I’ve never seen your mother, but I imagined her in a dream to be nothing like the woman I imagine she is when I’m awake. In my dream she’s young and artistic, long hair that falls in wisps and commas. In reality, I think of her as frail, translucent hands like the skin of onions, age spots. Ready, not to snap, but for bits of her bones to splinter off. In my dream, because I loved you, I preserved her for you. She was young and naked; she looked about 40. She was dead. I laid her in a claw-foot tub and submerged her in water. I worried she’d float up. Once the water covered her completely, I took thick waffle weave blankets, everything white and clean, and enshrined her. You could no longer see the tub at all, not even the feet of it. I was proud of my work when I saw you, so proud I almost forgot to offer my condolences. I figured it went without saying, as so much does between us.
Then you were going back to boarding school. They gave you a car called "a pool," and you asked, "so why did you get a town car, and I get a pool?" And I wondered, who’d want to drive, not be driven in, but actually drive a town car? That’s like getting a Bentley and not having a driver. What’s the point? Maybe I need more sleep.
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today is my daughter's 3rd birthday and STILL everytime i am able to lay down in bed in peace and quiet and go to sleep i let out a silent sigh of relief and think FINALLY!! SLEEP!!! I am grateful for every good night's rest i get and never ever take it for granted any more….things like this are never mentioned in those parent's manuals…oh wait, those still don't exist!
Dreams are eerie…this post is quite poetic.
Odd you should post about a dream! I had a weird one too last night. I was on the plankway of an oil tanker and my boy twin ran straight into the water. I couldn't get under the fence and a former friend of mine fished him out of the water. He wasn't moving and I kept saying, "you only fell in for a minute! you're barely wet! why aren't you breathing?" I started wailing in my sleep. It was ferocious and like nothing I've ever felt awake. Maybe primal is more like the sound. It woke me up. That split second of that lingering feeling of doom was shattered when in walked the dreamed of child with a big smile and a "HI MOMMY!" Creepy, but you're right… at least it's sleep :) Enjoy your weekend.
Other people's dreams are as interesting as
lists of factoids at cocktail parties…
Colleen, I also just had a dream in which my son was killed it was awful, I woke gasping and crying. There is nothing worse than visualizing your absolute worst fears in a dream. The panic is like sinking in quicksand….slowley. SK, what a interesting post, very descriptive. My first car was a VW, we called 'THE THUMB.
I can't really say how, but you reminded me of this poem:
By a route obscure and lonely,
Haunted by ill angels only,
Where an Eidolon, named NIGHT,
On a black throne reigns upright,
I have reached these lands but newly
From an ultimate dim Thule-
From a wild clime that lieth, sublime,
Out of SPACE- out of TIME.
Bottomless vales and boundless floods,
And chasms, and caves, and Titan woods,
With forms that no man can discover
For the tears that drip all over;
Mountains toppling evermore
Into seas without a shore;
Seas that restlessly aspire,
Surging, unto skies of fire;
Lakes that endlessly outspread
Their lone waters- lone and dead,-
Their still waters- still and chilly
With the snows of the lolling lily.
By the lakes that thus outspread
Their lone waters, lone and dead,-
Their sad waters, sad and chilly
With the snows of the lolling lily,-
By the mountains- near the river
Murmuring lowly, murmuring ever,-
By the grey woods,- by the swamp
Where the toad and the newt encamp-
By the dismal tarns and pools
Where dwell the Ghouls,-
By each spot the most unholy-
In each nook most melancholy-
There the traveller meets aghast
Sheeted Memories of the Past-
Shrouded forms that start and sigh
As they pass the wanderer by-
White-robed forms of friends long given,
In agony, to the Earth- and Heaven.
For the heart whose woes are legion
'Tis a peaceful, soothing region-
For the spirit that walks in shadow
'Tis- oh, 'tis an Eldorado!
But the traveller, travelling through it,
May not- dare not openly view it!
Never its mysteries are exposed
To the weak human eye unclosed;
So wills its King, who hath forbid
The uplifting of the fringed lid;
And thus the sad Soul that here passes
Beholds it but through darkened glasses.
By a route obscure and lonely,
Haunted by ill angels only,
Where an Eidolon, named NIGHT,
On a black throne reigns upright,
I have wandered home but newly
From this ultimate dim Thule.
E.A.Poe
Dude, I'm drunk right now and this post still doesn't make sense. Weird. But, in a good, greek tragedy stephanie way.
Here's what I want to know: What the heck did you eat before you dreamt that up?
your interview link isn't your interview anymore. You may want to change the link to their archives.
Very interesting blog! You've made my bookmarks!