mon 15 nov 2010 00:15:51 — witte de withstraat
we have too much alarm
something i just dreamed, after being asleep only about 90 min.
'we have too much alarm' the man looking up at me from the tiny curly stair pointed downward. indeed. down there were plenty of people working late, and they had been disturbed by reports of me wandering around unauthorized in the museum that was more like a cavern or an old mine. what had happened was that i was kinda at national boston, and an old colleague wanted me to come with him toward one room, which was about the story i was telling -- as if it were one of the cozy edit rooms. but i saw a little window, a porthole sort of, and remembered -- almost heard the dialog really -- that the real solution to my story was written up there past that long tunnel, in different places on the way to some long forgotten chamber. i couldn't get there directly, the port hole only looked up a long shaft toward it. so i found the door, i let tom sprague know i was going up into the caves. soon he and some well meaning friends were coming calling me and telling me to go to this part of the cave over here to the right, more toward the back of the building where the smoking alley was. but i knew that where i really needed to go was around and back up to the left, to places where i had been many years ago, where i'd solved the story and written it somehow in that place, but forgotten about it. what i'd written there was also incomplete, but if i could fit it together with what i had now, it would solve everything. mind you, there was nothing 'written' per se. just that if i walked up those stairs and turned all those twists and followed those tunnels and chambers, i would have it back clearly in my mind. it was like a museum, like a cave, like an old mine. i want to call it the peabody cavern gallery of the solution to gabo s. but to other people it meant something else more academic. i found the much written about chamber where the largest silver seal was, and read the illustrated guide about how amazing it was, but then i turned back looking for what i really wanted. and then i tried one other narrow stair door up but found it was closed -- and with so many doors closed i knew i would not find my way to where i was going. i would have to come back sometime during opening hours. so i started back to look for my way down. i saw a light on in an office and heard a man in there on the phone saying 's g collins is here, you say?' a bit further along that corridor, i saw a light in a tiny stairway down, the door just open a sliver, and if it closed you might never know there was a door to a stair there. the stairwells were not rough and minerally like the cave corridors: they were creamy, narrow, gently curling like in opulent victorian age city houses in new england. in that one open stairway i saw a man gesturing at me. i thought he meant back away, like i would disturb the people below if i came down that way. but then he indicated that i should come toward him. at the top of the stair i whispered to him 'ik wil naar beneden.' and he said, with a sort of hong kong accent:
'we have too much alarm.'