|
Instead of
Scotch or Seconal, you rely on lies to put yourself
to sleep at the end of another day you want to unremember
and fall into a dream from which you can't awake.
It starts out fine -- don't all nightmares do? You're watching a pretty
woman in a floaty summer dress, casually barefoot
as she performs the dance domestique -- folding
clothes, fluffing cushions, lighting candles, frying chicken, setting out the supper dishes.
But in dreams, as in life, nothing is as it seems.
You know her mundane routine has a secret meaning. This woman is no
mere hausfrau, but a master builder. She's erecting an edifice that
will forever stand, not made out of mortar and stone, but from the usual
items found in a well-appointed home: warm muffins,
fine
lace, crisp linens, fresh flowers, cut crystal, faces framed as they want to
be recalled, needlework samplers bestowing a benediction upon the house and
all within it. By power of will and the strength of her heart, she constructs
walls of unbreachable light to keep out the dark
and bedecks the impeccable rooms with hope like a halo of protection.
As she plies her craft, she chants a mantra: "Everything has
changed, everything will be fine, all is well, it's different this
time."
Someone arrives that the woman expects, a man you think you recognize and are
not glad to see. Wherever his shadow falls, a stain remains, and you
wonder how did he get into your perfect dream.
Suddenly you realize that you've been deceived – the woman isn't
really a master builder but a practitioner of illusion, performing her magic
arts for an audience of one. She can cast spells and bend spoons, pull
rabbits out of hats and make playing cards change from jokers and clubs to
kings and hearts, read minds and foretell
futures without wrinkles or spots. But the enchantment fails, the mood
turns foul and the man changes before your eyes, familiarity falling from him
like cracked shellac, though the woman doesn't seem to notice.
"Can't you see he's a stranger in a clever disguise?" you cry, but
your voice is weak and the woman is blind. Like a fall from grace,
everything goes awry in the scene and you are no longer an observer but have
become the woman in the dream, afraid because a storm has begun to rage.
The wind roars, shaking the house and rattling your bones, the walls
rain down blows as they crumble and fall. As you race across rooms carpeted
with broken glass, the floor buckles beneath your feet and under the
structure you've crafted with such care, you suddenly realize there is no
foundation.
Now you're outside, on a deserted nighttime street, and you're still not safe
because the storm isn't over. The thunder rumbles like a voice coming
closer and closer, the air is electrified with the smell of peril, the
lightning's bony fingers reach out of the darkness and you are its target.
You see your car parked at the curb, but you don't have the keys. You
frantically wave at a passing cab, but the driver refuses to stop and you
remember you have no money. All the doors on the block are closed and
locked, the windows shut tight,
curtains drawn and everyone inside is pretending there's nobody home.
You have nowhere to go to escape the storm, so you hide in the bushes,
cowering where dogs lift their legs and debris collects in dirty heaps,
calling upon saints and stars, crying to heaven for a providential sign.
But the only thing you see is the man in the moon's face, no longer
silvery and smiling over lovers' wooings and entwinings, but pockmarked and jeering at lives of woe
and unhappy endings.
Now you recall what you've tried to forget -- you live in a landscape turned
cruel and tricky, where promises are lies and vows are ties that bind until
they hurt, and love and pain are one and the same, where peace is only the
eye of a ceaseless storm and any building can fall down.
You awake with a jolt and drag yourself out of bed to put on French roast and
forgetfulness. You comb the twigs out of your hair, wash the blood and
grass off your bare feet, repair the battered face, broom the shattered glass
and salvage scattered treasures, scrape up last night's supper splattered
like road kill on the floor, groom the ravaged rooms and proclaim the start
of a brand-new day.
And though you believe in the tarot's omniscience and the talisman's
protection, the presence of angels and assurance of answered prayer, the
power of positive thinking and the force of unfailing faith, the eternal
grace of infinite deities and innate goodness of human souls and the
capability of unconditional love to erase every sin, the front door
unexpectedly bursts open and the reality you deny is upon you once again.
|
