The experience of fear is not an observer of it; he is fear itself, the very instrument of fear. -J. Krishnamurti In dreams I descend into the cave of my past: a child with a morgue-tag on its toe, the terrible metal squeaking of the morgue-drawers, & the chilly basement & the slam of doors. Or else I am setting up dreamhouse, with the wife of my second ex-husband. She complains of him with breaking sorrow- & I comfort her. (She only married him, it seems, for me). Sometimes I wake up naked in Beverly Hills- the table set for ten, a formal dinner- a studio chief on my left side, a fabled actor on my right. Across the table, Greta Garbo, Scott Fitzgerald, John F. Kennedy & Marilyn Monroe- & I alone not properly dressed for dinner, & besides unprepared for the final exam, in which our immortality will be tested, & one of us shall perish as dessert. Send parachutes & kisses! Send them quick! I am descending into the cave of my own fear. My feet are weighted with the leg-irons of the past. The elevator plummets in the shaft. trapped, trapped in the bowels of my dream, locked in the cellar by myself the jailer. Rats and spiders scuttle through the coal bin. I cower in the corner. I am fear.