The Subconscious

a collective dream I had..

The Subconscious

 

There I was, walking barefoot through the graveyard at the edge of town in the cold of night. My feet had carried me through the swampy grounds of the bordering woods and past the rusting gates.  There was a lock picked open, dangling from the mid-shaft of a corroding pole, entangled within snares of the cemetery’s thorny weeds.  If the night was deceiving my perception, and in the meanwhile taunting my quivering cognizance, I would have believed that the weeds had picked the lock open itself.  I had nothing on but a thin slip on that hid my frame from the whistling wind, and my arms and legs bare to the sting of the moist evening.  What was I doing here? I wondered.  I had never been to a graveyard before, so this must be a dream.  The unfamiliarity frightened me, but my trembling body was not my own. 

                I looked around me to the speckled boulders of mountainous stones that towered in my pathway.  Had there been sharp stones and pebbles beneath my feet I did not feel them.  There was absolutely no lively person in sight save for my reflection that glistened from a nearby pond I had passed on my way to nowhere.  I could see that a light fog had lifted from this place not too long ago as the blades of grass and weed on the ground were lathered in dew, and the gravestones were damp.  The darkness was beginning to become overwhelming; it was like the daunting presence of an omnipresent shadow in my wake, a figureless form, everywhere, yet nowhere.   

                “Angels protect me,” I trembled under my breath.  I must have been lured in this dream, unsuspecting to someone or something.  I must have slipped too deep in my sleep…perhaps. None of this makes sense or felt completely real.

 Ahead of me I could see the blur of an object being illuminated by the faint touch of the moon, and as I approached it, or as my feet did, I saw that it was a truncated headstone, nestled low between the soft bushes of rosemary and lilacs. 

Here lay thee,

Friend, daughter, and Foe.

May here her body rest, but her spirit free of lingering grief.

Bewildered, and perhaps frightened to the point of numbness, I looked upon this nameless headstone.  Friend, daughter, and Foe.  I looked around.  There were countless headstones lying about the perimeter, but all were not buried between weeds and florets.  One stood nearby, towering over a sodden ground that was beginning to grow weeds of its own, but the thorns were of great and perilous nature, and none she had ever seen before.  She stepped closer, careful of the leeching weeds that barricaded the frame of the disturbed ground. 

Here lay Bartholomew Burwitz,

Son, Brother, and murderer

His soul forever indebted to those less fortunate.

Another one laid nearby.  Barren wife, undiscerned mate.  And another.  Environmentalist.  Closet conservative. Faithless nun.  Homophobe. Terrorist…

More laid about the area, shadowed by the winged claws of the graveyard fences. They all had names to claim their perpetually candid graves save for the one burrowed between the bushes of rosemary and lilacs. I cowered beside it, brushing my fingers against the smooth surface of the gray stone.  There was a familiarity with the ground, like my feet had rooted itself to the moist dirt in the instance I stepped onto it.  And then right there, in that moment, I had the craziest notion of unbelievable concernment that maybe, just maybe, this had been mine. 

                Woe I felt to the truthful nature of a sleeping stone that not even human words could form from their suspecting hearts.  And if the cold, lifeless dirt could sprout up the former’s emotions and very essence of being what they were before succumbing to the natural sleep, then perhaps I now learn that what we are and who we become will leave it’s traces in this fragmentary world.  Friend? Indeed, I am, or had been, or was.  Life has it’s way of instrumenting people into my life, if only for a swift moment, or a lifetime.  Relationships were like consuming a breath of fresh air after breaking the glazed surface of a rippling ocean.  People were like the billowing foam of gassy clouds in the sky, respectable in their own forms, and present everyday, but always moving on. 

                A foe.  Had I been?  I imagined the corner of 23^rd and Hudson, where a one legged man would sit accompanied by his furry pet in the scorching central, southern heat.  He was dirty, lathered up by the trials of a long day and a hungry stomach.  Sometimes, when I would walk by, I could see him waving his hand below the shaft of his amputated leg and grimace in pain underneath the waterfall of his long and tangled beard.  “Damn leg!” I’d hear him curse.  But there was nothing there. As a medical student, I knew that the absence of the man’s leg was breached by the presence of “phantom leg syndrome.”  It was an insufferable pain, like an itch you could not scratch.  The man’s dog, a mutt of small size, would often brush its hind legs against the airy space, as if easing the non-existent leg into a sedative sleep so that it’s human would stop hurting.  Perhaps pets did have a natural sixth sense, I often wondered. 

                I would always pass by the one legged man and the dog on my way to the locale restaurants and pubs when I felt hungry, or needed to pick up a pack of Camel menthols at the convenience store.  His rough and coarse voice sounded in my head, “please spare some change, miss, if you’ve any.” He didn’t have a sign, so I knew he was no pan-handler.  No deceit was necessary to see that this man was, indeed, homeless and hungry.  But I often felt afraid, a delirious notion of fear and anger that I too was no better off than he was. Other passerby would see them, and they would give the man change or yet better food.  And so, I would pass by the blank stare of the mutt and pleading hands of his owner in a rush down the gravel street to where I meant to go.  I do remember, however, on a cold and rainy night such as this I dropped a few cigarettes and a 50 cent lighter into the one legged man’s cap as he was well off asleep in his usual corner.  His mutt cowered beneath the man’s arms, hiding from the splattering rain and peered its gentle eyes into mines.  I stared back, hesitated, and ran off.

                I don’t know who was more pathetic �" the hungry dog or me running off.  If I had spared change, even food or water, then perhaps this perpetually distraught sensation of mines would not be so overwhelming.  Perhaps the one legged man had reckoned me his enemy, or would it have been the dog?  I do not know.

                I also think back to summers ago, when my life had peaked before the eventual fall into distrust and disloyalty.  Yes, I too once fell in and scrambled out of love.  He was a tender man.  He had a voice like that of cello slurring in the breeze of spring �" deep and soothing to the soul.  His name was Pro, short for Prometheus, the demi-God (because his parents were English majors and enjoyed Greek history and novelties).  Pro and I were soulmates.  His towering figure blended into my yielding shadow, his fingers when intertwined with mine would melt into my skin and stay for a while, and I didn’t mind it at all.  Spring allowed our love to grow, blooming into many summers when we made longing promises to one another and I pictured our future for the very first time.  But we had run our course into a rough winter, and I had tasted the bitter sting of first love for the first time.

                I don’t know when it was when he had left.  Words had been spit, letters torned.  All I could recall was the heaping hollowness that engulfed me when the floor boards of our small apartment didn’t creak with the sound of his footsteps anymore.  Did we end things with distaste in our hearts? I don’t know. Perhaps I had become a foe, unknowingly, and unwillingly.  Now I would never find out.

                I wondered what other spirits thought of when peering down upon their own grave.  Was it the truth?  Had their names been defiled by a blasphemous lie engraved on that stone? The veracity of the nature of it would haunt them until judgement day, and then all would feel no more.  People live comfortably off of lies, as ignorance is bliss.  If I could resurrect my flesh, lest it be rotting and devoured my leeches and maggots, I would live it truthfully.  Maybe then my grave wouldn’t just be accompanied by rosemary and lilacs but blossoms of roses and daisies, a weeping willow, and a field full of olive green grass. 

                I had no intention of leaving the grave, because I didn’t know where to go.  My skin was tingling with the prickling promise of early dawn and I could see a sky bed filled with rusty pink and yellow form in the distance.  The sun was making its’ appearance, and the moon was being tucked away on the other horizon.  Perhaps I would linger on like this forever, regrettably and alone.  A swift, evaporated shadow in the translucency of another realm…

And then I felt the sensation of shuffling sheets and a heavy pull in my chest, but my body felt like it was falling, and falling fast into an abyss.  My arms and legs reached out before me but the gravestones were beginning to diminish into smaller stones.  Smaller and smaller they became until they seemed like pebbles floating in the gloomy gray.  There was no wind, nor sound, nor thought in mind as I plummeted into a strange stupor. Darkness surrounded me once more, and a tiring chill washed over my body.  I opened my eyes, and here I was in the comfort of my bed, awakening from a slumbering sleep… the morning light had creeped through the curtains already, embracing my feverish but lively body.