The City that Never Sleeps

Is Where the Most Dreams Happen. This is Installment #2 of The Falling Dream.

To the dream dreamers:

There are secret doors in New York City. Maybe you've heard about one, searched for it, and came up empty. But you know someone who finally figured out where one was and walked on through. Or so she says. You keep reading the stories, seeing the cryptic online posts and messages. Finally, maybe, you yourself eventually discovered the location of one of these hidden away doors, and late one night, turned the knob and made your entrance.

This may have happened years ago, or just last evening.

You're just not sure if it's a memory, or from a dream — possibly both: the memory of a dream you can't quite remember.

It's in this ephemeral, late night space — city lights ablaze, always — that the deepest, richest, most tantalizing and surreal stories take place.

DREAM STATE POEM: THE LIGHTS OF NEW YORK
by Sara Teasdale
(from Rivers to the Sea, 1915)

Sara Teasdale wrote many poems about love, longing, and New York City. Here is a poem that combines all three, with the moon gazing down in wonder at the electric, always-on lights of a city that never sleeps. These are lights that inspire and energize, that widen the eyes and keep you seeking and striving and hungry for more of whatever it is that you are looking for.

The lightning spun your garment for the night
   Of silver filaments with fire shot thru,
   A broidery of lamps that lit for you
The steadfast splendor of enduring light.
The moon drifts dimly in the heaven's height,
   Watching with wonder how the earth she knew
   That lay so long wrapped deep in dark and dew,
Should wear upon her breast a star so white.
The festivals of Babylon were dark
   With flaring flambeaux that the wind blew 
       down;
The Saturnalia were a wild boy's lark
   With rain-quenched torches dripping thru the
       town —
But you have found a god and filched from him
A fire that neither wind nor rain can dim. 

Are you heading towards the lights?

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CULTURE DREAM CONNECT: AFTER HOURS

After Hours is a one of the quintessential New York City movies — a journey into the shadows and curious figures deep in the heart of a peculiar night in the city that gets more and more intriguing the later it gets. It might be the one Scorsese film you haven't seen (unlike Goodfellas, which you've probably seen a gazillion times). It's very much worth checking out (or re-watching) and following the ridiculous misadventures and absurd calamities of a character named Paul — a “word processor” who has just had an epiphany about not just his career, but his life: it is wholly unfulfilling and strikingly mundane.

This movie feels like a nightmarish daydream, one that you'd have after unintentionally falling asleep while working late in a darkened, empty office. Too bleary eyed to focus on the task at hand, but unable to muster the motivation to just stand up and head home, you end up drifting off into terrible, restless sleep. And in this surface level slumber, you have a bizarre dream that is anchored by an inability to escape — not from a frightening situation, but the utter mundanity of your life.

This movie is a provocative, artistic, darkly comedic wake up call. The city lights and all the vibrant, one-of-a-kind shine that they provide are there to guide and inspire you, but if you aren't taking notice, they might just find a way to force the issue — getting into your dreams if necessary.

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DREAM LINKS

The captivating art by Miki Lowe that accompanies the poems featured in The Atlantic.

Joanna C. Valente’s recent poetry collection A Love Story.

Februllage - daily collage prompts and sharing during the month of February brought to you by Scandinavian Collage Museum and Edinburgh Collage Collective.

Ankh Spice’s new poetry collection The Water Engine.

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Hope the especially cold February weather has led to intriguing, wintry dreams.

— Lauren Maturo and Jeffrey Yamaguchi