One hundred and Sixty Two

I am lost.  This is what my dreams are telling me, have always been telling me.

I now know why I’m still alive.  It’s because in my dreams, and only in my dreams, she’s still alive.  But I can never find her, return to her.  The dream ends when I accept that I’ll never see her again.

I’ve dreamed these dreams only since she died.  My dreams were different when she was alive.

First came the train dream.  I’m on a train, the manuscript of my book in my pocket, on my way to meet with my publisher.  She’s sitting opposite me.

We talk.  We flirt.  The train pulls into a station and she gets up to leave.  It’s not my station, but I get up and follow her.

The train pulls out, leaving us alone on the platform.  The empty land, Eliot’s wasteland, stretches to the horizon.

She’s uncomfortable to be alone with me, someone she just met; but when I get her car started she smiles, thanks me and invites me to her house.  And then the nightmare begins.

I can’t save her.  I can’t save anyone in that house, or anywhere else, because I too am lost.

When I was young(er) my road seemed laid out like railroad tracks.  All I had to do was follow them.  At first I resented her for distracting me from following that road.  But I chose to follow her.  And I was right.  But now I'm alone.  

It's too late now to forget your smile
The way we kissed when we'd danced a while
Too late now to imagine myself without you.
 
How could I ever close the door
And go on just as I was before?
It's too late now. 

One Hundred and Sixty One

I’m closer to death now than I’ve ever been.  Not because I’m old(er) now—we can die at any age—but because I’m closer to suicide now than I’ve ever been.

Knowing that should the whips and scorns of time become unbearable, I could always my own quietus make with a bare bodkin, used to comfort me, as it did Nietzsche; but it does no longer.

Knowing myself used to comfort me; but what little self knowledge I have has always come to me in dreams, and it does no longer.  I used to have vivid dreams when I was young(er), and remembered them clearly when I woke; but though I still have dreams that I know are just as vivid, because I feel exhausted when I wake, I no longer remember them.

I had a dream last night, which I remember vaguely because it was—or seemed to be—very long.  It began when I entered college, and ended four years later, when I dropped out.

I always dream I’m back in college, or in high school, when I’m learning something.  What am I learning now?

Even though there were nights when I rode up and down the highway, trying to summon up the courage to crash my motorcycle, I remember my college years as a relatively happy time.  I had friends and lovers.  I was liked and respected by my teachers and fellow students—people who I wanted to like and respect in return, but couldn’t, because they seemed to me stupid, unwilling or unable to see what was obvious to me.   

The dream begins as I enter the building on my first day.  It’s crowded and noisy.  Everyone is talking, getting to know each other like passengers on a ship setting out on a voyage together.  But they all fall silent as I enter. 

They turn and look at me, and I realize I'm the spectre at the feast (This is not what actually happened—Diane sat down beside me during orientation and flirted with me; David and Paul both asked to be my roommate—nevertheless it's true. I've always been the guest who spoils the party for others because he arrives bearing bad news).

We come into this world, out of the everywhere into the here, in media res.  The world was here before we were, and I used to be comforted by the knowledge that it would still be here when I'm gone.  But no longer. 

I'm old(er) now, but I still haven’t learned to accept the world as it is.  Instead I feel more strongly than ever that I don't belong here.  None of us do.  It's even harder for me to accept that most other people aren't as disgusted as I am by what we've made of the world, and don't want to remake it, as I do.  They want instead to remake themselves, into people who can fit into this world.  They want a deck chair on the Titanic. 

What I have accepted is that I can’t remake this world alone, and no one else wants to try.  Therefore this juggernaut can’t be turned, this engine of destruction can’t be turned off.  It’s a bomb whose timer was set at the beginning of our history, and soon will explode.