better stay alive

I recently read a blog post, or an article, it’s kind of hard to tell the difference these days, by whatshisface - who has that baseball novel in pennsylvania - Michael Chabon, that's his name, where he complains about the stifling dullness of other people’s dreams, particularly in literature. He also said, rather shockingly to my mind, that in his household, dreams are verboten. No more than a sentence allowed. It sounded awful, to be frank, a breakfast table where conversation is limited by the standards of literature and silence preferred to a child’s recounting of a nightmare.

A long way of saying that the most interesting thing to happen in my life lately was, in fact, a dream – a dream in which I died (of cancer –my body filled with dozens of separate tumors, pushing my organs into small corners of my body and edging out the rest of me over a matter of mere weeks) and traveled to the afterlife. I got there by bus – a long bumpy journey, dull scenery, dull company. And then an interminable city, never quite coalescing into skyscrapers nor melting into suburbs, colorless mountains in the distance. My new home was a large Victorian, identical to all the other houses on the block except for color; each its own shade of pastel, each past its prime but not yet on the verge of collapse, and stuffed to the rafters with lodgers. At any given moment a dozen people in the kitchen, which smelled of food but had no food, another dozen on the stairs, people spilling out into the dusty yard, sprawled on beds and floors, napping, arguing, yelling, yelling. They were all theater people but me. They were working on a production. They would always be working on a production. It would be in rehearsal but would never have an opening night; they’d build the set and run the lines for eternity and never see the house lights go dim.

All the theaters were still in rehearsal. No newspapers printed, no new books. You could look in though the windows at restaurants full of line chefs hard at work, but no dishes were ever sold; they weren’t open for business. I had only the novels I had carried on the bus, two Faulkners and Freedom, I think, nothing else, and I worried for their safety in this house crawling with strangers. If they were gone I'd have nothing at all to read.

With significant effort and superhuman patience, messages could be sent back and forth with earth. But all I ever received was a brief note saying that my family was bringing a lawsuit against the doctors who provided no treatment in the months before my death. Very unsatisfying.

So in my dream, desperate to escape the endless clamor of my soft-hued house, I did the only thing I could think of; boarded a bus at a stop down the street. Busses came in with new arrivals but, when they left, went nowhere; a slow and steady circle, past restaurant windows and shuttered theaters, all the unfulfilled promises of a world where nothing ever changed, and back again. And again. And again.

I’m typing on a new keyboard, a soft rubber roll-up only reluctantly responsive. It’s slowing me down. An odd feeling, having to type slowly, thinking about pushing each separate key, breaking words down into their constitutive motions. Like doing tai chi or meditation as I write, practicing a willfully inefficient self-awareness.

And tiring, too.