That night, I dreamed my whole life over again from childhood into adolescence and adulthood and passed the present as an old woman. I rummaged in my bag for my dream diary and recorded as much as I could remember. Dreams, my dreams, and these lingering images fluttering just below my eyelids are prophetic and deeply intense. When I was young and free of responsibilities, I tried to sleep as much as possible, and the highlight of each and every day was the moment I was finally overtaken by that rare wave of trance that took me to a different, better world.I still dream every night without fail and every dream is filled with insanity. I remember them all, often down to every last tactile detail. I found very quickly that other’s dreams were not like mine. Most had dreams of embarrassment (being naked) or anxiety (teeth) and most dreams took place in public, recognized settings. They say you wake before you die, but I often die before I wake.
This trip weaved in all my dreams of the past, those that had repeated themselves many times before. I stood in the sun and stretched. Walking down to the resort, I left my knapsack buried in the grass behind me. I took a newspaper off a stand on the street. In my pocket, all my fingers closed around was a penny and some loose lint. I straightened my hair and clothes and smelled myself. While walking towards the hotel, I picked some fruit off trees growing along the gated pool. I peeled back the skin, biting into the flesh and loving the feel of juice dribbling down and onto my chin. I rubbed the raw skin across my arms and chest. Then I scrutinized the hotel.
The front was elegant, a royally red awning shading the marble steps and the gold-chromed glass doors where several young men in suits stood around like toy soldiers, pushing carts of luggage in through the doors, or grinned as they slid into the front seats of luxury cars entrusted to them (perhaps foolishly). I held my head high and walked passed them and into the lobby, svorski Chrystal turtles shining on every surface. I borrowed a pen from the front desk and, ignoring the stares of vacationers in slinky bikinis and dress suits. I turned over the newspaper and began to write: when I was a child…
When I was a child I was afraid of the world.
Not the realm of the wild, unmolested and free,
or the sunflower fields that grounded my dreams,
but of man and his metal (one profits, one schemes);
of humanity and destruction (one follows, one leads).
When I was a recluse I was afraid of my mind,
or of knowledge, or memory, or the strength of its lock.
The security of my key was threatened by crime,
by distorted perceptions that turned truths into lies.
In my dreams I was a saint in a sanctuary of nuns,
of craned necks and yellowed scripts more precious than gold.
in an instant I watched a fire expand and explode,
swallowed whole, willing me to salvage their bindings exposed.
When I was a woman I lost hold of my soul.
With death just a theory, I’d nothing to show
but trivial pleasures which wasted my years.
At age forty-eight I lifted my face;
my beauty was enigma, my smile but a sneer.
When I was a corpse in a grave no visitors came.
I closed my eyes to the dirt and envisioned my sins:
from ashes to fields of shallow holes, my dreaming begins
in room without windows where I peel off my skin.
And as the shreds fall, red-brown and new, to the ground
I left as I’d entered; unnoticed and without sound.
When I finally set the pen down and scanned over my words, an hour or so had passed and the sun seemed impossibly bright and wonderful outside. The guests seemed to disagree with me, holding away from the rays filtering in, sheltered in their pretty glass box. I returned the pen and folded the torn, written piece of newspaper into my pocket. I felt suddenly claustrophobic and left the lobby, venturing into the edge of a golf course that went on for miles and miles, so much so that the guests had to be driven around while golfing, lest they faint from exhaustion. I shed my shirt and shoes and walked barefoot in my bra across the perfectly trimmed grass. I felt the tickling of sprinklers as they slowly, staggeringly, turned on. I forgot about everything as I danced, arms to the horizon, spinning and soaking and ink running down my leg as my words bled into each other and then into me.
I whipped my hair out of my face, but my toes caught the edge of a sprinkler head and before I knew what was happening, I was falling forward and into outstretched arms.
