the road, but not that road...that road, the one with no path

It was a dream in segments. Reordered now that flashes have co-mingled with the jarring of real life. What is reality, really?

flash

The table, mahogany, three leafed, brass hinged; it is much finer than the antique of great grandmother’s walnut one in their basement. How peculiar, this one, with its one leaf folded down adorned with an embroidered tea set somehow glued on it. Garish. Ghastly and ugly in its pastel, kitschy glory. The man seemed so proud of it when he presented it to his old bride. She seemed suspect; perhaps wishing a diamond for forty years of endurance not a faux tea set embellishing a table she shall only have to pay the help to polish.

flash

We stood on the sidelines. I remember a Chinese double door lacquered bright crimson.

Look at that! The man imploring me to turn was my father, though younger, ashen hair still thick upon his head. He wore ugly brown loafers I’d never seen in our real life.

flash

Shoes – shoes kept creeping into this dream. In the scene before, the shoes of interest were silver platforms. They belonged to my best friend, but they were not shoes she normally would have worn. Hooker shoes, or at least of Gaga nature. I couldn’t tear my eyes away from those shoes.
Why was I there, just dropping in any way, she wondered.
I wondered that, too, for it wasn’t my nature. In a split second there was a knock at her door.

flash

Why are you here?
We raced from the storm. Everything had turned black. The city streets clogged with shoes and tires and screams.

Is it a fire

No

Is it a storm

No

We headed away from the charcoal thickness that began to choke our throats binding our eyelashes shut.

Look at that! He pointed to something otherworldly; Pixar created, a segment from a childhood dream fantasy. An industrial pipe a block wide was heading down the street. It had a gigantic head, a round gaping void of gunmetal grey, spewing waves of ash like a Chinese dragon shoots flames from its curling red lips. We ran.I’d entered The Road.

I had never watched, nor read, Cormac McCarthy’s The Road  before the above dream. Many years ago, an old boyfriend read it and left it in my home telling me it was my kind of book – dark, he said, you’ll like it. I fashioned a bit of the storyline in my mind from cataloguing the DVD for the library… Viggo’s hooded form sticks in my mind, yet, there was no great study of it beyond those picture flashes.

A black trade paper with copper & white lettering now resides on my bedside table. I dug it out of a cupboard where it has kept space for at least five years. Just a few months ago, I thought about adding it to the donation pile, but something always stopped me.

~ Flash forward 24 hours ~

The above was written after reading the first 50 pages of The Road. The dream was so vivid, even 8 hours after waking, that there was a need for documentation. The dreams of ash spewing mimic McCarthy’s constant reference to a landscape of ash — curious. The father/child dynamic has the mind ticking. The book itself has captured the imagination. There is something there that is for me to see…there is something in that dream that continues to hide. It is in books & dreams where the real action often takes place. I pray for another flash-filled night. ~

(a photo of me & z…it was 100 out, but The Road is one of those books that is best consumed in the enviro. I’m lucky, despite the hell of living in ‘burbia, a plot of land one block over is undeveloped with trees…a blanket was all that was needed.)

Posted by angela on 2012/07/06

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