Dreams, Real Life, and Writing

A couple of weeks ago (about a month after I started going to therapy) I began to feel as if I'd had surgery-- like some poisonous little thing had been snipped out, and I was all sewn up and tucked in for a long recuperation. A little later I began to imagine my situation as an untangling. Somehow my  sense of wellness and my view for my future had gotten knitted into the same garment as the financial settlement of my divorce, and now we'd pulled the whole thing off the needles for a thorough unravelling. I still really, really want to get my half of the joint assets, but it don't feel like I'm wearing it all the time.


Then Sunday I went by myself to a poetry reading in Santa Monica. My friend Sharon Charde had come all the way from Vermont to read with a group of other poets who'd all been published in Rattle. Somewhere on the 10 West the muse slipped into the passenger seat unannounced--not comfortably settled in exactly, but an idea or two rose up out of somewhere, and it occurred to me I should jot a note. I don't really jot down notes anymore, I thought. So I didn't bother to rustle around and find the pencil and the post-its I keep in the center console.


But there were more ideas, and finally during the poetry reading intermission, I pulled my index card notebook out of my purse and wrote something down.

And the dreams. I'm having dreams and remembering them. My therapist, who's trained in Jungian dream analysis, listens to me while I read my written record of my dreams, and then she reads them again herself, and we discuss them. When I was growing up in Iowa imagining that I'd meet my one true love and stay married forever, I'd never have predicted that 40-some years later I'd be divorced and dreaming about my ex and telling the dreams to a therapist and feeling better about everything.

I keep dreaming about light.

And I've had two dreams about cats--cats that I, at first, thought were other animals, and then, Presto! The rabbit turns into a cat.
The fish turns into a cat.

I hope I'm turning back into a writer.

Cat/fish

In the dream, my son and his wife T. live in a long low rambling house a few miles from a river. The house is a rendez-vous point where I often meet my aunt and uncle who have a boat they take out on the river. Or sometimes I use the house as a jumping-off point to drive to the river and visit them.

My aunt and uncle like to barbeque, and they want to cook burgers for all of us--my son, T. and their kids. I figure they'll bring their Coleman grill and some charcoal, but instead they arrive in their station wagon with the burgers all cooked. They pull them out of a cooler in the back--already on paper plates. It's not what I expected, but it works.

Another time, I go fishing on the river and catch a big orange fish. I bring it back to the house and later when I go to look at it, I see it's not a fish at all. It's a tabby cat with a gash in its side that looks a bit like a gill. It's still alive, and it looks as if I can nurse it back to health. "I didn't know it was a cat," I tell T. I'm worried it might have fleas, and now maybe there are fleas in the house, but T. doesn't seem upset about it at all.

Later she and I go shopping in a big warehouse. There's household stuff there. Cleaning supplies and light bulbs and stuff like that. It's dark in the warehouse. They keep the lights off because of the heat and turn them on section by section when needed. T. and I wander apart, and I befriend a clerk and walk across the parking lot with her to the employee lounge. I have my cart full of stuff with me which feels a bit awkward because I haven't paid yet. The clerk and I talk about travel--how there are so many places she wants to go. She's married and very pretty with long brown hair that swishes across her back when she walks. She's forty. "You're young," I tell her. After her break we walk back to the store together, and I feel a bit guilty that I've gotten separated from T. My son is there to pick us up, and they are looking for me.

Before I can go I have to load the wooden rocking horses into the cart that I've gotten for the kids. Somehow I've managed to carve designs into them, and they're nicely done. One of the designs is a sort of swastika, and I feel obligated to explain to the proprietor of the store that before it was appropriated by the Nazis, the swastika was a Native American symbol. The proprietor likes my work, he tells me. The carving is expertly done, he says, and he likes the piece of iron work that I've designed, too. No one questions how it is that I've come to this store to buy these things that I've made. We load them into the cart and roll to the car.

Dear Mr. Ex

Dear Mr. Ex:

I have spent this Friday evening actively loathing you.
The money I have dispensed on attorney bills trying to get you to finish up our financial affairs is now an amount too terrifying to utter.
The brain power I have given over to the rage and grief at the way you have treated me is a creativity-devouring, heart-shredding monster.
Someday that monster will devour you and spit out your bones one by one. I will gather them up and hang them in my tallest tree as wind chimes. The sound will remind me that you're gone, and I will dance.

The Performance

I'm back in Mr. Ex's house again. But he and the Little Missus have moved. They're living in some kind of luxury apartment with a plaza and city lights outside. Directly across the plaza is a theater with a hot new show, and I have four tickets. I'm not sure who is supposed to go with me. M. is there, but she seems to be babysitting for her dad's Kiddo who's stretched out on the sofa table next to a lamp that's teetering and about to fall. Everyone but me is oblivious to the peril--to both the Kiddo and the lamp. I'm on edge. What the hell is the Kiddo doing? He could get hurt. I'm on edge about the tickets too. They cost a fortune, and we had plans to go--at least M. and I did, but no no one's budging. I'm upset. I have to go back across the plaza anyway. I left my credit card and three twenty dollar bills at the pricey restaurant where M. and I had lunch. For some reason we were in a hurry when we left and the Maitre d' is waiting for me to come back. Finally I announce I'm leaving, and off I go alone.

Standing on the corner as I pass are Mr. Ex and the Little Missus and a half-dozen of their uber-couture-let's-wear-all-our-money-on-our-backs friends. The Little Missus has a new haircut--a curly bob and it's hanging in her eyes. When she sees me she covers her head with her shawl. I ignore all of them and rush first into the restaurant to sort things out there and then into the lobby of the theater. Having four tickets is a hassle, and I'm embarrassed that it's just me when I hand them to the usher. But once I'm seated, I realize I'm in the play so the extra tickets are the least of my worries. This piece of theater is something new. Part improv and part scripted. An audience member  gets put into the play each night--and tonight it's me. My seat is near the set and a spotlight is focused on me when I have something to say. I'm a wife in the play, and my husband is played by my old boyfriend, Billy, who has decided to take an acting job even though he's an award winning writer now in real life. There's stress in our marriage--our pretend theater-piece marriage.

Or maybe the stress is between Mr. Ex and me.
Real life and the play get mixed up at this point in the dream.

Billy The Husband is sick or he's an addict while Mr. Ex has to have some sort of surgery that is supposed to be minor but isn't. There are letters on the top shelf of a living room armoire addressed to me in the event of my husband's death (whoever he is--Billy or Mr. Ex,) and I wonder if the Little Missus knows that her dying husband is writing to me with his last wishes.
Somehow I survive the First Act.

During intermission, I offer to babysit for my friend Elizabeth's boys so she can see the rest of the play. They are little boys--maybe  5 and 3, and there's a special room that the usher tells me to take them to where they can be put to bed. The room is raked like an Elizabethan stage and the floor is padded. There are two antique beds that look like they've come out of theater storage. I get the boys settled in a corner and cover them up. They are  wearing matching sets of pajamas, but they're uneasy. They miss their mom. Still they seem receptive to me. I'm trying hard to make them happy.  I'm fixing them up a night light but it can't be too bright because there's an actor in the room trying to sleep before his next entrance. At last I settle on a flashlight that I rig  up by clamping it to the drawer of a large desk. The drawer is full of things that a lighting technician might use--gels and gel frames, a wrench. The flashlight projects the night sky onto the ceiling, and the boys are suffiently comforted to let me leave.

When I enter the theater, the show is not in progress. There's  a warm up act or some sort of improv going on. When I arrive the audience begins to murmur. They seem excited that I'm ready to begin, and then it's silent. They are waiting for the Second Act. Lights up. Billy The Husband enters. "You look like fuck-all," I say. "You're a fucking addict, and  I don't care who knows it." Billy The Husband looks awful. His honey-colored curls are dirty, and there are immense dark circles under his eyes.  I begin to cry and the audience gasps. We are all suffering.