Dream journal

Jim Byrd was steering for me as I read directions from the map. The wheels caught on the lip of the road, nearly plunging us off the edge. Laughing, we pulled into the train station. Near the depot, a group waited in the warm sun, shelter from the brisk winter wind.

An old couple stood in front of a bench. He stumbled, and fell face up, his cane pointed up accusingly at the sky. He said, help me. I can’t breathe, as he slipped away. I watched, frozen to the spot. My God, A man is dying in a crowd of strangers who don’t even notice his passing. I stood rooted to the spot, seconds pass in what seemed like an eternity.

Someone jumped out of the crowd as I cried for help. Ambulance! No time to ask questions. She administers mouth to mouth, but it is too late. What is it like to pressure lips against the lips of the dead? Is it like a dog licking your lips?

And ambulance siren cuts the distance in half.

On the banister, fastened by red sealing wax, snapshots of the old man. His wife says we only just returned from a pottery workshop. One photo shows him intently working at the potters wheel. The clay slop has murdered his clothes.

To have lived such a full life. Dying seems less threatening, is if anything could be anything other than dying, if one lives a life to its fullest.

Are my assumptions naïve? From the banister, I gather up a checkered cloth filled with reptiles— lizards, geckos and two napping mantled ground squirrels the size of cats.

One sleepy rodent yawns luxuriously like a cat, and stretches. His mouth closes down on my index finger, and I feel the gentle strength of a sense of his incisors. I am afraid he will draw blood. Slowly I remove my finger from his mouth. They curl up tightly together, and go to sleep.

The lizard to go wild. Bluebellies, alligators, geckos, iguanas—all dashing after each other in a mad frenzy Mr. snapping their jaws and maiming each other. I am startled and frightened by all of this. One iguana grinds his jaw sideways instead of laterally and the inside of his mouth is lavender, his skin is forest green and he snaps to kill, I am glad they run in the direction they do, and not towards me.

Boys Hot Springs 12/9/83 dream journal