She didn’t tell him about the dreams until the fourth date. They had already slept together at that point; in fact, it was in the afterglow of the surprisingly good first time, basking in relief born of previous disappointments, that she entrusted him with the secret.

“I have a recurring dream,” she said. “I dream that my car has stalled on train tracks somewhere and I’m stuck inside, watching the train bearing down on me.”

She immediately wished she had said nothing, but he simply frowned and asked: “Do you escape in the end?”

“I’ve never gotten to the end. In the dream, the train is still far away. I watch it advance; I get frightened; then I wake up.”

“So every night you fall asleep and it just restarts from the beginning?”

She suppressed a shudder. “It doesn’t happen every night.  Sometimes it skips a day or two.  But each time, it picks up where it left off. The train keeps getting closer and closer.”

He turned over to peer into her face. “A dream in installments—”

“Yes.”

“Huh.”

They said nothing more of it that night. They cuddled, and kissed, and made love again, and drifted off to sleep. At around five in the morning, she jerked awake. The train’s horn still reverberated in her ears.

In the shower, she noticed a bruise on his chest that she didn’t remember seeing the night before. It was Monday, though, and they had overslept and were running late for work, so she didn’t ask about it. By the time she headed towards the subway stop, anticipating the taste of food-truck coffee, the bruise and the dream had both retreated into deep recesses of her memory.

That day, he sent her several flirty texts. The next day, he called—right in the middle of lunch. She glanced at her sandwich with hungry regret before picking up the phone.

“I’m sorry,” he said, “were you eating?” She started to mumble no but he was already carrying on: “This dream you told me about… I might be crazy, but I have to show you something. Can we meet tonight?”

He sounded agitated and slightly out of breath. She briefly considered saying no but his voice made her happy.

“You might think I’m crazy,” he repeated later in the day, sitting on her sofa. “I can’t explain it any other way, though.”

“Explain what?”

He pulled up his shirt. There were bandages on his stomach, stained rust brown where blood leaked through.

She brought her hand to her mouth. “What happened?”

“I’ve been having a dream, too,” he said. “I’m back in school for some reason, and I’m fighting this guy. I’ve never seen him before, but he was trying to bully me. Each night, our fight advances only a couple of blows before I wake up. I’m not doing too well against him, I’m afraid.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Last night, he pulled a knife on me.”

She shook her head impatiently: “This. What happened here?” And pointed at his stomach.

“I woke up cut and bleeding. It’s a scratch, but it hurts.”

“There was something sharp in your bed—”

“No. Believe me, I’ve looked.”

“You aren’t trying to convince me that your imaginary bully did it, are you?”

“It isn’t the first time. I’ve woken up with marks before. He’d hit me, and then I’d find a real bruise on the spot where the punch landed, the next day.”

“This is impossible.” But it was possible, she already knew. She saw it with her own eyes.

“I didn’t tell you anything the other day because I wasn’t sure.” His face was haggard and sad; she stifled a sudden urge to run her hand across his cheek. “I’m sure now, after last night. This is important. Even if it’s an off chance. You’ve got to get out of that car.”

“The car?”

“Before the train runs you over. You’ve got to get out of there.”

She felt it: acid dread flooding her veins. “Stop,” she said. “I don’t want to hear any more.”

“Look, you might be in real danger—”

“Stop it!”

“I don’t want for anything to happen to you.”

“Get out.”

This had the desired effect: he stopped talking and looked at her, bewildered. She thought with regret about the bottle of Malbec in the kitchen. Now it would go unopened.

The next morning he woke up to her crying. She sat in bed with her back to him, hugging her knees. He knew the reasons right away but said nothing—just reached out and touched her shoulder. She flinched.

“You okay?” He swallowed the stale overnight taste of red.

She extended her arm towards him without looking. A round blistery burn blossomed red on white skin.

“Car lighter,” she said. He winced.

Some time passed before one of them asked: “So, what do we do?”

Read more …

Earlier today, his grandson said that he wanted to write a story, to make him the main character.

In response, he shook his head and warned that it would be impossible.

“Why?” asked the boy. (Thirty two years old, yes, but still a boy to him. Some distances cannot be bridged).

“Because some distances cannot be bridged,” he explained and saw blankness in the boy’s eyes. “It’s like this—” he said and stopped, at a loss for words. Finally, he bumbled on: “It would be a story told by someone who wouldn’t be telling stories. Understand? A paradox.”

“I don’t understand,” said the boy.

A story is an undertaking, he wanted to say, a forward-looking act, a gesture towards the future. All I have is the past. My time for undertakings is over. They are the slightly embarrassing purview of the young, who still think things matter. I know the world is immutable and indifferent; I know that nothing we do counts in the end; I also know that, long as my life has been, I still haven’t figured out any answers and that’s probably because there are none. This is a story without a moral. It’s not worth telling.

“Don’t worry about it,” he told the boy instead. “It’s ineffable.”

thejanuaryist replied to your post: When the Fat Lady Croaks

Encore!

My Wednesday evenings are free, so I’ll try to post one every Wednesday.

The evening begins in the rustle of elegant dresses and stiff frock coats. Guests are pouring into the vestibule of the theater in large numbers — top hats, white spats, the works — but although the crowd grows by the minute, the ambient volume barely rises above the level of murmur: everyone here is on his best behavior. The list has been carefully prepared in advance; only those deemed worthy have been invited.

It does not matter, of course, that the dresses are faux silk and the sharp suits are made of burlap instead of fine English worsted. In the theater’s somber semi-darkness, their muted tones acquire the necessary formal gravitas. Ignorance and imagination do the rest.

The theater itself is the best part of the event: a patched-up shell of the real thing, left miraculously standing amidst the desolate blocks that used to reach towards the sky many years ago, before the bombs fell.

They come in; they give the adepts at the door talismanic tokens called “tickets” and, in return, collect folded sheafs of paper that carry a single proud word — Programme — printed on the front page in block letters by an earnest if inexperienced hand. They find their seats; they lower themselves into them reverently, ceremoniously; they sit in respectful stillness, waiting for the heavy sackcloth of the curtain to part and for the incantation to begin.

She does not disappoint when she finally floats onto the stage. In the wavering light cast by torches she stands at the center of everyone’s attention: the portly conduit of the sacred knowledge of the ancients, the high priestess, the Diva. She stands there quietly for a moment while the audience erupts in the calls of “Applause! Applause!” — a greeting that the ritual mandates for the initiated to shout out in the presence of the higher adepts. She surveys a wall of faces that are surveying her in return, eager for the transmission of the esoteric knowledge to begin. She extends her arms to them (the audience leans collectively forward, as if trying to fall thousandfold into her embrace); she closes her eyes (countless breaths are held); she opens her mouth and emits the first nasal, grating, tuneless notes of the spell that, according to the holy books, the learned ancients called opera. Her thundering ululation soars above the crowd and for a moment, people are tempted to press their hands to their ears, to shut it out, to think of more pleasant sounds.

They do not do that, of course. To flout the trappings of divine grace is to scare the grace away. Like it or not, they’re getting culture tonight.

• I am staying at a hotel downtown, near the British embassy.
• The sound system plays Christmas carols on repeat, all day.  They’ve just finished “Let It Snow”.
• It’s +30° C outside.  I am sitting in the shade of palm trees by the pool, drinking coffee.
• There is a giant Christmas tree in the lobby.  There are life-size plastic figures of Santa and reindeer suspended from the ceiling.  The place sparkles with Christmas lights.
• David Carradine ended his days here a couple of years ago.  My local gossip sources whisper darkly about autoerotic asphyxiation.
• Along with massages, the spa pitches skin-whitening treatments.  So does the local elevated.
• I forgot how nice it is to be completely alone.
• Edward Tufte’s booklet railing against PowerPoint is a disappointing read.  Bullets have their uses.
• I eat at the breakfast buffet.  There are yet fruits I do not know, there are yet fruits I have not tried.
• Rambutans suck ass!

Ka-Ching, the Book of Small Change

I find myself in the middle of a self-staged psychological experiment.

At one month of age, my son shows few recognizably human traits.  He acts on pure instinct.  Lanie and I agree he seems more a pet than a child at this point.  I understand why even the most devoted parents complain about this stage: one’s life becomes reduced to the non-stop servicing of a ceaseless chain of physiological demands; one essentially becomes chained to the bottom of the Maslow pyramid.  This breeds misery on a very deep, instinctual level.

The misery has a counterweight—the giddy happiness that overcomes me at the mere sight of him.  This is tangible proof of the evolutionary importance of parent-to-child bonding.  As always, my tendency towards overexamination complicates things: I mentally dissect the nature of my surges in happiness even as I experience them.  This dampens their soothing effect.

Eraserhead is not nearly as lateral to reality as I thought it was.  It is a fairly accurate depiction of a new father’s emotions, stated in allegorical form.

I dream these thoughts in liminal halfsleep at around 4 o’clock in the morning, listening to the grunts of the creature beside me.