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a dream
February 01, 2006
last night, at about 2:30, i awoke from a dream. it was more unusually cohesive and epic than most of the dreams i'd known, or felt, before.i wrote down what i could, and reconstructed the rest today.
i can't remember how it began. i know, fuzzily, that amber and i revisited somewhere we had been in my dreams before, a simple, easy place, with an outdoor stage. afterwards, we left, and went to where she lived, a large, older brick structure, so much like the older dorms in the quad at the university of texas, where mary lived and i spent so much time. except this building stood in a neighboorhood, and was surrounded by more darkness than the carothers dorm.
we walked through the interior, grabbed a few beers from the fridge in a darkened kitchen, and moved through an area where her roommates and friends were congregated, hanging out. they were real, in the sense that i didn't recognize all of them, but as characters, they were as they should have been. they were inhabitants of the subculture that part of me yearns for, that sees values in different things than so many of my peers do. it's not that it's right, but it's different, but yet no less valid. i felt welcome, though with a little of the conspicuousness that i feel in my waking times.
we walked outside, across a yard that was pleasant, though not so well-manicured. i followed slightly behind, picking my way through the darkness, and when i looked up, amber was in a swing, already moving in low, long arcs through the night. i looked up, and one of the other swings was tangled, and moving across her path, but it kept tangling in the chains of her swing, and moving away, twisting.
i looked up, and could just barely see the branches the swings were hung from, on the branches of trees that seemed to be oaks, but impossibly high, like no oaks i had ever seen.
i looked at how high she swung, and i asked her, "i guess i shouldn't bring these beers up with me, should i?"
she laughed, and it reminded me of the message on her cell phone's voice mail, an odd laugh at some inside joke, before she says, "this is amber, please leave a message."
this time, the laugh, then, "no, probably not."
i walked towards the swing, then time flashed forwards. we were back at the house, on a large patio. an older man sat on the edge, well-dressed, but his feet dangling off, his eyes looking into the darkness.
his face was old, wisened, disturbed, but kind. it was a composite sketch of physical traits that followed from character traits. i knew from his complexion and his speech and even his clothing, the simple but elegant white shirt and black pants, that he was cuban.
he asked me what had happened. amber stood behind me at the door. she watched, and i felt some comfort from that, but she didn't interfere.
still, i knew what he wanted to know. i knelt beside him. i spoke in spanish. i apologized for the poor quality of it, but he smiled wanly and said it was alright, that he appreciated the courtesy.
i told him that we had resisted it. that i felt guilty, knowing she had pledged herself to another. we had done our best to ignore the obvious, we had tried to remain friends, that she, too, had resisted, but our efforts had failed in the face of youth and immediacy and, i said, love.
when i finished, he nodded, and thanked me. he told me he understood how these things happened. he did not seem to judge me, but he told me that now things were different, and i felt the sadness in him of fates altered, in the dictates of rules that went beyond the wants and dicates of the heart.
i turned, and it was still amber, but maybe it was not. i don't know who she spoke of, but she told me that now, she could no longer marry her boyfriend, her supposed intended. now, it fell to her to marry another, a relative several times removed, for whom she felt nothing.
amber and i walked back out across the yard, back to the swings. we were quiet. i heard a voice calling out behind us, and i turned to see the father on the patio. i told her i'd go back to see what was happening.
i began to walk, then, as i tend to do these days, i began to jog, and my strides slowly lengthened and quickened until i felt the joy of wind in my ears and the feel of the balls of my feet only briefly touching the earth.
as i approached the house, i heard sounds behind me, and i turned, and saw four dogs running out of the darkness after me. i was not afraid. i looked back ahead, and saw three more appear. i slowed on the gravel leading to the back door of the house, and the dogs surrounded me, their faces friendly, their paws gentle on my legs and on my chest as i knelt to pet them.
i left them and went inside, and up the stairs, to a brightly lit but small room, so much like the dorm rooms where mary and her friends lived, but even older. the room was full, of women in flowing white gowns, their faces covered in hoods of white cotton and gauze, with characters in black ink down the center of the hoods.
i saw the father, and i went to him and asked what was happening, and he looked up at me with a mixture of certainty and sadness, and told me that they were preparing for the wedding of his daughter to another man, whom she did not love.
i felt fear and guilt and remorse, and i ran out of the room, past the women who were lining up to begin the wedding procession.
i ran down the stairs, and the wide double doors at the end of the atrium were open to a small courtyard with a pool. i saw my friend michele there, waiting, and i knew that she knew what was happening.
she said my name, and pleaded with me to stop, and she reached out to grab me, to stop me from what i knew looked like a headlong, panicked rush into madness. but she only caught hold of something that draped over me, the lightest of gauzes, like a thin veil across my eyes, and i saw it pull away in her hand, my vision becoming slightly clearer.
as i ran past, i told her that i had to find her, and as i ran outside, the night became a storm.
lightning flashed, and water ran in sheets, planar flow across the yards and in the streets. i saw workers with shovels and sandbags, and i thanked them for their efforts, even as i looked through the water that poured over my face for amber, for my friend, for my one friend with many names.
i called her name repeatedly, and tasted the rain in my mouth each time. i looked back in fear at the procession gathering on the patio, and i kept calling her name.
then i woke up.
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notes
tonight, i shared the story with amber. when i told her about the swing, she pulled her sleeve down, and pointed at her wrist.
i looked, felt dim, said, "what?"
i saw she was pointing at her one tattoo, that i always see as a stick figure of a reindeer. she reminded me that it was a swing, hanging from a tall tree.
as i told her about the dogs appearing out of the night, her eyes grew wide, and she told me that in the same night of my dream, at about the same time of my dream, she had dreamt of dogs chasing her.
i felt last night, but recognized intellectually today, that amber is a stable, steadfast point of reason in my life right now, just as she was the non-interfering, but comforting and protecting observer in my dream.
the father of a past love, the most significant one, is cuban, though i never met him. some of you know the rest of that story. hi, fgm...
at one point, i had an... encounter with a girl whose father i consider a friend. she has a fake boyfriend.
i have another friend, whose name i called out in the storm, that suffered a problem with her parents not accepting the culture and religion of a man she loved.
and finally, oddly, but understandably, i really did speak spanish in my dream. when i woke, i remembered what i had said, without having to go through the thought process of translation that i usually have to go through in the first stages of speaking in another language. and as evidenced by my attempts to speak spanish later today, i was slightly more fluent in my dream than i am waking.
i know what some of this means, clearly. but there are so many new questions...
Posted by Rob at February 1, 2006 12:39 AM