I was roaming a brick city with my girl and an old friend of
mine. The friend isn’t real in my waking life; I had never met him before this
dream. But in the dream, we had a
history, a knowing. He was a childhood friend that joined the army and went to
Iraq. We didn’t feel comfortable around each other now that he was back, but
there was an unsaid faith between us that our friendship was deeper than
comfort. I wanted this friend to know I
was in love with Mariah. I wanted him to see what love is. When we got back to
his apartment, the walls were half painted and most of his things were still in
boxes. I knew when I walked in; it was going to take him a long time to let
somewhere be home. He brought out a box of pottery. He said “ I made these out
there, and somehow got them home in one piece.”
The bowls were crude and neutral toned, and I loved them. He may be
broken, but he brought something home that was intact. I saw that these bowls
were the things he was basing his sanity on. In my mind I said, “ The moment is now!” I
took one of the bowls into his dark carpeted bedroom and then took the ring out
of my pocket and placed it in the bowl. I came out to the livingroom with no
furniture and got down on my knees. I said,
“These bowls made it through a war because they were made from love, and
I want our love to be that strong.” I lifted the bowl with the ring in it to
her waist. She blushed and picked up the ring. The ring was the size of a
bracelet. He stood like stone, she
didn’t know what to do so she held the ring between two fingers. And it flopped
heavily between them. I cringed at the
sight of it. I had ordered the wrong thing. I tried to mold the thing in my
hands to fit her finger. Everyone just stood around quietly and watched.
Last night I had a dream that I wanted to hold you. We were with your friends at some cabin on a
northern beach. It was a vacation or a party or a celebration—something with
potlucks and balloons and people who haven’t seen each other in a while. You
let me hold you for a minute; your wet bathing suit soaking into my shirt, the
hot of my body and the cold of the ocean together was the best thing. Then you
ran away into the steel cut waves. I
followed you. But then you wanted to
move over to the side of the beach where the waves were a blur of blue and
green mountains; crushing the sand like a thousand drums. I told you I was
afraid of waves like that. You swam out to the tall sheer walls, and I waded by
the shore. I was pining for you, and watching you in the distance when I saw an
older man floating face down in the water. I slushed against the waist deep
green sea to get to him. I turned him over, and screamed, and screamed and
dragged his body in slowly and sloppily.
He was so heavy with water and muscle. When I got him into the gray
shore, the young men medics were there and they noticed he had a welt on the
back of his leg. One of the boys said he had been licked by a poisonous fish.
The poison rots parts of the body one by one and spreads with contact. IT IS
VERY CONTAGEOUS! I saw that his legs were black and emerald, his ears and parts
of his arms. They said, “You shouldn’t have touched him, you shouldn’t have
touched him!” and I said “ Are you saying I was supposed to watch a man dying
and turn away?” I looked down at my hands and two of my fingers were black and
charred and ready to fall off.
I didn’t care about the creek. I had heard that it was
getting polluted and that sketchy things were happening to people trying to
speak out against the corporation dumping into the creek. My boss, who was a student of mine earlier in
the year, was there. The creek ran behind the college where we went. She was trying to tell me how bad the creek
was and I was ignoring most of it. Then she said, “ Just come to look at it.” I
walked with her down the grassy hills to the creek bed. The creek was a puddle,
muddy with trash and sheets of Styrofoam and giants objects damning its thin
brittle waters. I felt sadness well up in me. I felt shame. I felt called to action. I went home and drew
up letters and speeches and maps. I was surrounded by paper with notes and
sketches on them. I needed a disguise in order to keep anonymity from the big
corporation. I drew up a superhero’s uniform. The next day I crashed a city
meeting about the creek. I was wearing a painted motorcycle helmet. I started
shouting over the speaker. I said, “ Denial will kill us.”
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