Collecting images and setting them aside to be discovered later

the room
here in Bellingham
outside my door
I see a creature
looking in
watching me
studying me
I am at the end of a long hallway
struggling against a gravity
that keeps me in place
I want to confront the creature
outside the door
but I am held
by invisible bonds
as if I were in a world
full of viscous fluid
the creature is now rattling the knob
its head is a surreal polygon
another shifting polygon inside of this
is a mouth full of isosceles triangles
stalks like those of a snail
are what I presume to be eyes
sensory appendages
as forbidding as the creature is
I am not certain
if it is friend or foe
what its intentions are
as I struggle to move
I become aware
I am dreaming
and make mental notations
of the dream
to be re-collected later
the creature is still active
outside the door
and I am still struggling
but another part of me
is collecting images and
setting them aside
to be discovered later

I wake up
go to the bathroom
mentally reminding myself
of the dream
I go back to sleep
begin to dream again
another dream
but I choose not to remember it
because I am interested
in the previous dream
I had set aside
not the dream itself
but the space within my mind
where the image elements
of the dream to be remembered
had been placed
while dreaming another dream
I paused to ask myself
if I need to wake up
and write the previous dream down
then
like a man in a curio shop
going over to a table
where he had previously placed
a few unusual objects
to be examined later
I knew
I would be able to return
to that same table
look at those objects
and remember their significance
a comforting aura
of potential remembrance
surrounded these thoughts

I am reminded now
of when I first learned
a new fundamental truth
in elementary school
for instance,
the relationship
between division and multiplication
12 things divided 3 times resulted in 4 sections
a / b = x
and 12 is equivalent to 3 of (times) those 4 sections
a = xb
the inverse relationship between the two
a / b has a solution in a = xb
I had learned
an algebraic axiom
that was true for any number substituted
and I remember how
it "dawned" upon me as a kid
that "of course, that's true!"

as to what the mnemonic axiom
is for setting aside a set of memories
within a dream
to be recollected later
I am unable to articulate
but I believe I am on the verge of
learning something
fundamental about the process
of remembering dreams
and of memory itself