*
J began to dream of those who were dead -- in the last dream of the night -- and the people were quite alive in his dream -- and the dream itself was therefore quite alive in leaving him in his own perplexity and wakefulness. Well it was half wakefulness, like a heavy weight on the heart, slowing its forward movement. The weight was the dream itself and the dead people in it. There was his sister Una, carrying a book. Didn't she always have a book with her? She was soaked with the water that was said to have drowned her and carried her away. But the book itself was dry. And the club hostess shooed them forward, saying: Sit down. Sit down. We must move along. Everything is appearance. But (J said) I have to call my mom -- that is, my stepmom. Can't just sit down. So the staff brought a phone to the table, just as in some decadent German night club that one had not ever really heard of, it was so quaint and unimportant. Something in Isherwood maybe.
Are we in a boat? Una asked. Why does everything seem to be rocking? Oh, he said, that is the pyramidal neurons swaying and leaning forward -- they wish to form coalitions, they stretch their hands, trying to link. To link is to think, just as to rhyme is to climb. Ooo but this crowd makes it all sooooo hard -- I mean, just to think -- how hard it is just to think. This was not just anybody, this crowd of neurons was so select.
So these were the rich. (Psalm 74) Everyone here was middle aged but pretending not to be, and not at all liberal but pretending to be. The clothes were of the finest material and of the most gently sloping cut. Not Botoxed like faces. The folds fell sadly like children. This was fashion! Why fashion? Its purpose was to make you feel small and this was accomplished. You did. The nonbelievers smirked and the neurons fired and the dance music sort of slid across the speaker like beer-soaked boots. The floor did tilt like a deceptive boat. And look there was Estelle at last! My beloved stepmom. J's mere touch of the dial of the phone, just that alone, had awakened her or lifted her decal loose -- from the oblivion to which it was affixed -- as skin comes loose in a swimming pool. This is the loose the loss the pull of the moon. How it hurts.
Estelle of course was wearing the threadbare this-and-that clothes she always wore, her mind always on other more important things. The ladies looked at her with that certain look, the suavest of gotchas.
She moved forward, bumping into things, looking for someone. She bumped into a wall. She stood there looking at it, not moving. Unable to back up, just unable.
And I? I felt that urge one has around an old person, to help them, to right them, as if brusquely, with impatience and fretfulness, a state of emotion that helps no one, so I felt, yes I did, anger that she was there, that she was as if alive, disordering the laid down scheme of things in which she had passed away, we'd buried her and cried our eyes out. It was horrible but it happened, why is it unhappening??? And my sister Una looked at me in horror. This gift -- this rift -- this gift, why are you not accepting? Oh I needed you, Doctor Sam! No not Doctor but Father. Father Sam. I needed you to calm me down and point me once again to -- to the one you sort of represent or promote or feebly evoke -- the one, divine, the one, whom I must wake up to remember and I cannot wake.
*
A couple passed chatting: "It got so bad that babies couldn't share food."
Here is what I will say in conclusion. The neurons reach forward into what is eventually a black place, which they don't cross nor do they come out of it, not even mangled, on the other side. No, Father, the black place is simply there in my head and nothing crosses it. And no one explains it nor does it ask to be explained. And I am in the center of the blackness, sitting at a table by myself in a windowless room. And the rationalists never succeed in tidying this room. And I do feel closest to God when I am sitting there. But all alone, my love. Apparently it must be that way.
*
So Una walked over to the old woman and began gently pulling her, then she turned her 180 degrees, it was like resetting a dial. The woman looked over at me and was a total stranger, someone else's mom or stepmom. And Una herself, she looked so unfamiliar, a pretty girl, the kind that single guys open doors for. She was blinking and steadying herself as the floor rocked and I said to myself: Wait, Una's dead too. So who is that woman?
It was like a contagion. And I reached my hands to touch myself, to make sure I was really there, but that never works in a dream. The body seemed to be gently blowing against my hands, like a gentle puff of air that goes and comes. A garment that the dream itself was taking off. And the phone rang urgently but no one picked it up.
Lord, put me back together!
*
In the morning J woke up clinging to the ceiling -- or to the heating duct that abutted the ceiling. Sam stood on the floor where a human would normally be. He was tapping his foot.
Get on down now. No point.
There was no point in wasting breath saying don't know how. The frozen shoulders were an easy read.
Okay. Number one, Sam said. If you're going to fall just make it an act of grace. Fall gracefully, you might as well. Right?
Number two. Go into God. Just fold into that darkness that you dread so much. If God is everywhere God must be there, right? If God is there, maybe you'll find, well, at least the breath of your sister and your mom. So why be afraid, right?
I was afraid of my own longing to die but anyway, that was an old story, it was better to go somewhere new instead. I let go of the vent and stepped forward and then I was on the rug panting. This time I woke up for good. The priest was standing there. The room began to rock like a boat. Home!
*
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