Under
Friends,
Forgive me for not writing again sooner. I have been waylaid for some
months in a small town in the western part of Washington state. The
people here are honest and trusting, quick to offer
hospitality, slow to judge the weaknesses of others. The air is clean
and pine scented. The water is clear. Sure, there have been a number
of brutal supernatural murders in the past weeks, but…well. No place
is perfect.
The only reason I can find to prevent me from settling here
permanently is that all this idyllic stillness is affecting my
subconscious. I find it hard to write. By day, I live in the town. At
night, I dream about the town. In all other places where I have lived
and slept, I have always dreamed of places other than the one where my
body was sleeping. Sometimes daytime people would appear in those
dreams. They would give me messages or accompany me on journeys.
Often, these people would die. I would not be alarmed by this. After
all, people die in dreams. They do not actually die. These are
projections. The real person of their beings is far away, safe in a
box that has only one key. Sometimes you wake up afraid of something
in a dream. Often, I wake up afraid. But once you are fully awake, you forget these fears. You forget your dream. No one dies because of a dream.
But in this town, I go to sleep to the sound of water rushing over
rocks. I wake up to the same town, the same rocks. While I was asleep,
the water that I heard was passing many miles away to the Pacific
Ocean. But as long as I was asleep, I heard the sound of that water.
The people in my dream were those I had seen and talked to during the
day. The dream and the day were the same to me. What would happen if
someone died in one of THESE dreams? What if I had killed them? Could
I be convicted?
The town library where I spend my time is very old fashioned. They do
not have computers or movies. There are only books and dust. There is
one concession to modern times: a microfiche machine. There WAS an old
fashioned librarian to go with this old fashioned place. Her name was
Miss Lyon. Last week, however, Miss Lyon suffered sudden unexplained
hemorrhagic bruising of the cranial vertebrae. She has not yet
regained consciousness. In her absence, a girl named Helena Troy has
been placed in charge. Her hair is stringy and frizzy, like a bad wig.
I do not trust her to care for the books. What about mold? Luckily,
Helena is distracted for the moment by a group of schoolchildren
writing book reports. Who would have known that someday I would feel
grateful for The Scarlet Letter?
I used to think that dreams and stories were the same kind of thing.
Except for this – one of them can be controlled. Let me be more
specific: in dreams, one often does nothing. One sits and one watches
what is going on. Sometimes you participate in the actions. Still,
they are not YOUR actions. If something you do in a dream is against
your nature, it is silly to feel guilt about it. After all, you are
not the author of your dreams. In the same way, wolves and dogs are
also two kinds of the same thing. Wolves are wild. They cannot be
controlled. Dogs are not wild. Yet, wolves and dogs can breed. These
pairings produce viable offspring. On a basic genetic level, there is
no difference between the two. It is the same with stories and dreams.
Except perhaps this – dreams do not have genes?
When I am done for the day with the library, I like to go to the cafe
for coffee and listen to the old men talk. Listening to old men talk
is almost the same as reading books in a library, except you can do it
with your eyes closed. Also, if you spill coffee on an old man, he
doesn’t get stained as badly. If it is still light when I am done with
my coffee, I like to walk beside the river.
I have mentioned that there had been murders in the town? For some
reason, I am reluctant to talk about them. But I will say this – five
bodies have been found. At least, parts.
Though there is one thing about dogs. Because you trust your dog, you
will open your door to him. You would never knowingly open your door
to a wolf.
Helena Troy has a very deep voice. Even when she tries to whisper, the
vibratto of her voice carries to the back of the library. It is
obvious she knows nothing of Nathaniel Hawthorne. Because of her
ignorance, the children will never read ‘The Artist of the Beautiful.’
In that story, a young artist labors for many years to create a
clockwork butterfly. Then it is destroyed by a child. In the story,
onlookers are horrified by the destruction. The artist merely shrugs.
He has done his work. Only the onlookers have lost something. It is an
interesting lesson.
It is a myth that if you dream of falling, you must wake up before you
hit the ground. It is possible to dream your own death, and wake.
Now I am engaged in reading all the books in the library that were
written by people about other people. Last week, I read the books
where the author was writing about his or herself, either openly or
with fiction. This mostly covers all the kinds of books in the
library. There is only one kind of book I have left to read.
Many more people are killed by dogs each year than are killed by
wolves. Think of it! Can this really be only because more people come
into contact with dogs? Do we act more dangerously around dogs? Do we
underestimate our dogs because we think we control them?
The air by the river is much cooler than the air by the road. That is
- the temperature is lower. The sound of the water is loud enough to
cover the noises of the town. There is a mill to the north that sends
up smoke. If I turn my back to the North, so that I cannot see the
smoke, I imagine that I am in an untouched wilderness. Sometimes I
hear a footstep behind me. But actually, it is fish jumping out of the
river and falling back in again. Why do fish do this? What are they
looking out for?
The other thing about dreaming the same things that happen when I am
awake is this: I’m never sure what part I am playing. Is it a bit
part? A major role? What if I’m not the protagonist? Generally, when I
am awake, I am the protagonist.
The children have left the library unenlightened. Now Helena Troy has
come to the back of the library. She watches me. She has a pretext,
however – she is fixing the microfiche machine. I hope I have not
given the impression that Miss Troy is unnattractive. In fact, there
is a pleasing muscular symmetry to her features. However, the dress
she wears is truly ill fitting. Also, she has a five o’clock shadow.
The birds here are very different than the birds where I grew up.
There are many kinds of woodpecker. Before they found the bodies, I
would walk in the woods and listen for birds. I made lists. The woods
sounded very different from the woods I am used to. Chickadees,
however, sounded the same. They say – chickadee! Now that they have
found the bodies, I walk at the river instead.
More than one person cannot have the same dream. If you tell someone
your dream, you will not be sharing the dream. They will think you are
telling them a story.
“Sometimes I see you walking.” Helena Troy tells me. She has stopped
pretending not to see me. I tell her yes, I walk. She smells of pine
and citrus cologne. It is not a scent one would find in nature.
Except, possibly, in Greece. “Aren’t you afraid? People have been
killed.”
I am never afraid when I am walking. Sometimes, when I read, I feel
fear. I am afraid for the characters in the book. I am afraid
something bad will happen to them. But you can close a book to put off
a bad thing. So really, it is not the same sort of fear.
One time when I walked in the woods, I came across an open place where
earth had recently been turned. A man was there. It was dark, and I
could not see his face. I believe we were both surprised to see each
other. I did not greet him, but walked on.
“They tell me you write stories.” Helena Troy tells me. There is a
buxom dancer tattooed on her left forearm. She is trying to read what
is in my notebook.
Did I say that the stillness in the town makes it difficult to write?
Let me be clear. It is not difficult to write. Rather, let us say I
have been reluctant to write. When I go to bed, the sound of the river
runs in my ears. It is the same when I write. In that place where my
mind is writing, there also I can hear the sound of the river. If I
dream of death, not one pebble would be harmed. But what if I share my
dream? Could someone be hurt?
Helena Troy is leaning much closer to see what I am writing. Her hands
on the table are huge and muscular. I tell her that I have just
finished reading the last book in the library that was written by
somebody about somebody else. There is only the last kind of book to
be read. What kind of book is that? She has grabbed both my wrists, so
I can no longer hold a pen. I can no longer be writing.
“The last kind of book is the kind that isn’t written by anyone. It is
about some people and what happens to them. At first, maybe, you do
not know what kind of thing it is. It lives with you. You give it
food. It can live with you a long time before anything happens. But
when something does happen, then you wonder. Was I ever actually in
control? Was I the one who was writing?”
You may have gathered by now that I am very fond of the river that
runs through the town. It is not a very deep river. Its clear shallows
are famous for their quality trout fishing. However, there is one spot
near a cliff where currents and rocks have ground away quite a large
portion of the riverbed. The water in that spot is green and opaque.
It is impossible to see the riverbed. This part of the river is
visible from the windows of the town cafe. If you were to visit, I
would suggest that you come to the cafe in the afternoon, when the
haze has burned off and the view is best. I would also recommend this:
the blueberry pie.
If you are an adventurous sort of person, it is possible to hike to
the deep spot in the river and sit on the bank. It is so quiet in that
particular spot that it is hard to believe that the water is even
moving. Only if you were underneath would you understand that it has
never stopped moving. Don’t do that! If you go underneath, you would
not come up again.
The sound of the river from under the water is very much like this:
“Hush.” I wonder about this sometimes. It is always in my mind these
days. Hush. Hush. Hush.
