Dream Path

“I see again the generosity of dream geography, giving me places from many periods of my life at once …”

The final (for now) installment of the collaboration between poet Judith Serin and artist Masami Inoue. The series will resume in January.

I keep thinking of a path I dreamt years ago, wondering why I remember it. Maybe I dreamt it more than once; there are dream places I return to repeatedly. I’m walking on a San Francisco hill, the dream geography version—steeper, slightly more rural, with larger spaces between the houses and more trees. Still San Francisco, though: I recognize the altered neighborhoods that recur in my dreams. At the edge of one is a narrow woods—trees, vines, leaves patterned with light. A dirt path the red of New Jersey shale from my childhood curves through it, lined with ripe blackberries warm in the sun, and I see again the generosity of dream geography, giving me places from many periods of my life at once. It seems to me now that sometimes I choose to walk the path to the other side and sometimes I turn back, looking for the bus home I never take in waking life.

Judith Serin is the author of the poetry collection Hiding in the World, and her work has appeared in numerous magazines and anthologies, includingThe 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 primary medium.

About the Series

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 June 2016), is “Dream Path,” by Judith Serin and Masami Inoue. It’s the final installment—for now—of the Dream Geography series. See “Map of Dreams,” “Dream of San Francisco,” “Dream Architecture: New Views,” “Dream Architecture: Outside/In,” and “Dream Architecture: Big Houses” on our website.