Parliament of Leaves

I had two rather odd dreams, separated by the alarm clock and a short walk. In the first, I had been the lover of Byron, had he been an artist rather than a poet. And I wasn't me, either. He died, young and tragic, and I was in his house, unknown to the rest of the residents, as I knew all the secret passages, having used them to meet on many occasions. A man draws a bath for himself, and calls a younger upstart of a man an ignorant cur. I am the water in his bath, and I embrace him, flow around him, feel every inch of him at once. And when he tires of that, I am washed down the drain. I think this was Byron in life. I end up in a hallway, filled with piles and portfolios of his sketches, and a few paintings. Portraits, landscapes, weird little Froudish creatures watercoloed as sketches for a leager composition. I am looking for something--another way to get to something. His body? His room? I see myself from behind, and am wearing a black gown, that looks like an abreviated gown from thw 1830s or so. Big puffy sleeves to my elbows, narrow waist, diaphanous skirt made of many layers of fabric so fine as to look like spiderwebs, and about as strong. it kind of resembles a classical tutu, coming to about half way down my calf. Like the ones in Degas' paintings, I guess. Then, the alarm. I really wanted to get to the end of that hall though, and find out what I was supposed to be loking for....

Second dream. Might have been the same house, might have been the same not-me. I came out of a hallway through a secret door, into a small party. Sarah was in the next room, she was making up a bed because Dennis had fallen asleep on the floor. I knew three girls there, and they took me downstairs, to a different party. This was a wedding reception, as opposed to the debauchery upstairs. I was still in the mourning gown from the previous dream, and felt rather out of place. Shane was there in a splendid coat, a curled wig, and an impressive cavalier's hat. I think he was supposed to be some sort of high ranking officer in the military, and therefore had to look impressive. Someone who looked like Remy, sometimes acted like Remy, but was not Remy complimented Shane on his coat. This not-Renmy was connected to the three girls, who wanted to introduce me to him. Something sexual, but I can't catch the implications. They were sleeping with him, or something, and I was supposed to be part of it. Not-Remy also wore a white suit. Amazingly, it wasn't tacky or hideous. I don't remember the cut, so I'm still not making one. Nyah. Anyway, we made quite a nice contrast. Shane was miserably depressed, as he had been in love with the bride. So I spent a while trying to comfort him. Eventually he went off to get a beer. During this time, the girls had disappeared. I kissed NotRemy, and had some revelation on how one can be faithful to the "one true love" idea, and still care about the other people one is sleeping with. And how there isn't a conflict. I don't know how it went, dream logic and all that. He went away to another part of the party, and I went to the alcoves outside, trying to find a) Shane, to make sure he was ok, b) the girls, because they and Shane were the only people I knew there and I couldn't find any of them, or c) NotRemy, because I had enjoyed the kiss. The party thinned, and I found NR. There was something about a telephone, that the handset was broken downstairs, so I had to go upstairs and get one. Found it in the room where Sarah and Dennis were. Dennis was still on the floor, having been too out to acknowedge any attempts to rouse him. So Sarah and I flopped on the waterbed for a while. It was fun. And then I took the phone, and brought it downstairs. We went upstairs to another room, and I'm not sure what happened. It was morning, and I was in the room where the previous night's upstairs debauchery had been. By day, it was a nursery, and people were shooting at it from outside. children were screaming and dying, as were their nurses. I grabbed a little boy and crawled across the floor with him into the room Sarah and Dennis had been in, which was farther into the house. As bullets were coming through the outer walls, this seemed wise. I tried to figure out how to get milk for him from the refrigerator next to the window, and a bottle from across the room, because he seemed to be trying to get milk from my finger. He was saying something, but I couldn't make it out. There was a massive Germanic woman, the head nurse, looking out the window, and the shooting stoppef. I left him there, deciding we should adopt him at some point. I found NR, and we got in his car and drove away from the house. I had a book, left it in the car when we started walikng, and found some gloves on the side of the road, but they were both rights. Nice red leather gauntlet style, though, I put them in the car too.Walked a bit farther and turned around and got in the car. We drove farther, I tried one of the gloves on and it split. NR was starting to take on qualities of both the long dead Byron, and Remy, but wasn't quite either, though the relationship was starting to look the same. Sort of. We turned around and went back towards the house and I woke up.