Chapter Six: My Dreams and the Sea (Part One)

Once upon a time I sat in my car for hours.  I say once upon a time because I do not know when, or how long.  I was a world.  My own metric, endless, extensionless, a mathematical point that went nowhere forever.

Ive always hated math.

I thought, as the mind thinks its random thoughts as it struggles away from a tragedy: if I have a soul that is not flesh and bone, not metal or material, where was my limit?  How was I here?  If who I was truly was immaterial then how was I myself?  What kept me between ribs and heart if I could truly not touch them?

And so I surged away.

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When my family was wealthy, and still loved itself, we had a house upon the high rocks looking over the shore.  I loved it.  It was like a beautiful monument giving its vigil over the slim stalks of dune grass, which descended at least a hundred feet down to the beach.  The house rested upon a stretch of mostly deserted, curling hill, away from the small town that sprouted further south along the cold foaming lines of ocean towards the Haystack Rock, a giant mounting up from the sea like a titan and impressing itself on the horizon through fog and cloud.  Our own private corner of paradise.

One could make their way down to the beach by finding a path winding through the sea grass down through the many dune hills, making labyrinthine the way toward the waters.  And as one passed through the waves of amber stock rippling, themselves like waves of water in the wind, watching the occasional fighter kite ripping carelessly through the air, you would make your way to level ground and see it.  The great dead tree.  Splayed over and horizontal like the lumbering sky itself grew bulk and fell to the earth, dead.  I remember some of us would have conversations about how it got there; whether it fell into the cove from the cliffs above, or if it was carried here by the galloping waters from far away.  It might as well have been from another galaxy; its frame was gnarled and infinitely complex.  As if the secret of our far cove needed another boundary, another limen, a second isolation from the endless southern beaches.  It was a field of husked and forlorn bones, jagged gnarling bark.  Even on its side it stood taller than a man.  A pillar that formerly held the sky had fallen.

             I drove there, after it all happened.  I went there without thought, without hesitation. I barely even remember the drive.  I fled through ancient memories, drove under a forest of stars.  How many times I had passed these roadways with my family.  With my friends.  I remember I took a girlfriend there, and we sat on the dunes beneath the brittle canopy of endless lights, kindled a fire, and we watched as the heavens broke through and wandered before us amidst the blackness.  I remembered kissing her and holding her, remembered how we whispered we’d love each other for ever on.

But that was gone now.

I had no money for hotels.  And we had sold our beach house so long ago.  So I parked out in front of it.  Slept in my car.  I was there for five days.  Alone with just the sea and my dreams.

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Where are we?  What the hell is going on?

            Don’t you remember, I said.  I am dreaming.  Don’t you recognize the moment when I could have saved us?

            This cant be happening.

            I cant help what I dream.

            Let me out.

            I can’t, you’re me.  You gave me that damn look.

            You aren’t you.  You are me; my subconscious.  If I wake up—you—you disappear.

            Great.  So whats this about?

            You see us there?  I pointed.  You looked towards a door.  Our house, forever ago.  Everything else was strangely out of focus, in the way that dreams often are.  We both tried to look away, but everything else was just like oily marks on walls, stains on the air.  As if some artist were called in to fill in the peripherals, the details that didn’t matter and weren’t remembered.  As if art enframed us.

            But there you and I were, standing on the porch outside.  It appeared like we were talking.

            One could vaguely make out the marks of dusk, only just beginning to fall.  Everything outside the breadth of the door glowed and warped like pastel brushings on a canvas; there but not real, imprinted with the marks of some fabrication.  The sun sat nearly asleep on the shoulders of the distant mountains, threatening to tumble down.  Spiral clouds drifted like soaked cotton, barely aloft and threatening to drag sky to earth.  The deep firmament imperceptibly gave way, up, up, into a hemisphere of ink.  The navy blue horizon just the first gush of the uttermost and infinite dark.

            Theres no need to cry, my other I said.  His hand, my hand, on your cheek, my thumb, his thumb, gently brushing away a tear.

            I don’t want to watch this, I said.

            This is your dream.

            I tried to look away, I said.  Everything else is so…blurry.

            I know, you said.

            I watched and I remembered.  The scene repeated suddenly, like the tape had rewound as I tried to look elsewhere into the blurry night.  I had come for a few more of my things.  It was December and winter ran around us.  I had climbed the long stairs and found you with three of your girl friends, primped and ready for a night in the city.  Their movements lithe and full of intoxicating perfume.  Short skirts and lipstick and recently manicured hair. Cute coats.  A flurry of gossip and giggling, staccato and poorly stifled as I knocked.  Their heads all snapped to me as I feebly knocked, and as recognition rolled on their faces, all eyes furrowed through the half window of the door.  I could only imagine what they said about me.

            Other-You held a drink and a smile.  Walked toward me like a model walks the runway.

            I guess you weren’t drowning in tears, then.

            Oh hush, you know people deal with things differently.  You said.

            The other you, the dream you, shooed off the now scowling friends and scolded them to be quiet as you answered, opening the door.  Like wolves reluctant to be chased off a kill, they moved to the kitchen.  I saw martinis.  An empty bottle of vodka.  Nutrient, no doubt, for the night ahead.  Between olive touched draughts a head of one or two would snap towards us, free of coy restraint, as a glower and vicious stare leapt from their circle.  Hushed murmurs.  And a laugh would break out.

            Before my other-I could speak you stepped over the threshold and closed the door behind you.  A welcome wall between the wolves and I.   Your eyes were earnest.  Voice whispering.

            I remember you smelled like heaven as you came close.

            Thank you, you said.

            I need to talk to you your other-you said to my other-I.

            Theres no need to cry, other-I said.

            Your other-hand caressed the distance of my cheek.  A hand went to my waste and threaded two fingers through a belt-loop of my jeans and, ever so gently, seductively, pulled me in close.  Hips to hips.  Eye to eye.

            There was that silent moment, the moment between lovers that hold so close as to feel the warmth of breath, holding right on the edge of the pull of the others lips, leaving no room for the cold of the night.

            I—I think I made a mistake. Other-you whispered, as we watched. 

Oh, this moment, you said.

            What moment?  I asked, curious if you actually remembered it, too.

            When we kissed.

            For the last, time.  I said.  For a moment.

            Yes. 

            I—I—want you back.  Your other you said.

            I saw the hesitation in my face, the great grinding cosmos passing beneath my eyes through brain and wire and heart and screaming soul. 

            Time stopped for a moment.

            I remember asking myself: self.  What should I do?

            You could take her back.  A voice said.  You looked at me as if you heard.  Why didn’t you listen?  You asked.  Other-you and Other-I were frozen in embrace.

            I—

            But she betrayed you, another voice said.

            Shes asking forgiveness.

            Ha!  Forgiveness, after every other option ran dry.

            No, you looked at me, it was genuine.  That was a phrase I feared.  But could not believe.

            What does that even mean?  I asked you.  Genuine?  Do I think that you genuinely missed me in that moment?  Yes.  I believe that.  But what does it matter?  Genuine emotion can come from opportune moments.  You were alone, abandoned. 

            I missed you.

            I was an easy target to miss.  At the end of all other options.  Everyone thinks genuine means truly.  I don’t know.  You genuinely missed me, but it was not truly.  You were reduced, in that moment you were clouded.  And the actually you felt was you when you were small and not yourself.  So the self that was not you genuinely felt my absence.

            You were always too philosophical.  Why couldn’t you just be romantic?

            And take you back then?

            Yes!  Embraced me in a moment of sorrow.  My heart was yours to take back.  You were too blind to see.

            I would have had it for but a moment. 

            You tilted your head.

            You know its true, I said.  We would have been in love again.  Yes I believe it.  But what happens after a week?  A month? A year?  Nothing changed.  We would have been intoxicated in some deep sleep.  And we would wake again from that coma.  Romance would have just led to us to a second death.

            You don’t know that.

            No.  I guess I don’t.  Not for sure.

            Do you regret it?

            I regret—I regret that there will be a moment that I have to stand before God and explain this to Him.

            Me too.

            And the tape started playing again, in this pastel dream.

            I want you back, other-you said to other-I.

            Because Im the last resort.  How other-I hurt you, how I struck you down.

            No.  You said and pulled me a little closer.  Your perfume blurred the lines between us.  I breathed in deeply like I could draw you into my soul.  That terrible halcyon love threatening to spark there between us again, artificially new in the twilight of its death.  It refused to settle down.

            I remember catching a last waft of the candles you loved to light in our house.  Slipping between your perfume and beautiful breath.

            Cinnamon and apple pie.

            And then that beautiful horrible moment came.

            Before I could answer again you drew me in for a kiss.  The world wobbled; the lustral dark swooned.  You held my belt loop beneath the pastel moon and the pastel stars, and with the other hand the back of my head as your fingers ran through my hair.  You looked into my eyes, and I looked at yours as they darted down longingly to my lips and you with the gentlest of pressure drew me in.  The kiss was tentative and tender, like a first try, like our first so long ago beneath the waterfall and the Autumn of Oregon’s gorges; we were movements of infinitesimal advance until the tender bridge of mouths connected.  And at their impress I felt silence expand like a deep breath, as the wolves waited and watched.  Lips, so light and delicate, reveled as they found each other and held in that smallest pressure and heat. 

            We spoke in a language where no words passed between us.

It was a kiss you feel in your whole body, as if one and another were unity.

            But our bodies were a sorrow.  And we could not escape it. 

Could not escape what made us tragic.

            I pulled away.

Not because I didn’t love the kiss, but because I did.

            No.  Other-I said.

            No?  Other-you replied.

            You looked at me.  I looked at you. 

            In the dream it was like the event happened twice at once as our duplicates and  ourselves made the same motions, apologies.  We watched ourselves dying, died ourselves as we watched again.  Said the same goodbyes.

            I cant do this, both of me said.

            Both of you looked grieved.

            The whole dream moved and we all became one motion.

            Pastel stars swirled and bled.  The whole sky, fibers of dark and light.

            I said to you: Im sorry.  I just cant.

            Why, you both asked with your giant, beautiful eyes.

            I don’t want this.  I cant trust you.   Not anymore.

            You think Im a bad person?

            No.  I never said that.  God, I never said that, you know I love you.  I just cant trust you—not with me.

            Then you did something I could never do.  You accepted what I said. 

And with a grace you nodded with an empty look and stepped away.  A step back.  Taking your perfume with you.  Your face a pastel shadow sinking into the dream.

            The world heaved with a dull roar.

            Whats that sound?  Your shadow said as the blurry world went even more dim.

            I think it sounds like waves.

            Waves?

            Waves.  I am dreaming.  I think I remember, I am asleep next to the ocean.

            You mean in a hotel?

            I don’t think so.  Im—its very cold.

            God—you’re not sleeping outside are you?

            No.  I think Im in my car.

            There was a sadness in the pastel dark of your shadowed eyes.

            I never wanted that for you, you said.  Your were always in my heart.

            I know.  I said.

            You, other-you, was silent and looked to the side.

And still we pulled away.  Great lengths of shadow stretched between us.

I heard your wolves howling about me as you walked into our former home with red eyes.

And I walked away.

Toward the new life sorrow built.  So cold.

I awoke.

Stumbling, I spilled out of my tiny car.  Into the misty cold of the morning.  Grey mist kissed my skin as I pushed through the sand toward the roar of water giving its endless conversation to the land.  The sea is a woman, I thought.  And the land a man.  The water is always talking, and the earth always silent as it listens to the sea. 

I ducked into my car and searched for a sweatshirt.  I threw it over my head and quickly buried my hands into the small front pocket.  The clock hummed six-fifteen.

I found my way to a carapace of rocks throwing itself into the oblivion of early tides.

I closed my eyes.  Breathed in the mist.

         I stood on the verge of the trembling sea.

It was just we, me and the sea.  But I saw it wrong. Grammar told me it was actually the sea and I that were paired.  But this doesnt rhyme.  Let me start over.  It was just the sky and I.  As I was by the sea. 

Much better.  Lets begin.

There was no narrative now, in the spaces between our lives.  No constellation or map.  Just moments.  Beautiful horrible spaces.  Gasping amongst sea-foam for each other, but alone.  They no longer talk.  They no longer unite. It was like a movie reel caught on fire.  The amber waves of cascading light making small circlets, burning, expanding as they invaded and ate the frame of the reel.  Leaving only spots and atoms of pictures, remnants unrelated.  And I wandered useless between them.  A star knocked from orbit; searching now within the voids and deserts between lights.

A picture held me captive.  Of you and I wandering.  Apart. Away.

And I tried to escape.  But you painted yourself on everything I saw.  All my language repeated you.  Was inside you.  And every small story I spoke, in winter or summer, in happiness or depression, repeated you to me inexorably.

Imprinted itself upon my world.

I am an abbreviation, I thought as I breathed out into the open sky.  I am caught here, on cliffs and all of Oregon’s little misty edges and tidal draughts, holding one end of a love.  All my movements are an etc… of some story, and every breath of mine is just another ellipses.  I was like a stripped live wire, loosing its clouds of sparks like blood seeping, bleeding my last little fires out into an unreceptive empty space.  But were these little fires, like all ellipses, merely hints and symbols of something more?  My visible movements, were they just little hills with beautiful crests, carved from an infinite sky more profound than them all?  Was there meaning here?  Or was I nothing more than one of the stones listening to the sea?

The whole world stood before me, I felt, in its horizon and panorama as a great mystery.  I felt so saturated with meaning that I could burst; but what I would burst with I did not know.  It was like one of those dreams—like all dreams starting in the middle, within an action already started—and you are chasing a glimmer of movement.  You go as swiftly as you can through the room, sometimes the dream makes you move like you are fettered in chains, sometimes you are swift as an imprint of lightning on the air—but the outcome is the same.  All the doors that open in the dream reveal only further stretches of carpet and another door.  Oh God—this was not a curse but a question shouted at the waters—was that our love?  Were we merely types of sadness searching for that movement, and did we mistake each other for it?  And that disappointment that sometimes fell between us my love, was it the sorrow that murmured as we strained to look beyond each other, trying to sneak a glimpse now and then of the shadow which turns the corner, always a pace or two ahead of us?

Had we been curious temples for each other, for God himself?

Oh God.  We thought we were to be God for each other.  But that shadow always escaped us.  We were not God.

Our divorce was the dissolution of a recognized idolatry.  Of a failed love.

I could only hope it was so grandiose.  So holy.

But it raised the question.

Where was God?

Where was God as the nights closed in around me; where was God when you desperately gave yourself out to find compassion? 

But what was even more important:  Was God a thing that had a place and was not where He was expected?  Or was God a thing that we discovered had nowhere to be?  The difference was great.  A thing not where it was expected to be is still somewhere.  But what if the thing you wanted was nowhere?  The highest tragedy, the one that spoke loudest to my soul in every book I ever read or movie watched, was the desperate search for that which did not exist.  El Dorodo.  The fountain of youth.  Atlantis.  How many desperate souls had committed themselves with all the passion and fury of man to a phantom and a rumor?  And how close were they when they in their heart of hearts felt so close?  Only ever infinitely far.  The last verge of hill, or great swath of jungle, held no secrets but only another silence.

I looked up at the shore, at the horizon, at the rumors of sun over the sleepy horizon.  And an anger pulled itself from my cage and bones, like my soul was snared by the question and hurled itself upon the sea and its tumbling waters.

I stepped from the crags onto the dunes blonde with sea-grass.  One could hear all the gears and clockwork of my sadness grinding, could hear the unwinding hours of grief pouring from my soul. I ran at the beach spotted with pools of water and the great mist of an early Oregon morning, suddenly in sprint like a madman, all frenzy and terror.  My lungs stung with the onrush of frozen breath.  I got my wish from so long ago, when I wanted to scream and break things until my voice cracked my skin and unfurled my soul from artery and bone, until I just burned out like cinder and became absolutely nothing but the thin air.  The mist and the sea and my screams were a symphony playing to the morning horizon.

Where are you?  I roared.  At God.

You were supposed to meet me here!

A few seagulls flew away.  Far along through the mist two shipping boats floated serenely about, shimmering outlines on the far end of the sea.  Down along the shoreline at a distance an old man was hunched over looking for shells in the early morning.  My voice did not even carry to him.  Or if it did he did not let it bother his pursuit.  Did my voice then, carry to God?  Or was I so small that it was lost upon even the first waves?  Was God hunched over looking for me, as the old man was for his little shells?  My anger redoubled.

Where are you, coward?  I exploded.  You said you would take care of me!

In the heat of my rage I had pulled off my shirt, even in the utter cool of the morning.  The mist hugged my skin with frost.  Both my arms were held out, flexing and with fists flailing to my side.

I’m right here!  Answer me! 

God was silent, but the sea-song was beautiful.