WESTWOOD INSISTS

By Ben Greenman

from forthcoming collection, as yet untitled

Dreamers are a rapacious breed so far as the literature of the sleeping imagination is concerned. They gorge on every work published on the subject, whether breviloquent pamphlet or capacious monograph, whether the author is a complete unknown or a veteran adept, in the hope that somewhere in the paragraphs they may discover the secret that will unlock the meaning of their nocturnal images and narratives. The dreamer is certainly to be pitied, for there is no shortage of these volumes, and yet they are in conflict, sometimes directly. In Richards’ “Eyes Down” a woman with shadows across her face is a target of unexpressed desire. In Thirlwell’s “Head Heritage,” the same dream signifies a long-dormant memory of childhood abuse at the hands of a domineering mother. Or a running dog: to both Richards and Thirlwell it is a figure of fear, but to Gerson, in “The Darklands,” it is one of bravery, and to Hauser, in “Perchance,” one of sadism. It has been said many times that all the canonists are at odds with one another, with the result that a dreamer would rather having consulted no reference rather than any pair or trio of them. Of far greater value is Westwood’s “They Mean What You Want Them To Mean,” which argues, as its title suggests, that dreams are a product of idiosyncratic psyches, and that each individual would be better served making his or her own determination as to the significance of an symbol or narrative. “If you dream of coins falling from the sky,” Westwood writes, “and you wish for that cascade of currency to represent erotic achievement, then it should do that and only that. If you dream of a snake slithering through the socket of a skull and you wish for it to be an image of unfettered innovation, then it should be that and only that.” Westwood himself, it should be noted, is not in fact real but is a figment of Thirwell’s imagination, where he appears as a casual philosopher-cum-guru, shirt open to second button, hair mussed with calculated insouciance. Hauser has also dreamed him, but as a fastidious academic, bow tie pulled to a perfect horizontal. For his part, Westwood insists that he is in fact the one who dreamed both Thirlwell and Hauser, and that one is trapped inside an ice block holding a participation trophy and that the other is walking backwards while speaking half-speed.