Why Does Complexity Grow in Dreams?
In the dream I am painting the outside walls of my old high school.
I choose brown and yellow, the school’s colors, to transform a cen-
tury’s worth of brick and stone . The old priest-principle is there,
blessing my selections. I begin to brush, and find filigrees and
curlicues blooming in sandstone; now figures and scenes, now
marble plaques and names of long-dead teachers; now intricate
memorials and a whole museum-front of treasures; now old coin-
phones, dust-covered. The complexity grows, seems natural, pre-
sents dilemmas: I must decide what gets brown and what stays
white (yellow forgotten). As can after can empties, and a storm
brews around me, I keep up, adorning entrances and planning on
rollers and sprays—aware that each labored stroke is a new choice,
a decision for the ages.
