Dream-o-Meter: Why I Fear Emeralds
It is a Friday afternoon and I am wandering down Broadway (at around 110th Street) and I have an overwhelming feeling that I have to find something that I've lost, but I'm not sure what it is. I come across a church, but one that looks like it doesn't belong in Manhattan. It's an orange wood and looks like it belongs somewhere out East on the Island. I'm not sure what street I'm on anymore, but I go in and kneel in the first row. There is no one else there.
But suddenly, there's a full congregation and the minister is preaching directly to me in a loud TV voice and tells me "seek and ye shall find!"
A man taps me on the shoulder. He is wearing a white t-shirt and jeans and is unshaven with unkempt brown hair and flashing eyes that immediately make me think of Raskolnikov. (But there's kind of a trashier quality to him...). He and I have some kind of exchange and the next thing I know, we are in a stone chapel.
It looks like one of the back chapels at St. John's. There are tall sparkling stained glass windows, but other than that, no light. Suddenly, he begins beating me, although I seem to have already given my consent. I can't recall thinking about anything except for each blow. My vision floats in and out of focus and I can feel my face swelling. My lips sting and are sweet with blood. All at once, I start to feel incredible pain, but I can't concentrate because it is slamming my head up and down against the stone floor. It is cold and I am beginning to lose consciousness.
I am washed with a violent wave of panic and fear. I see my body thrashing around on the floor and I keep thinking "OK... this isn't okay anymore! I want to get off. I want to stop the ride."
I hear myself crying and retching and coughing blood, but still I do not speak. He pauses and I think "Speak, god damn it! Speak!" I will my lips to move and I feel them sputtering, but what they say is "more..." and so he starts again.
I have no time to dwell in the astonishment of my self-betrayal because once again, everything is blurred beneath the blows.
I see him suddenly move away and with his elbow he shatters the largest central window. The colored specks of glass rain down around me and I begin to cry with a delirious joy. I touch my head and my long hair is sticky and matted with my blood.
Red streaks run like ribbons around my arms and legs and over the yellow-blue bruises on my cheeks and eyes.
"I am them," I think. "I have finally become that glass. I shine in the most brilliant red and I too am broken on the floor."
He picks up a large piece of jagged green glass. The glass gleams and casts green gelatin shadows of light on the opposite wall. HE brings it towards me.
"This one is for you."
I smile, although it hurts, but suddenly, he grabs my head from behind and tightens his arm in a lock around my neck. I am afraid that he will cut my throat and I brace myself for it, but instead, he brings the glass sharply across my eyes. At first I see only green slashes and shards, dancing by lazes, but then, my eyesight is gone and I wail in unending pain as everything becomes the thickest black-red.
My face is covered in a muddy torrent of it and I am in a panic and disoriented. I begin to scream and scream uncontrollably.
"Where are the emeralds?" I demand. "Where are they???"
"But my dear," he says calmly, "of course you know, the emeralds were all sold long ago!"
He begins to laugh wildly, bu controlled in a very condescending manner. I am silent. All of the pain is gone and I just sit there on the floor, sort of disconcerted.
The dream always ends there with a sort of empty thoughtless void feeling. He laughs good-naturedly at my foolishness.
posted by Hyde @
12:30 PM
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