a trio of dreams
You know how you had that little enamel bird in a golden cage that you used to teethe on as a baby, and when Roee brought all your jewelry you asked her where she put it and she shrugged like she’d probably sold it?
and how i had two dreams after dad died, one where he told me that God would “repay the years the locust had eaten” and the other where “when the skilled technician makes a joke, you will know that I have forgiven you”?
well i had a third dream tonight.
you know how i have been lugging around Anna’s “Spiked Comix” zines she made that depicted me heroically the way i seemed to her back when she loved me?
I was always afraid to lose them because she wrote them as purposely low circulation items - “a nightmare for her biographer” she said.
if they are lost they will be gone from this world, and it would be as if I, or the best part of me, would cease to exist forever.
that is still true, but i am comforted by a thought in the dream i had tonight.
i dreamt i went back to uni, to a poetry class on gothic fiction. all the kids in the class were 20 years younger than me and had no time for me - and regarded me with a mixture of scorn and disgust.
A famous model from my era was reading her poetry out of a magazine feature of her self, where she had been the cover girl 40 years ago, and she was reading it wearing the same sheer gothic dress on the cover that looked like something between an orchid and an early 2000’s designer’s rendition of a candle flame.
the handouts we had were facsimilies of the whole magazine complete with her advertising shoot and dripping with the discontinued perfume she promoted on page two.
and the poem was about her day at the zoo.
and in the middle of the reading a young girl who reminded me of a girl i knew in high school (the kind who would look all preppy but unilaterally tell her boyfirend that they were both vegan now because it was morally obvious to be such and this is an ultimatum to man up to the moral high ground or leave) stood up and showed the class that the age of political correctness i had grown up in was over:
she interrupted the reading and asked “how is this gothic poetry. it is just poetry written by a goth”
and the speaker said “i am a goth and this is my truth, seasoned with the pepper of the spice of my life and the tears of assault” (and pronounced “assault” like anna used to “a-salt”)
the kid said “there are no tropes of gothic literature here at all. if there had been no accompanying photo shoot I would not have found any link to gothic culture at all. I am going to the library to get my gothic literature book”
I said “the old gothic poetry reader with the ratty vinyl cover? i loved that book. i was counting traits and I am sure that our speaker’s poem at least references the terror of the unhomely in the zoo, the uncanny in her assailant and the sublime in her building of a life after the incident” and i accompanied her to make sure i could check out my favorite reference book before the rest of the class could.
in the stacks i found my book, a slim volume of 200 pages with ratty contact on the cover. the kid grabbed an armful of hard cover ammunition for her essay and left.
while alone in the stacks i saw three hard bound comic boox out of place across the top of the other books, but in the right area of their dewey decimal assignments for gothic literary theory-
they were Anna’s comics. hard bound and with ISBN numbers. in my dreams, her vanity had led her to do some vanity publishing and now they were here as a testament to herself. and they would bear witness to my memory too. i didn’t have to carry them alone anymore.
I woke up then.
in my waking life, my life is still bare as the field after the locust has swarmed, but my brother the bloodless lawyer he is still surprised us with a joke at Dad’s funeral.
You found the little bird in the gilded cage in the safety deposit box and i wept because you could find a relic of your treasured past and my treasured past would never return.
And i still dream of the day that others will preserve the memory of who i was when i was good.
and how i had two dreams after dad died, one where he told me that God would “repay the years the locust had eaten” and the other where “when the skilled technician makes a joke, you will know that I have forgiven you”?
well i had a third dream tonight.
you know how i have been lugging around Anna’s “Spiked Comix” zines she made that depicted me heroically the way i seemed to her back when she loved me?
I was always afraid to lose them because she wrote them as purposely low circulation items - “a nightmare for her biographer” she said.
if they are lost they will be gone from this world, and it would be as if I, or the best part of me, would cease to exist forever.
that is still true, but i am comforted by a thought in the dream i had tonight.
i dreamt i went back to uni, to a poetry class on gothic fiction. all the kids in the class were 20 years younger than me and had no time for me - and regarded me with a mixture of scorn and disgust.
A famous model from my era was reading her poetry out of a magazine feature of her self, where she had been the cover girl 40 years ago, and she was reading it wearing the same sheer gothic dress on the cover that looked like something between an orchid and an early 2000’s designer’s rendition of a candle flame.
the handouts we had were facsimilies of the whole magazine complete with her advertising shoot and dripping with the discontinued perfume she promoted on page two.
and the poem was about her day at the zoo.
and in the middle of the reading a young girl who reminded me of a girl i knew in high school (the kind who would look all preppy but unilaterally tell her boyfirend that they were both vegan now because it was morally obvious to be such and this is an ultimatum to man up to the moral high ground or leave) stood up and showed the class that the age of political correctness i had grown up in was over:
she interrupted the reading and asked “how is this gothic poetry. it is just poetry written by a goth”
and the speaker said “i am a goth and this is my truth, seasoned with the pepper of the spice of my life and the tears of assault” (and pronounced “assault” like anna used to “a-salt”)
the kid said “there are no tropes of gothic literature here at all. if there had been no accompanying photo shoot I would not have found any link to gothic culture at all. I am going to the library to get my gothic literature book”
I said “the old gothic poetry reader with the ratty vinyl cover? i loved that book. i was counting traits and I am sure that our speaker’s poem at least references the terror of the unhomely in the zoo, the uncanny in her assailant and the sublime in her building of a life after the incident” and i accompanied her to make sure i could check out my favorite reference book before the rest of the class could.
in the stacks i found my book, a slim volume of 200 pages with ratty contact on the cover. the kid grabbed an armful of hard cover ammunition for her essay and left.
while alone in the stacks i saw three hard bound comic boox out of place across the top of the other books, but in the right area of their dewey decimal assignments for gothic literary theory-
they were Anna’s comics. hard bound and with ISBN numbers. in my dreams, her vanity had led her to do some vanity publishing and now they were here as a testament to herself. and they would bear witness to my memory too. i didn’t have to carry them alone anymore.
I woke up then.
in my waking life, my life is still bare as the field after the locust has swarmed, but my brother the bloodless lawyer he is still surprised us with a joke at Dad’s funeral.
You found the little bird in the gilded cage in the safety deposit box and i wept because you could find a relic of your treasured past and my treasured past would never return.
And i still dream of the day that others will preserve the memory of who i was when i was good.