of wood growing from his chest, and a bloody stump where his foot should have been. He was rude to me about the chicken I was eating.<\/p>\n

Dream. <\/em>\u201cWait until I write to you.\u201d All right, I said, I will.<\/p>\n

Dream. <\/em>\u201cIn Paradise, no one cares.\u201d<\/p>\n

Dream. <\/em>An argument with my father. He became more incoherent as he became more enraged. He said: \u201cI\u2019ll teach you about life.\u201d I said: \u201cThis is what I remember life feeling like.\u201d He threw his many guns out of the house. They were valuable, and throwing them out damaged them. I stood looking at them scattered on the sidewalk, colorful like a child\u2019s building blocks, and screamed: \u201cYou\u2019re trying to hurt me!\u201d \u2014 <\/em>I woke up screaming.<\/p>\n

Dream. <\/em>\u201cAlbion Fox wanted a sandwich.\u201d<\/p>\n

Dream.<\/em> Charles Manson found the Ativan I had hidden in my sock.<\/p>\n

Dream. <\/em>\u201cYou live in an exhausted reality!\u201d<\/p>\n

Dream.<\/em> \u00a0A naked man being tortured. Beaten on his cock with a club. Fed his own shit on the end of a flat paddle. His brain was pulled half out of his skull. His organs were ripped out, ground up into hamburger, and pushed back into him through a hole in his sternum.<\/p>\n

Dream. <\/em>My father was kicking me as I lay in the gravel driveway. But it was his talking that tormented me. I screamed: \u201cShut up! Shut up! Shut up!\u201d \u2014 I woke up screaming.<\/p>\n

Dream. <\/em>The world\u2019s most popular breakfast cereal was a Chinese brand named Snow Mouse & Ice Mouse<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Dream.<\/em> \u201cPline,\u201d a kind of traditional ice cream, was being phased out at a beachside inn, and the locals were enraged.<\/p>\n

Dream.<\/em> We all have numbers. I am E16. Many people don\u2019t know, or can\u2019t believe, that I am also the writer C4.<\/p>\n

Dream.<\/em> I stood in a plastic garbage can, urinating, filling the can, soaking my socks. It\u2019s all part of the routine procedure, I told myself, unpleasant but it must be tolerated. The back of my head was cut open for brain surgery. I said I wished I could help. \u2014 A dark basement, many people kneeling in prayer. Someone said \u201cI am Jesus,\u201d and soon they were all shouting it, on their feet, \u201cI am Jesus, I am Jesus,\u201d marching up the basement stairs and through the house.<\/p>\n

Dream. <\/em>My father threw pieces of a broken machine at me.<\/p>\n

Dream<\/em>. I hear a boy singing a repetitive song to a girl who is crying. I go to investigate, to be sure that it\u2019s only children playing or teasing and not something more cruel or strange. But I don\u2019t see a girl anywhere. The little boy is still singing. \u2014 In the center of the garden is a pheasant or peacock under glass. A candle is burning under the glass. I\u2019m worried about the bird. It could catch on fire, it might be asphyxiated when the flame drinks up all the oxygen, it could be frightened. My aunt Alice Carol is working in the garden. I don\u2019t want to trespass on her jurisdiction, so I begin by pointing out the bird situation to her. She says the glass container over the bird is cracked, and it might break if it is moved. She says, \u201cIs anyone walking on the suicide wall? I like it better than drinking.\u201d She takes a running start at a low embankment, bricks topped by a shelf of rough concrete, jumps over it, loses her footing while landing, seemingly on purpose, and falls and skins her elbow and knee. Now she\u2019s not my aunt, but my mother. \u201cOh, Johnny, why did I do that?\u201d she says, starting to cry. I\u2019m wearing a clean white T-shirt and I feel ashamed of my brief hesitancy to hug her because I will get her blood all over me. But I do hug her, and, as I do, I repeat, \u201cGod damn it, God damn it, God damn it.\u201d And now: a boy is singing a repetitive song to a girl who is crying.<\/p>\n

Dream. <\/em>The gargantuan stag called Old Newton. The wolf with impossibly long legs named Lucifer\u2019s Crucifix.<\/p>\n

Dream. <\/em>A song. \u201cEverybody wants to be friends with me. Everybody wants to eat my energy.\u201d<\/p>\n

Dream. <\/em>Answering machine messages from my mother. \u201cI\u2019m worried about you. Why would you stand there like that for fifty-two hours?\u201d When I visited her in person, I was surprised to find out that my mother was the First Lady.<\/p>\n

Dream. <\/em>\u201cI don\u2019t want to fight you. You\u2019re just a child, like me. All I wanted was to eat in the cafeteria. Why does everybody want me to act like an adult? I\u2019m seven years old.\u201d<\/p>\n

Dream. <\/em>A black stallion, rearing on a hilltop. Hawks, wheeling. A tiger. When I saw the stallion, I fell to my knees with my face in my hands, weeping. I wanted to share my vision with someone.<\/p>\n

Dream.<\/em> Asking my parents not to be angry with me. \u201cBe quiet,\u201d my mother said. \u201cYou slept on stage last night,\u201d my father said.<\/p>\n

Dream.<\/em> \u201cI examine my lethargy.\u201d<\/p>\n

Dream.<\/em> Lightning strikes my parents\u2019 house and burns it down.<\/p>\n

Dream.<\/em> Hell, unleashed on earth.<\/p>\n

Dream.<\/em> Arguing with my father, when suddenly I am attacked by a bear.<\/p>\n

Dream. <\/em>\u201cA rat does all of the things that a rat does, and if it does not do them, then it is not a rat.\u201d<\/p>\n

Dream.<\/em> \u201cHere come the mighty interceptors.\u201d<\/p>\n

Dream.<\/em> I was grilling hot dogs for my mother and my Mamaw and my father, and a hamburger for myself. My mother and Mamaw took their dogs and their plates and went indoors. My father took his dog, too, but stood there with my plate in his hand. He told me to put my burger on my plate. \u201cIt\u2019s not done yet,\u201d I said. He got angry. \u201cPut it on there right now,\u201d he commanded me. \u201cNo,\u201d I said. He acted hurt. \u201cNo one says no to you<\/em>, Johnny,\u201d he said. I said, \u201cThat\u2019s because I ask for things that are possible and that exist.\u201d He became prophetic. \u201cMy wish for you,\u201d he said, \u201cis that one day you\u2019ll realize how much trouble you\u2019ve caused for all of us.\u201d I said, \u201cMy wish for you is that you find happiness. My wish for myself is that you do not try to punish me and haunt my future by laying your eerie, vindictive curses on me.\u201d<\/p>\n

Dream<\/em>. All Miss America pageant contestants must enroll in a secret Peloton group code-named \u201cChainsaw.\u201d<\/p>\n

Dream. <\/em>\u201cDo not tell me I am sullied.\u201d<\/p>\n

Dream. <\/em>Meg Ryan whispers to me, \u201cLet\u2019s have sex.\u201d MEG RYAN<\/small> is an anagram of ANGRY ME<\/small> and MY ANGER.<\/small> \u2014 And GERMANY.<\/small> \u2014 ANAGRAM<\/small> is an anagram of MAG RAAN.<\/small><\/p>\n

Dream. <\/em>I had fallen into a deep pit full of alligators. For more than two weeks, I was not rescued. The alligators did not eat me, but I screamed until I went insane with fear. When after fifteen days I was finally pulled out of the pit, not only could I not stop screaming but I myself had begun to turn into an alligator.<\/p>\n

Dream.<\/em> Insect religion. Insects experience reincarnation and can remember all of their past lives, and this burden of memory is painful for them. In their religion, they pray for zero regression<\/em>, a return to zero, a blankness, resetting the odometer, permission to be nothing.<\/p>\n

Dream.<\/em> A brilliantly colored landscape. Jungle, rocky dirt roads, flying, desert and dunes, ice fields, psychedelic colors and textures. I wanted so much for someone else to see what I was seeing.<\/p>\n

Dream. <\/em>My father is screaming at me. \u201cYou\u2019re a three-year-old,\u201d I tell him. I hold up three fingers, for him to count them.<\/p>\n

Dream.<\/em> A man announced that a science fiction film set was an elaborate mask for a genuine alien invasion. He was impaled on a fork of purple-blue lightning, screaming, burning, shouting Oh God, <\/em>his eyes burning, groaning that he couldn\u2019t see, lying down smoldering in the parking lot, not yet dead. His torment was a lesson to others who might investigate.<\/p>\n

Dream. <\/em>A song. \u201cTears in my eyes, blood on my hands.\u201d<\/p>\n

Dream. <\/em>The greatest ping-pong game in history.<\/p>\n

Dream.<\/em> \u201cReducing the governable scene.\u201d<\/p>\n

Dream. <\/em>I couldn\u2019t believe anything that was happening. I kept stopping people to ask: \u201cIs this the real world?\u201d They all treated me like I was crazy. They encouraged me, or forced me, to doubt myself. But it wasn\u2019t the real world: I was asleep. When I woke up, I felt vindicated.<\/p>\n

Dream. <\/em>I ran so fast that I could fly.<\/p>\n

Dream<\/em>. My father is better than I am at everything.<\/p>\n

Dream. <\/em>My father tries to strangle me to death. I turn into a cigar cutter and I chop him in half. Sometimes a cigar cutter is just a cigar cutter. \u2014 A black goat comes out of the woods. It says to me: \u201cDid you just kill my father?\u201d<\/p>\n

Dream. <\/em>\u201cLess mystic, more biscuit.\u201d\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

Dream<\/em>. I die and go to hell. Hell is a boring giant gray-green dome. When I was alive, everyone tried to convince me that hell would be full of exciting torments. People who are still alive are so stupid.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

J. D. Daniels is the winner of a 2016 Whiting Award and <\/em>The Paris Review\u2019s\u00a02013 Terry Southern Prize. His collection\u00a0<\/em>The Correspondence\u00a0was published in 2017.\u00a0His writing has appeared in\u00a0<\/em>The Paris Review,<\/em>Esquire,<\/em>\u00a0<\/em>n+1, and elsewhere, including<\/em>\u00a0The Best American Essays\u00a0and\u00a0The Best American Travel Writing<\/em>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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