The dreaming writer and his muse enter the garden, leaving their fig leaves at the gate. Now alone and denuded of all manner of covering, they are happier beyond belief, for there are no longer the obstacles of shame and separation, nor the judgments of others. There is only the writer with his imagined muse, dwelling and playing within God’s heavenly garden, where every tangible need is provided for.
Tag: Dreams & Nightmares
Dad’s cloud
The local townsfolk call it Old Albert’s Place, located on the north side of the crater, near the bunkers, a few miles off of Route 18. “Can’t miss it,” they tell me with raised eyebrows. “Just follow the dirt road to the end. It is still passable, despite the winter rains last year. Watch out for the potholes and radioactive stuff. Good luck, mister!”
And so I walk…
Elephant in the room
This was the last leg of our father & son trip, to cross the Canadian border and explore the innards of another country, a first for both of us. But Dad always ran his tires into the ground, until they were bald and ready to bust open, and so there was always a 50/50 chance of losing a tire on a long trip. And this time we were on the wrong end of 50/50.
I began hearing the sound earlier, but said nothing, hoping the road was just old and noisy, keeping my eye on Dad’s involuntary expressions. Dad turned towards the driver’s side window several times, looked into the rear view mirror, wrinkling his forehead a bit, and then refocusing on the road. Once or twice he looked at me for a second and said nothing, wondering if I’d been hearing it too, but I said nothing. We did this kind of silent inquisition often, keeping elephants in the room as long as possible before acknowledging them, hoping they’d run off. But this beast was staying and getting bigger, Dad and I finally looking all over, window to window, mirror to mirror, getting more nervous.
Sleepwalking
I felt “watched” whenever the moonlight streamed into my bedroom window at night, paranoid that God used the moon as his lookout – probing me from there with his powerful flashlight. I didn’t want “him” to see what I daydreamed about in my bedroom. Not that it was anything bad or abnormal for a 12 year old, but I didn’t want my parents finding out and meddling in my private stuff.
The shrinking of Isaac
The shrink in my dream told me that a little piece of “something” is who I am. He showed me a tiny, hairlike splinter on his pinky finger, to demonstrate just how small this “something” may be. He asked me to consider that this minuscule fragment of “something” has been the real me, the only real part of me, since it formed during the earliest days of my life. And that before that time, I did not exist as an identity of any kind, but only as a formless blob of competing needs, fears, perceptions, and instincts. One day, the shrink explained, a tiny part of the blob solidified around something, such as an unfulfilled, infantile need or childish wish, and this hardened piece created a wall around itself and separated from the rest of the blob, becoming me.
Notes from David 