“Hours of patient sleep, waiting for the dream to come.
And now—nothing, worse than nothing..."
–ETGAR KERET
“On the Nutritional Value of Dreams”
In my dreams we are moving through corridors and taking each other by the hand and there is music playing in other rooms, but we barely hear it for the pulse of blood that leads us to leave our lives behind. All the children and the mothers and disappointed lovers who are waiting for us in other rooms with all their obligations and timetables and needs and certainties and clockwork lives.
In my dreams there are no clocks, only shadows and cries of love, and arguments which end in lovemaking. In my dreams there are no mornings, only nights and late afternoons, and cats climbing in and out of windows like acrobats, arching their backs and purring and asking to be petted. There are flowers on windowsills which sometimes break and shatter but never make a sharp noise which could cut our ears. And anyway in my dreams we don’t hear the voices of others, only raindrops and footsteps and children playing outside our window. I close the blinds and watch the sunlight filter through making strange shapes upon the ceiling and walls and the sheets of our bed. A car passes and I am removing my dress with its pattern of flowers and snowflakes. I feel your fingers slipping between the zip and feel myself being slowly unwrapped like a present on Christmas Eve. First the bow and then the wrapper and then the lid is cracked and I am there inside, naked and waiting.
In my dreams we do not speak or I do all the talking. You are quiet, or more quiet than you are with others, with whom you joke or feel a need to please. To be smart and earn their praise. You know you need to do nothing to please me. I am already yours.
Are you dreaming the same dream as me? Or is your dream just a cheap fantasy and my part could be played by any bit player, any woman at all would do. As long as she has a nice face and a good figure and is willing.
I want to clarify your intensions because if it is one of those dreams, I don’t want to be a part of it. It would be so easy to stay here under the covers with my eyes closed. Is that your dream–it will be hard and it will hurt–but if that’s your dream I will force my eyes open
And I will rise
and wake to a world
without you.
"In My Dreams" is currently being adapted for a dance performance. It will be filmed and included in our short film series which we are doing in collaboration with Etgar Keret and Dov Alfon's StoryVid project. If you are a writer, director or film student and would like more information on collaborating on short films, please contact us.
Music by: Shigeru Umebayashi
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Mia Funk is an artist, interviewer and founder of The Creative Process, an exhibition of her interviews and painted portraits of over 100 esteemed writers, which is traveling to universities. Her portraits of writers and artists appear in many public collections, including the U.S. Library of Congress, Dublin Writers Museum, Office of Public Works, American Writers Museum (forthcoming), and other museums and culture centers. Funk has received many awards and honors, including the Prix de Peinture from the Salon d’Automne de Paris and has exhibited at the Grand Palais, Paris. She was commissioned by the Guinness Cork Jazz Festival to paint their 30th anniversary commemorative painting of over 20 jazz legends. Her paintings of Francis Bacon and Lucian Freud won the Thames & Hudson Pictureworks Prize and were exhibited in Brussels for Bacon’s centenary, in Paris at the American University, as well as international arts festivals in Europe. As a writer and interviewer, she produces a column and podcast for Litro (UK) and the Portrait of a Writer column for TinHouse.com, and contributes to various national publications. She serves on the National Advisory Council of the American Writers Museum.
