a few nights ago, friday night to be precise - the first night of the year - i dreamt a play. it was a complex play. it began as more of a first-person-usual-dream sort of thing, with me preparing for a play and trying to remember my lines, repeating them, and the lines and the play that i'm about to perform is about a relationship, beginning at the beginning of it and going from there. my co-star is, of course, a recent ex, who is not an actor, but in this he was, and prepping for this was kind of strange because it was hard to tell where the lines ended and where reality began. there was a minute where i was in the bathroom and he was there as well, and the soap dispenser got stuck open and i was trying to fix it and he was there, doing that thing that these guys do that makes me alternately crazy and crazy about them, just watching and smiling and helping when i needed help. he looked amused but not so amused that i could be offended. then i wondered if this was part of the play or not.
the dreamplay went from there, where we were getting messages from an older man, a sort of james earl jones character, making conversation and reminiscing about his life as it related to the play, perhaps a past relationship (i can't quite rememeber this conversation). then we were running an errand before the play with a castmate or possibly stage manager, but the errand brought me to the living room of my grandmother's house, and she was sitting there, old and sick and possibly on her way out soon, but very much alive and happy, and we had a customary loving, southern conversation where i'm pretty sure grandpa was brought up, and there it was again - the real story and the real world as it connected to this play.
the last scene of this play i remember best. it was simply an older man talking about the days leading up to his own death. it is as follows:
We were in Virginia, to the west, in a little cabin on the side of a mountain, it was pretty far removed. I knew I was ill, and I surmised there wasn’t much time left; it was like I and my brother and my son had hunkered down away from the public to spend time together until. Some nights we would go outside with a certain picture book. Our mother, Rick’s and mine, would read it to us at night when we were little kids, sleeping in the same room, and the book was giant and beautiful; in just about the middle of the story is a depiction of the night sky, with birds, night birds, and there’s silver paint on the stars, it just jumped out at us. And then when I had a son, I would read from the same book every night, and show him the pages, and as he grew into a boy he was just as in love with the images as Rick and I had been. I would call Rick up and say, I read to Tommy from that book, he just loves it, and Rick would say, of course he does. So those last nights, the three of us would bundle up and go out to the back porch, where there was a deck that went as far out as the mountain would let it, then there was a drop into nothing. At night there were no lights, of course, just the stars and the moon when it was out, and sometimes a satellite going overhead, really slowly, and Rick and Tom and I would bring that book outside and turn it open to that illustration of the sky, and would set it down on the picnic table on the deck, and sit around it and talk quietly about things. When a wind blew through the trees, they would shift around and the starlight or the moonlight would flicker across the page, and the stars on the page would twinkle. When we got too cold, we would go back in and go to sleep. After a while Rick had to help me up and get me back inside, I was so cold and stiff, then Tom and Rick both had to help me, and after a while they carried me out and back. But as I got weaker, if the weather allowed it, we would go out, every night. On the last day, I remember they grasped me under the arms, and slid me to the side of the bed, and put some ski pants on me and my thick coat, then they were lifting me and carrying me, and we were outside, but it was day! The sun was bright off the snow and they set me down on the bench at the table, they had cleaned the snow off it and Rick held me up with his palm on my back while Tommy ran back inside and came out with the book, and flipped the pages to that illustration, but it was day. The stars were glaring off the page, they were so shiny, but I couldn’t understand why we were out now, and I looked at my brother and at my son; they were speaking, but I couldn’t understand them. They spoke to me, to the book, and I watched them, their faces were – And then suddenly it got dark. (quietly nods as if to say: yes, and then I died.) |
i'm working on the rest. it's a fine line between honest and forthright and melodramatic and self-absorbed. obviously i'm not currently in a relationship, and the past few haven't ended in the best way, and so i'm frustrated and i also am doing what i can to not feel lonely. my schtick was to either feel lonely with someone or lonely without someone. it's a strange thing, to like someone and be fond of them and for that very reason not trust them. and that's why i'm not in a relationship now. nobody wants to feel alone when they're really not alone. nobody wants to feel alone much at all ever. and so it goes, and is that all there is?
but this play was dreamt in a more open, vulnerable, hopeful way than my general angsting, and that is the way i will attempt to keep it. although the first scene does go on. we'll see. but it's nice to be writing something other than poetry, and only my sleeping subconscious encouraged it.
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