A collaboration between Judith Serin and Masami Inoue.
Judith Serin is a dreamer–a very vivid dreamer—and when we at Broad Street read her work, it sparked a lively conversation. We’re a nonfiction magazine, but who’s to say that dreams, with their jumble of memories and images and things we’ve never seen, aren’t a kind of reality in a world for which we don’t yet have a map?
To say the least, we were intrigued, and we had to think of a way to bring the debate to our readers. What follows is the first installment of what will be a weekly series called Dream Geographies, a collaboration between Serin and artist Masami Inoue. The two came from different backgrounds to meet at the California College of the Arts in San Francisco’s Bay Area, and the project reflects some of their shared landscape.
So here, in anticipation of our print issue “Maps & Legends” (available in May 2016), is “Map of Dreams,” by Judith Serin and Masami Inoue. Further pieces will appear each Thursday for the next month.
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“Map of Dreams”
I start out sloshing through New York City slush in high heels I haven’t worn in waking life for decades and stockings I’ve never worn. Then a change of coasts. A group of us are driving near the University of California Berkeley campus, looking for a dream park called Tam Grove. I say, “It’s on the map; Golden Gate Park is on the map, so it’ll be too.” Sure enough, on the San Francisco map from the glove compartment, Golden Gate Park is near the Berkeley campus, aligned north/south instead of its actual east/west. And Tam Grove is where I expected it to be, in the center of the map’s southernmost section. When I wake, I realize that the dream combined not only Berkeley and San Francisco but also Marin County and San Francisco — Tam Grove from Mount Tamalpais and Stern Grove. And later I think of how my history was mapped by the dream — the East Coast, Berkeley, and finally San Francisco, my dreams taking me to my past in a time when my bad back won’t let me travel far.
Judith Serin is the author of the poetry collection Hiding in the World, and her work has appeared in numerous magazines and anthologies, including The Ohio Journal, Writer’s Forum, Nebraska Review, Colorado State Review, Proposing on the Brooklyn Bridge, and When Last on the Mountain. She presents these pieces with gratitude to Betsy Davids.
Masami Inoue, who also works under the name Masa, is a Japanese-American artist who has lived on both coasts of the United States. Most recently she has been studying and working in the Bay Area, where she and Serin began their collaboration. She creates both digitally and traditionally, focusing on watercolor as her medium.
