First there was the usual chaotic assortment of vivid, random images --- a skunk cuddled into a box, discovered by a group of people disagreeing on the correct response, and Joan feared one would alarm the small beast into producing the fetid squirting. Somewhere under the dream she knew the critter was hunting past her house, leaving whiffs behind him. In and about the skunk stench the dream moved to a huge kitchen. Then there was an abundance of fishes, laid out headless in preparation for cooking, large salmon and steelhead, fresh smelling and shiny, dripping sea water onto the floor. Onions, garlic, and tomatoes stewed, and around those moved an assortment of happy friends, cooking, remarking, watching, smiling. The faces of the friends were unfamiliar, but in this dream she knew them and watched them warmly, enjoying the bustle and the pungency of the food.
"Where's the saffron?" One of the cooking friends was looking at her, head cranked around and she knew that this huge shining kitchen was hers, that one of her daydreams now had come to join in the pillow fantasy.
"It's in the panel of spices," and Joan was relaying information, helping these sprightly dream folk with their concoctions.
"Salmon in a rich, spicy broth, sourdough bread, avocados with a buttery olive oil, and a light Malbec. What do you think, Joan. E 'grande?"
"Si, che e grande," she called back, she who knew no Italian boldly speaking.
Still dreaming Joan then found herself walking into a small room with a bed where she saw her husband David, or he saw her and drew her forward and he wanted her. They embraced, giggled, then were in the bed where she could smell him and feel his skin. She heard his gravely voice, warm and grumbling, and he was there against her as he had been so many times, firing desire as they touched, and moved, and struggled to remove clothes. It had been so long since they’d been together and intense need rose in both of them and he was poised and ready, and she was stirred and welcoming when the cooking friends came through the door with laughing and questions and wine, so the couple stopped to join them.
David rarely appeared in Joan’s dreams. When he did she would know he’d been there but she arrived too late, or he was due but she would already be gone, or he just didn’t find her interesting. In her past dreams David didn’t want her, wanted someone else, found her boring or useless, and issued commands but no glances. So for fifteen years all of Joan’s dreams containing David had brought a sense of isolation and loss --- until the one in August.
For fifteen years Joan had been a widow from the one relationship of her life that had been right. Never having believed in the “soul mate” theory, it proved itself to her anyway. David and Joan had lived in a nearly perfect balance, a compliment of personalities. But their communion had gone beyond that. There had been moments when she couldn’t tell which of them was which, or whether they were actually two separate people at all, but instead a single animated being of much greater merit than just the two combined. She could touch his skin and just slide into his body, not sexually, but super-humanly, sharing the same being-ness, as the perception of one-ness was that intense. And while it was real life, and all the real mistakes and discord happened, there was this substantial correctness in the relationship as though they were both finally complete on this unjust and cruel earth so that neither ever needed to be completely alone again. And then he died.
Joan rolled over in bed and then back into the dream, and clutching David’s hand, they rose to solve the kitchen problems and enjoy the conviviality of the friends. Plumes from bubbling pots rose about them and she could feel the flakes of fish on her tongue, pliant and infused with garlic and herbs. Stainless counters became coated with steam droplets as the whole dream was suffused with a foggy heat.
Finally, finding David beside her she led him back to the small room with the soft bed. They nestled into the cotton sheets and touching him she could feel the bumps along his back, see that curly, gray hair, coarse and smelling of soap, and the feel of him soft was on her tongue as her nose caught that genital scent that humans give off except that this was the one that was uniquely his. Her senses held all those elements that made David a particular person. All the things she could never remember after his death --- the ragged cadence of his voice, thick with humor, the largeness of his six foot plus frame, the way his fingernails curled down into the flesh looking like little shovels --- all these things, lost awake, were present in the man with whom she loved here in this dream state, which at that moment was the only reality.
The thing most stunning to Joan about death was the finality of it. Within a few days of David’s demise she’d lost that sense of constant touch with him. She cast about wishing up a ghost, but none came and the details, the little things, quickly fled her memory and she realized that it took the living person not memory to create existence. And there was this longing feeling of not being finished, that there was more for them to do and be together, and that now, with David dead, she would forever be just half a person --- less than half since they actually seemed much more than two together.
Dawn was far off, she was not yet awake, and the dream pulled Joan back inside --- back into friends cooking fish in another room. The warmth of vaporous dishes, the scent of oregano and onions, all the clatter and babbling as the couple wandered back in to find a table set. Flowers tumbled from an improvised vase, Deruta bowls were haphazard in front of chairs, and friends were carrying trenchers with the great fishes and bowls of fragrant broth and weedy greens --- all these items were strewn about the table accompanied by jocular talking, giggling, and winking. Joan brushed damp flying hair from here eyes as a friend yelled,
“vieni, siediti” “Sit here, eat with us,” as she chose a chair and inhaled both scents and the sense of the place.
“Mangia, eat eat,” said a laughing woman at her side. “Va bene, godere.”
Joan tasted soft, herb infused fish, all sweet and dripping. She seemed to be eating with her fingers and the juices ran to her elbows. She mopped the broth with torn, crisp bread and yeast fragrances mixed with the other food as she breathed the satisfaction of repast shared with others.
Then the fragrance changed to the moist scent of love making, fecund and piquant while she saw sunshine on a warm bed and felt David caught up to her. All the sensations that made reality splendid had crowded into her dream world --- smell, taste, and touch were abundant and inflaming. David’s face had a days beard that scratched her cheek. Sun heated one of her feet and he opened his eyes and looked down at her, finding home in the black pupils as she disappeared into his. She had that sense of his weight on her, his breath in her ear, and then she grabbed at his back as he arched and vocalized, and she moved with and against him and they slid in together with no skin and no distinction and no present and no past.
Somewhere at the edge of consciousness the skunk whiffed in. Joan inhaled and opened one eye to see the pre-dawn light, then realized that what had been her only reality was simply a dream, although at the time it had been indistinguishable from the actual, and at this moment of waking her life seemed to lack the rich texture that she had enjoyed in the illusion. It was pointless to even wish to return, yet she was dazed to find that the veil between the real world and the dream one was so reversed that at that moment actuality had less density.
Through a screened window Joan could hear dried leaves scuffle. A lone bird had begun it’s morning warble. A gauzy curtain stirred, then blew across her head, glancing her nose in it’s drift. Breathing more deeply she brought herself fully into her life, but savored the renewal and completion of the past.
No comments:
Post a Comment