Female,
poet, born 1953
When I was eighteen, I dreamt that a person very important
to me asked, "Why do you write?" Instantly I saw in my mind
the housing project where I grew up: unadorned, plain red
brick apartment buildings, sterile little lawns in front,
little chains on low metal poles to keep you off that bit
of grass. And I heard my own voice replying, with those
buildings somehow behind the thought, "Because everything
is alive."
****
Over the years I have many times had a dream I think many
other people share as well. I am in a house, one I live in
and know well, when suddenly I discover that there is in
its back a much larger, second part, at least the size of
the first, sometimes larger, that I had never known
of. As I enter that space and explore, it is always
under construction. Sometimes it is close to finished,
other times it is early stages of a complete renovation,
with scaffolding and unfinished walls. It is always very
large. I can never imagine how I had not known it was there
before. It always makes me happy to walk through those
large rooms, and when I wake, I'm glad to have had the
dream.