… An exploration of the literary merits of the Dreamtime
Act 1: In which I fail to grasp the rules of the game
“I dreamed that I screamed at a stranger for doubting my husband’s intellect.” My dream-partner, who is also my lover, leans forward to hear more.
Come with me to the large room in which they are climbing. Plastic rocks sprawl across an artificial cliff. A girl (11?) stands, triumphant, upon a pinnacle atop a 5.4. I approach a 5.7, the limit of my ability the last time I climbed, not quite a “ladder” (they scoff), yet well below the smears of paint that I have seen people float up. I am climbing well, but two-thirds of the way up, I discover an interesting array of handholds, a branching, a horizontal option, and I set out sideways. I test different combinations, explore the strength of my fingers, the widths and shapes of the rocks, then realize that I am wearing a harness. I lean back, test the feeling of hanging, sharing my weight between the wall and the rope, then descend to take a better look.
Back on the floor, I see so many more routes, options, not a wall of vertical lines, but a web. As I contemplate I hear a whoop, and a young man of my acquaintance (permanently frozen at his age in the mid-90′s) runs straight up the wall to dangle upside down from the ceiling to great applause. Several men follow suit, and soon the room is filled with these spider-men (no women I note). I watch their ascents, perplexed: it is not physically possible. No matter. There is still the conventional approach, one handhold at a time. But as I approach the wall, I am stopped. Only one chance. My inner four-year-old rises up in protest: It’s not fair! I didn’t know! I would have done it differently!
“Was the point to get to the top?” he asks over breakfast. “No. The point was to be seen getting to the top.”
Act 2: In which I doth protest too much
Later, discussing in a group, we are all seated in rows, me next to my husband, a ballet dancer who gracefully and effortlessly scaled a 5.8, coming down like it was no big deal.
“Of course,” says the group leader scathingly, “You have no understanding of the true nature of reality.” I have been sitting, silently fuming, still protesting the unfairness of it all, eying the empty wall with its array of possibilities. But this… this is too much!
“He’s a physics teacher!” I screech. As though that designation, once earned, grants him special access to knowledge. And even as I scream it, the rage erupting from my lips, I know my mistake. I am overreacting. Mis-reacting. The statement was oddly sarcastic, granting him the special privilege I want him to have, and everybody in the room knows. But it is said, and I am shamed, leave the room alone, out into the dark parking lot.
“And what does your husband represent?” he asks me. He subscribes to the theory of dream interpretation which considers all symbols and imposed narratives to be disparate parts of one’s own psyche. “Clearly my rationality,” I reply, without hesitation.
Act 3: In which nothing becomes clear
The parking lot is full of cars, empty of people. Except for three children, leaning over the creek where it dives into the culvert and vanishes beneath the asphalt. Suddenly, there is a cry of alarm – she has fallen in! In Dreamtime, the gaps disappear; I am standing waist-deep in (cold) running water, reaching beneath. Dark, cold. Dive. My arms come up empty. Again. Again. Finally, I feel her, wrap her in my arms, bring her to the surface. We have drifted upstream, against the current, impossible, thirty, fifty feet from where we started.
She comes up gasping, but unharmed, her hair perfect, curly, blond. She is cherubic, perhaps six years old. And there I am in the dark, in the cold, holding her while the crowd gathers.
Perhaps I am redeemed?
“And who is she?” he asks, turning towards me from where he is doing the dishes as I tell him the story. “Guinevere,” springs from my lips. “Innocence. We’re supposed to say the first thing that comes to mind, right?”
“That is,” he says, “what They Say.”
Epilogue: One More Way of Looking at a Wall
Specifically, the wall above my desk. With thanks to Mary Oliver, who seems to be haunting my waking life.
