Three Dreams

Three dreams

To quote the great Wendell Berry, “This is a work of fiction. There is nothing in it that has not been imagined.”

Chapter One: The Daymare

Like listening to candy on wheels, like the catharsis of a punk song when you’re miserable, like rubbing your hair on a sticky pavement and coming up for air when it feels glued down, June Rudolf wanted to take a nap in bliss and she wanted to cut her hair all the way off. She settled for focusing on the unexpected tattoo of a crescent moon on the back of the woman in front of her, simply to take her mind off the feeling she might sway so far to the left during her boyfriend’s set that she would fall over.

She felt as one cast in the miry clay; imagine if an actress found herself on stage, and yet the ground was made up of a messy clay, a stinking mess, the most revolting clay imaginable. Like mud after rain, but gray and dark and leaving a stain upon her garments, she felt tangled amidst an impervious goo. She found a spider web on her walk to the venue, and the wind blew a soft leaf into it, as she watched it dance like a tumbleweed into tangles.

June wore high heels, a short black skirt, and a silky gray blouse with puffy sleeves. She loved her boyfriend more than the stars love the moon. She had met Jackson for dinner that night, after his old routine set at the Blue Owl, and the time they had together afterward could be described as full of wonder. They adjourned from the dinner table to her private deck, and she chided him for having dirty hands. “It’s not my fault they’re dirty. I’ve been in a dirty world all day,” he said. She laughed and teased that he should have a brown flower tattooed to his hand for how often he made that statement. He laughed, flashed his huge grin, and gently nudged her shoulder. Then he spread his arms wide and pulled her into a hug.

She was very private; she liked to keep her feelings inside and pent up. What June didn’t want to share with others her intense daydreams of phantasms and visitors. These specters and apparitions appeared in her waking life, unexpected but always disturbing. Despite her desire to keep it inside, she found the courage to tell Jackson about her morning. She went walking with her daughter Rosemary as usual, and today the sun was out and wild strawberries cheerfully dotted the edges of their walk, like punctuation. She expected nothing out of the ordinary, which is usually when the most newfangled events occur.

Exclaiming about the strong gushes of wind, they looked like twins with their long, dark hair flowing down their backs, matching dark eyes. It was to her surprise, then, that she had a frightening daydream at this moment with her daughter, and as she awakened and was coming into a delirious alertness and self-awareness, she remembered her dream. A daydream seemed, to her, an unexpected curse. She would have much preferred a nightmare she could awaken from to escape.

They were walking on a sidewalk that wrapped to the left of a duck pond at Mallard Conservatory. They followed the jigsaw pattern of rocks on the walkway, and she noticed the trees with bark in diamond patterns like argyle socks. They held hands and she gripped more tightly, mother’s instinct told June to keep her daughter close. Her own soul felt simultaneously devastated, as if darkness and light could be braided together, entwined in an eternal fate of nothingness.

As they were chatting lightly and enjoying the cool Spring day, a cold wind pushed a duck in their direction, and as it neared, it changed forms and became a ghastly genie. He still looked like a duck, but like a demon, he had greyish brown skin, a strange topknot that looked like a tadpole, and vampire teeth with blood dripping off his giant fangs. June backed up instinctively.

She imagined her hair getting stuck to the sticky pavement and she could see demons surround her like they did the monster. Each demon had to repeatedly cut his hair from the sticky grey goo, as it grew longer they would find themselves entwined in it again. They scraped their foreheads against rough, jagged pavement trying to extricate themselves from the grasp of his morass there on the shores of the pond.

The mere look of him made June feel frightened that he would drag her, and the impression, and the impulse one so often feels in dream, was that he wanted her to live with him at the bottom of the duck pond. He wanted to take her to the clay where she would struggle to live, struggle to keep living and not drown, though she knew his constant companionship would be a living struggle, like a fire burning the very clothes on your back.

At the sight of this terrifying figure, her daughter shrieked and shrinked away. Not another tantrum, June thought. June was sympathetic to the girl’s fear. It was as if something like a wasp’s nest or a hornet’s stinger were being held over her head. She was surprised to notice that Rosemary also saw this visitor from another realm. However, her daughter had lately thrown temper tantrums about various things. She didn’t want to eat a certain thing, she didn’t want to change out of her yucky pajamas, she didn’t want to sit at home bored or have another conversation. June had become accustomed to daily exasperation.

June felt that she would be gently led as she took care of her children, but even the most patient person would someday be called to account with a difficult child in tow. Rosemary was beautiful, strong-willed, and easily disturbed from peacefulness. She tried to handle the tantrums by taking her to see the doctor. She felt that each time they visited, she would learn something new about her daughter’s health, development, and forecast for the future. Often she would put her shiny best self forward but she found herself struggling more and more with an intuitive introspection and a hyper-sensitivity to the moods of others.

Preparing for these visits, she would brush out the tangles from her daughter’s hair and tame them into two braids. Rosemary never objected to having her hair done. Yet in public, Rosemary did not hesitate to make a scene. June’s sensitivity to others’ disapproval was obnoxious to herself and others, and it created problems at times when she needed to be strong and impervious to the whims of the world. The way she accounted for moods was by psycho-spiritual-analzying people and this was not accomplishing what she hoped it would. It was making her life more difficult.

Of all of her difficulties you could say she could open her hands and let them go, she could take the thorns and throw them like rocks in a stream. She could not psychoanalyze her toddler again! She felt that a higher power would know better what to do with her perpetual worry about relationships. But she could not psycho-analyze a specter or a ghost, whether it be real or in a dream.

*************

She remembered now why she thought herself a failure. She had gone down that road and it seemed prosperous and lovely at the time. It started by eating one spicy meal with a friend. His name was Jackson and he was the most handsome man she had ever met. He was funny, hard-working, with big eyes and a lot of creativity and hope about life. He loved to party, he could run for miles, he could gain 100 pounds of muscle in three weeks, he loved climbing and art, played music, adored discussing offbeat culture, and he was happy even when hungover. Worst of all, for she knew he liked her a lot, she could tell their friendship was making him better. He wanted to be exceptional- a scholar with a lucrative job and a hook or pitch that would seal the deal forever.

However, she found herself preoccupied by feelings of jealousy. She tried to stir up trouble and strife and she went after it. Self-loathing was a tangled knot she took solace in from time to time. She knew she was getting older, and wrinkles and bodily changes confirmed this hunch. “I’m sure you never had crushes,” she thought, as she remembered her daughter’s father, and it gouged her soul so sharply, like a white hot heat of pain, and she could have cried for three days straight. Yet she put on the cloak of disguise and kept going in the direction of a person who seemed needy for the attention that those in need of counsel wear. It ends with a toxic explosion in every case. The only hope for peace would be if someone in authority could be stronger than the victim. She wiped his name from her every device, and tablet. Deleted, undeleted. Deleted. She knew her strength would have to overcome the vice of an idol and a preoccupation.

She tried to figure out why Jackson held such sway. He was flirtatious like her. He flattered her. He put on a zany show for her. He made her laugh a lot and his stories were extremely specific and entertaining. She could tell he liked talking to her, and she could flatter him and it meant something to him. Her care for him was received and it was meaningful. He finally told her what he liked about her and she floated above the moon for days. Like licking an icecream cone heavier than his head, he liked talking about books.

In contrast, the one who promised to be there for her felt fatiguing. She was drained by meaningless events and ho-hum conversations. His hands were tied, his mind was preoccupied, his humor and happiness were on the same branch as her and it was too much pressure. The branch of faithfulness was dead, rotten, and sagging down to the earth. She couldn’t believe that his other branches were thriving, because she was suffering so much. Her panic attacks took her by the throat and pushed her against the wall, and the only sense she could make of it was that some divine force wanted to punish her endlessly.

She only saw two options before her, but she knew there was a third. The third way- the way of virtue as she knew it- seemed so difficult it would be absolutely impossible. But because she couldn’t depend on his branch of faithfulness, all of her branches grew wild until he chopped them down. Then he took an ax to the base of the branches of the tree, not at the root but at the stem, and chopped down everything. He was wildly swinging at the roots and thus, she completely hid herself from him.

How could the two that had been made one become whole again? She knew it was only through counsel with someone stronger. She was living what she knew, and the faith she put in him had always been shaggy and shabby. Now they were living a nightmare and the idea of faithfulness and holiness was on the line. Someone had to hold the line for them. Someone long-term needed to stay there and hold the line.