I haven't had dreams for years. I dreamt, of course, but I remembered only a few. Months would go by. Lately, I dream and wake, dream and wake. In the morning, it is as if I've lived through all of them. Mostly, they have been disturbing.
When I was in Jamaica the year of its liberation from English rule (do your research), I travelled everywhere by country bus. On the way to Negril, I met a woman holding a hen who told me to look up her friends, that they would rent a room to my girlfriend and I. Norma and Jolie. The resorts were not there yet. We stayed in a one room cement building Jolie had put up to serve as a guest house. That first night, we were attacked by robbers. Norma and Jolieheard them and came running like the proverbial troops with spear guns. The robbers fled.
Each morning, Norma would bring a pot of Blue Mountain coffee sweetened with condensed milk. Jolie would tell me about voodoo. He said he could hypnotize birds and pick them out of trees. He told me how to keep duppies in the grave. Toast two peas and three kernels of corn in the oven, place them in a Bull Durham sack with the first shaving from the coffin, and throw it all in the grave with the first shovel of dirt. Barring that, place pins in the feet of the corpse so that it can't walk around at night. Of course, they can always ride a mare. Ride a mare, I asked? Of course. Hence the name. Nightmares.
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