Wednesday, June 30, 2010

DREAM #.063010: "VELOURIA SOLARIS"

  
       In my dream, I'm on the second level of a fancy restaurant, dressed nicely, dining with my Symbiote. We're both watching a news program, playing on several screens in different tasteful locations all over the room. The news segment is about Lindsey Lohan, at home, in sweatclothes, out of make-up, looking almost fresh, almost innocent, less sad and desperate than usual. She's reading my book and the cameras just watch for her damage. A full thirty minutes or so of her pacing around her bedroom, reading it, the camera watching for reactions. I see her eyebrow cock. She tears up at one point. I start talking to my Inamorata about what a publicity coup this is.
        When I look up again (from food and conversation) at one of the televisions, it's showing me Lindsey's empty room with credits rolling over it.
        She's not on TV anymore.
        I see her entering the restaurant, dressed in dowdy black, with a big sweater and a floppy beret, stepping through the ground floor entrance, ignoring the maitre d, ignoring everyone, walking with great purpose up the stairs. I realize she's here to see me. I expect praise, but also turmoil over how a character in the book could almost be mistaken for a complex cartoon of her. I'm preparing my defense, my explanations, my alibis. One just never imagines meeting these people when one writes about them. She walks right up to our table. I'm about to act like it's an honor (though her days of vibrant youthful potential have long since faded into frosty blurs of powder burn and delirium tremens).
          She shoots me in the head.
          And I can feel it.
         Not pain, but a sudden weight, like there's something heavy where my brain should be, something too heavy, and I need to rest this heavy head of mine on some soft surface immediately. It's like my skull is a sock stuffed with D batteries. Then there's a hiatus of oblivion, like a fade to black.
         Then I'm in a hospital. The Girlfriend is standing nearby, looking lovely but anxious. There are some other people. The doctor, maybe. My head still feels heavy and tight, like it's all wrapped up with something. Bandages, I suppose. The TV is on. An episode of "The Hills".
         Everyone's waiting for me to say something, to gauge how deeply I'm damaged. There's so much I want to say, and I feel like I'm in full possession of my faculties, but I'm reaching for words and none are forming. I can remember the noises I should make to signify basic things, but they won't come out in a meaningful way. My confusion and building fear are becoming apparent.
         It's eating the Girlfriend up inside. She wants to be supportive, but she tearfully averts her gaze. I clutch her by her slim little wrist. I'm flashing back (on some level) to dreams I had as a child, dreams wherein I was suddenly mentally "retarded", where I'd walk the neighborhood to the houses of all my friends, showing them all my drawings as some kind of proof that I wasn't always this way, like some mistake had been made. I remember one drawing called "citadel of blood".
        I'm feeling a similar urgency as I clutch her wrist and stare, staring so hard my gaze should leave a bruise, wanting her to look deeply into my eyes and see the smart person trapped here in a distorted place where the words won't form. I want her to see the bright child screaming in my eyes, so she'll know I'm still in here, because all i can say is "Nnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn...".
      The doctor's seen it all before apparently. Bored by the pathos, s/he is looking away, at the screen, at "The Hills", which I start watching, too, looking straight through the Girlfriend, my attention span apparently as impaired as my vocabulary. The shallow, scheming little poppets on the show seem suddenly wise, possessed of a gravitas I always missed and will never fathom. They're beyond me now. I feel like a dog watching a symposium of fringe physicists and Dzogchen monks, discussing the intricacies of cosmology and/or consciousness. Everyone seems smarter, now. Since the accident.
    Like that bright child gone dim, I start screaming.

4 comments:

  1. Oh dear. You need to finish this book, S! I'm glad The Girlfriend is there to balance you while all the lindsay lohands and paris hiltons of the world shadow your sanity.

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  2. She couldn't stop the bullet, though. And will she change my diapers, as I struggle with that head full of bullet-shredded gristle where my brain used to be? THAT is the question. The answer, i hope, is "yes".

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  3. And, yes. I DO need to finish this book. On it like a bonnet.

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  4. Full of bullet-shredded gristle? I'm sorry, my imagination zombies must have visited you during the night. They've been so unruly recently -- taking whomsoever brains they please. Finish your book and like magic your brain will return to its rightful spot.

    ps. I'm picturing you in a bonnet. ;-) Tie those strings under your chin. Yes, much better.

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