They dance before me

A tight, quickly spinning chain of images, connected not one bit by chronological order. Summer moths swarming a light hanging over the Roaring Brook Beach bath house, with ribbons of sand drawn along the carpet; peeling the plastic-wrap away from a cheap package of stale sticky buns, in a musty yellow kitchen, while an old woman talks away behind me; the feel of a hook pushing into my thumb, after pushing a worm down onto it, the blurry twinkling of dusk sun on the water behind me; my father’s eyes on the road, hands on the wheel; the scent of cedar, and the stiff misty air of a campsite dawn. Fragments of memory give light to other memories, one after the next, in a rolling snowball of uninvited reflection. If I can’t remember a single thing I did last week, how can I remember what was playing on the store radio the day I bought a microwave pizza from the Hollywood Gas Station in 1993? It’s as though I am bogged down by the details of ancient memories, and am unable to fit any new ones in. It makes those moments before sleep, when I’ve not had a chance to thoroughly exhaust myself beforehand, very adventurous ones…for better or worse.

The other day I had a dream in which I was visited by someone that is no longer a part of my life. It was a wash of relief that could only be described as realizing that someone you cared deeply for, who had passed away, had not actually passed away…and was in fact just fine, and sitting in your living room waiting to see you. This person, who my memory regards most potently with cruelty and indifference, was instead kind, and full of affection. It saddens me to think that I can’t recall an instance in waking life in which I’ve been happier. In my dream we spent time together, laughed together, and held one another close in the darkness. Words cannot express the despair I encountered just outside the borders of dreamland, in the unforgiving daylight streaming through my drapes…