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What's in a dream?
Carolyn: What a question! But if I only have to be entertaining and enlightening in reply at least there's no pressure. Since you're relating a dream, I'm going to answer in dream form. That is: I'm going to sling a whole bunch of stuff with no rhyme or reason (OK, maybe some rhyme) at you and let you decide if any of it's entertaining, enlightening or even English. There ought to be a disclaimer here. Don't try this at home. See your doctor. Squeeze from the bottom of the tube and flatten as you go up. Dreams are the unconscious mind's way of working things out. Unfortunately it never shares the results with the conscious mind. If I ever got married I don't know what I'd fear more, dying and leaving her behind or being the one left. Even knowing it was coming for a decade and having a week to get ready for the final goodbye, Nancy Reagan cried the most sorrowful tears patting and stroking her beloved Ronnie for the last time, locked inside his box and going away forever when the sun set behind the western sea. Even when he could no longer remember her name she could hold his hand. How long does she have to live now that her world lies inside the Earth? Even if they sound like other people, voices in your dreams are you talking to yourself. "Sorry we had to burn out like that," he said, "but look where you are now, you've come a long way and you have a lot further to go." YOU are sorry, and may always will be. It ended too soon -- screw Neil Young! -- you preferred to fade away.*** But you are acknowledging to yourself that it's not disloyal to Eric if you continue living when he could not. You vowed not til death do you part. It didn't mean yours. Is there a boy involved? You're not breaking your promise. Did you feel better when you woke? I don't think about dreams a lot and lately have been grateful not to remember mine. When I do they invariably involve work. Failure here. Failure there. Failure failure everywhere. What am I going to miss? What have I forgotten? When are they going to discover me for the fraud that I am and send me into the street, lonely and homeless, if only figuratively? Man, how long until I can be done with this and go home, if only figuratively? You told me in Birmingham (the first time) about the loose clothes Eric wore because they were the only ones he could tolerate. You were quiet much of the night. It was the anniversary, you said. Not the date that began your marriage but the one that ended it. I remember. What do you say? "Oh, yeah. That happened to me once. I think it was last Tuesday." But no. Who does that happen to and what do you say when you meet her? You didn't want to drag us down. We wanted to pick you up but didn't know you well enough to know how. If you even wanted it if somberly honoring his memory. Never knowing Eric I project myself into his place and think that protruding tumors would make me ashamed of how I looked. Vanity dies next-to-last, survived by the guilt that I let you down until my spirit is extinguished and I only want to go to my home behind the sun setting into the western sea and sleep. But those are words in my voice. Lucky you they're not in your head and probably weren't in Eric's but now you know you never write to me fearing that it will seem too weird. *** "It's better to burn out than to fade away," sang Mr. Young. "But I hope Neil Young will remember a Southern man don't need him around, anyway," sang Ronnie Van Zant in the Lynyrd Skynyrd song "Sweet Home Alabama." He also sang in that one that, "in Birmingham the love the gov'nah." That's because he lives in Montgomery. But it's my song that goes, "In Birmingham they love the governor. He lives 90 miles away" and it's not finished yet.
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