La Boutique Obscure: 124 Dreams Read Online Free Page A

approach.

No. 30
November 1970
     

GABA
    My boss pays me 82 francs (3 × 16) instead of 45 (3 × 15) for having served for three days as a fake subject in his experiment.
    I propose that he put the money into a slush fund, but he shakes his head no.
    He asks where my file is.
    I think of GABA (gamma hydroxybutyric acid), then of presynaptic excitation, which is—evidently—synaptic excitation, and of presynaptic inhibition.
(long feeling of strangeness upon waking)
     

No. 31
November 1970
     

The group
    of what may have been a large countryside party, an opera full of twists and turns, there remains the image—static, almost petrified, insidiously upsetting—of a group: Four characters à la Watteau, two men, a woman, a man…….…
     

No. 32
November 1970
     

An evening at the theater
    I was, with Z., at a public event that Aragon and Elsa Triolet were also attending. Elsa Triolet, a small and gentle woman, waved to me, which surprised me because we don’t know one another.
    Later.
    We are at the theater.
    I am packed in right near the stage, just above the illuminated walkway. At one point one of the actors, who had been sitting with his back to the audience, rises and begins to count off time like a conductor. We hear music from backstage. First it’s just a harpsichord, then a whole orchestra. A character on the right begins to sing. It’s the end of the play. I am overwhelmed, even as I realize there’s nothing to it and wonder vaguely why I appear to be the only one at all moved.
    The exit of the theater is mobbed.
    I am with Z. at the top of the stairs. Elsa Triolet walks by below, toward another exit perpendicular to ours. Once againshe tilts her head toward me. I tell Z.: “That’s Elsa Triolet.” Z. asks how small I was when I met her and tells me she’s going to introduce me to someone who knew me even smaller. But all of this is said in such a way that I can’t tell whether we’re talking about a woman or a man, and whether she really means “even smaller than I am.”
    We go home.
    My uncle, a bald man, is following us. I recognize him as Z.’s current lover. Walking in front of my uncle and somehow losing him, Z. brings me into a little dormitory, a dark room I identify as one of the annexes of the house in Dampierre.
    We tumble down onto a bed. Z. presses against me, panting slightly, but I sense that she plans to rejoin my uncle and wants me to stay here. All told, she doesn’t seem entirely sure what she’s going to do. In any case, I tell her, I don’t feel like sleeping anywhere besides my room.

No. 33
November 1970
     

The esplanade
    A cluster of cops in capes gathers on a large esplanade; not riot police, but rather policemen marking the perimeter for a celebrity to pass through.
    I find myself surrounded by cops. I am naked, or only in my underwear, but the cops seem to find this normal.
    At one point, I run.
    I make it to a car with J. standing nearby. My clothes are on the ground, in the mud, filthy. I find a sock, but I can’t put it on.
    We want to take the car (so I can change inside). In front, in the driver’s seat, there is an enormous turd; we wipe it away with a curtain.
    Later, J. and I are driving. We are circling a movie theater. A huge animated advertisement announces an erotic film: two neon silhouettes, a man and a woman, in all sorts of positions (implying permutation and recurrence): man andwoman on their backs, man on woman, woman on man, man and woman face down, etc.

No. 34
November 1970
     

The double apartment
    There are many double houses and apartments, i.e. where two families live, separated by a common room. The L. family and P. and I share one. Marianne M. comes to see us. We go to meet her downstairs; she comes up in the elevator with a stranger who she tells me is her husband, but it’s no use trying to recognize him: I don’t.
    A small bathroom: the toilet bowl is full of shit. I’m surprised, and a little relieved, that it doesn’t