Dreamtime: A Happy Book

Resort

17 17 17 Resort Dreaming begins in late fall and stretches through winter. In November I dreamed that I was raking leaves and woke up musty with perspiration , blankets scraped into a pile. I went downstairs to the kitchen, drank a glass of orange juice, and for twenty minutes stared at the linoleum before returning to bed to be smothered by leaves again. In December snow fell, and I dreamed I was shoveling the drive. I pitched my blankets to the side of the bed and sat up, my back throbbing and my forehead wet and icy. For her part Vicki became a mariner riding the storm-tossed mattress, occasionally waking and shouting, “Hearty, har, har, har, matey,” ending with a raspy “argh,” the sound the cry of a landlubber’s being eviscerated by a rusty cutlass. When working dreams fill the night, lassitude infects the day. Often surprises billow through moments, however, pushing one beyond the doldrums . From Australia in December, Barbara Olds sent me a poem from her collection Boundary Rider. The title of the poem “Promise” was also the first line. Promise when I die you’ll scatter my ashes at sunset in the hills overlooking the Mundi Mundi where I can watch wild horses as they chase their shadows across red earth 18 | Dreamtime 18 | Dreamtime where a thin dark line divides land and sky burnt and blue reflected in the steaming air where no longer bound by the gravity of life the willy willy will set me free To be plucked from leaves and snow by a dust devil and spun over the Mundi Mundi flatlands and through the horizon appealed to me. For a moment I imagined red sand and stringy blue skies, kangaroos, whistling kites, and black-faced wood swallows. In dream season, though, the poetic fit does not last long. Two days later I saw “Positive Exposure,” an exhibition of photographs of albinos taken by Rick Guidotti in Tanzania . Albinism, a broadside said, affected one out of every four thousand people in Tanzania. Melanoma was epidemic, and the average life span of albinos in Tanzania was thirty years. In the West the life expectancy of people with albinism was the same as that of the general population . Melanomas splotched people posing for Guidotti, spreading in brown webs under the skin like the hyphae of mushrooms. In West Africa the bodies of albinos were considered magical and, if stewed into portions brewed by witch doctors, were thought to bring riches. During the past year the broadside stated, at least twenty-eight, and perhaps as many as sixty, albinos had been murdered and parts of their bodies “hacked off and sold to witch doctors.” Such exposure darkened days, causing the Dickensian jollity associated with December to catch in the throat. Moreover at Christmas the dead seemed more with me that the living. In fact I had more to say to the dead than to the living, and only champagne therapy enabled me to fizz through the demands of affectionate small talk. Behind the weariness of December lay not only dream but the stock-market debacle. Much of my retirement vanished, and I spent many gloomy hours mulling my losses. Of course the gloom was intermittent. My friend Nowell sent me The Pot Thickens, a cookbook for which he supplied recipes for ambrosia, pimento-cheese sandwiches, baked-bean casserole, apple pound cake, and “the legendary red dressing from the Monroe, Georgia, VFW.” The editor of the book commented on the recipes, his remarks rising like Resort | 19 soufflés, light to the funny bone rather than to the palette. Of chicken wings a woman served at her annual Superbowl party, he wrote, “I would even sit through a football game for food like this, and the last time I actually sat through a football game, I was dating the quarterback.” He then paused before adding, “Oh, never mind, these things do get away from me.” During dream season many things get away from a person. The day after Christmas the immobilizer on my Volvo got its antenna in a snarl, announced “Start Prevented,” and shut the car down, blocking the drive. The next morning the car started, and I drove to East Hartford for repairs . While a mechanic massaged cramps out of the immobilizer, I ate breakfast in a diner. Two women in a booth next to me drank coffee and discussed...