Dream Passage of the Day

From Darconville's Cat by Alexander Theroux:
What then, pray, has he to do with dreams
Who wakes away the night he wants to see
In sleep alone: but sleep alone so deems
The restful dreams I see it keeps from me.
I can report what takes the place of dreams:
Red magic, a witch that's howling a filthy cry,
Helldogs barking in contrapuntal,
A taloned pig that slits its throat to die!​
 
Let me take you down,
'Cos I'm going to Strawberry Fields.
Nothing is real
And nothing to get hung about.
Strawberry Fields forever.

Living is easy with eyes closed
Misunderstanding all you see.
It's getting hard to be someone.
But it all works out,
It doesn't matter much to me.

Let me take you down,
'Cos I'm going to Strawberry Fields.
Nothing is real
And nothing to get hung about.
Strawberry Fields forever.

No one I think is in my tree,
I mean it must be high or low.
That is you can't you know tune in.
But it's all right.
That is I think it's not too bad.

Let me take you down,
'Cos I'm going to Strawberry Fields.
Nothing is real
And nothing to get hung about.
Strawberry Fields forever.

Always, no sometimes, I think it's me,
But you know I know when it's a dream.
I think 'er, no' I mean 'er, yes'.
But it's all wrong.
That is I think I disagree.

Let me take you down,
'Cos I'm going to Strawberry Fields.
Nothing is real
And nothing to get hung about.
Strawberry Fields forever.
Strawberry Fields forever.
Strawberry Fields forever.
The Beatles - "Strawberry Fields Forever" (Lyrics by John Lennon)
​
 
For candy:

"When the day to begin exploring the spirit world finally arrived, my great-grandfather took me to a part of my dreamland that I'd never seen before. We walked past the playground of my preschool, across the freeway overpass of my adolescence, and over the mountain pass of my teenage years. On the other side of the mountain range, we approached the edge of a massive cliff that was so high above the valley floor that I couldn't see the bottom. All that was visible was a field of clouds that went on for miles, with birds flying in and out of the billowy mist like dolphins playing in the surf. I thought I had explored my dreamland thoroughly before, but I didn't remember this particular precipice. It was as if it had appeared out of nowhere when I was ready to see it, and it seemed to beckon me with clouds that were breaking like waves against the cliff. As I stood mesmerized by the awesome beauty in front of me, a small flock of large ravens circled above my head and cast an ominous shadow at my feet."
Scott Blum - Waiting for Autumn
​
 
The Divinity Student wakes with a soft head, lying on a concrete stoop. He was dreaming, a river carrying him away; now he sits up shaking his head alarmed, doesn't know where he is - walked in his sleep. Around him, a slanting narrow street with white walls flaring in the sun, small children in cotton trousers running to crest the hill kicking dust, cinnamon brown door at his back; he looks down and sees the notebook in his hand, his thumb still jammed tightly between the pages, holding his place. He opens it and looks at words he doesn't remember collecting but that touch his memory with vague suggestions - these two leapt at him out of a pool-hall eight blocks from here; and that one floated down onto the page like a leaf, a woman speaking to her neighbor from a second story window, and she let that one word drop clean and clear from a stream of unintelligible gabbling. Sleepwalking, he has collected them himself, without knowing. The Divinity Student stands up and counts - he has gathered more words in one day of sleep than in any day of waking. Why hadn't he thought of this before?
Michael Cisco - The Divinity Student
​
 
In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure-dome decree:
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea.
So twice five miles of fertile ground
With walls and towers were girdled round;
And there were gardens bright with sinuous rills,
Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree;
And here were forests ancient as the hills,
Enfolding sunny spots of greenery.

But oh! that deep romantic chasm which slanted
Down the green hill athwart a cedarn cover!
A savage place! as holy and enchanted
As e’er beneath a waning moon was haunted
By woman wailing for her demon-lover!
And from this chasm, with ceaseless turmoil seething,
As if this earth in fast thick pants were breathing,
A mighty fountain momently was forced:
Amid whose swift half-intermitted burst
Huge fragments vaulted like rebounding hail,
Or chaffy grain beneath the thresher’s flail:
And mid these dancing rocks at once and ever
It flung up momently the sacred river.
Five miles meandering with a mazy motion
Through wood and dale the sacred river ran,
Then reached the caverns measureless to man,
And sank in tumult to a lifeless ocean;
And ’mid this tumult Kubla heard from far
Ancestral voices prophesying war!
The shadow of the dome of pleasure
Floated midway on the waves;
Where was heard the mingled measure
From the fountain and the caves.
It was a miracle of rare device,
A sunny pleasure-dome with caves of ice!

A damsel with a dulcimer
In a vision once I saw:
It was an Abyssinian maid
And on her dulcimer she played,
Singing of Mount Abora.
Could I revive within me
Her symphony and song,
To such a deep delight ’twould win me,
That with music loud and long,
I would build that dome in air,
That sunny dome! those caves of ice!
And all who heard should see them there,
And all should cry, Beware! Beware!
His flashing eyes, his floating hair!
Weave a circle round him thrice,
And close your eyes with holy dread
For he on honey-dew hath fed,
And drunk the milk of Paradise.

-- S.T. Coleridge, "Kubla Kahn, Or, A Vision in a Dream. A Fragment"
 
Although the morning was young, the hazy mirage was up. The uncertain air that magnified some things and blotted out others hung over the whole Gulf so that all sights were unreal and vision could not be trusted; so that sea and land had the sharp clarities and the vagueness of a dream. Thus it might be that the people of the Gulf trust things of the spirit and things of the imagination, but they do not trust their eyes to show them distance or clear outline or any optical exactness. Across the estuary from the town one section of mangroves stood clear and telescopically defined, while another mangrove clump was a hazy black-green blob. Part of the far shore disappeared into a shimmer that looked like water. There was no certainty in seeing, no proof that what you saw was there or was not there. And the people of the Gulf expected all places were that way, and it was not strange to them. A copper haze hung over the water, and the hot morning sun beat on it and made it vibrate blindingly.

John Steinbeck - The Pearl
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