Woke from another unsettling draam. He’d bought me some fish. It was due to come through the post. I’d felt bad about this. I didn’t want to eat it, after all I was a vegan, but something made me want or was it need it. I was eating some white fish as I woke. I was horrible, it tasted metallic, unhappy, dead.
I walk in the night in search of shadows to draw. I like the closing-in-ness of the dark. Much of the detail is lost. I want lines, simple lines. But, as Berger says, all drawings, and possibly intentions, fail.
Sometimes I catch him midway through a dream. This morning he was both in and out of one. It was something to do with a washing machine cycle and how he had wanted to time his sleeping with it. It was clear and yet it wasn’t. It’s a liminal space, that just-after-dreaming-land. Sometimes I never want to leave it.
If I die before you, I said to him last night, will you make sure that it is in my bed so that I can listen to birds outside? He promised.
I’m not sure. I prevaricate, as always. Should we go or not? I want an escape. To just put my body somewhere else, if only to look back on where it usually is. And this hotel will do. It isn’t far. It’s comfortable, not plush or elegant, but comfortable. Not much will be asked of me. It will do. And I should and will embrace it. Soon.
I know why I dreamt of them. I’ve been reading about them during the day. The dream featured corridors, windy ones. I was with a group of people. I think H. was one of them. We were in a hotel that seemed to improve in decor and plushness the more corners we turned. And the more corners we turned the more chairs there were. Chairs grouped in pairs. Occasional chairs that nobody would ever use. I picked one up and began to carry it with me, presumably to put in my hotel bedroom. You won’t need that, said a member of the hotel staff, who had just appeared and took it off me. I woke then.
Can there be a positive take on such a word? What can endurance bring – hope? No, not that, but perhaps a sense of self-reliance, of a strength that was unrecognised. Is that enough to sustain? Possibly. It’s this seeking of happiness, even contentment and safety, that’s the bugger. Can such aspirations be let go of? Can just living do? The endurance of it?
Sometimes dreams can be seemingly full of portent, dark and unsettling, others they can appear utterly banal. Last night he and I talked about felt pens. He was in favour of them. I wasn’t sure. Though I did wake from the dream looking forward to using one that I know I have in my drawer. It all came from a drawing I’d made yesterday afternoon. The pen had been wrong, inappropriate. My subconscious was clearly trying to work this through.
I think that was what made me cry. His writing that life is miracle enough. And it was that notion of a miracle, just that coursing of blood through veins, and not feeling it, not rising to feel it that made me sad. And yet he had died so young and so tragically. And here was me outliving him by some years and not feeling that wonder. At least not yesterday. And I am sorry for it. For I know the gifts that I have, and his love especially. Forgive me my self-pity. It is not good enough. I will try harder. I promise.
I don’t know what it is that is causing it. An overactive, worried mind, perhaps? There is so much I haven’t solved yet and the fear of that niggles and jiggles in my head. Consequently I bring a befuddled brain to this morning’s writing. Oh well.