Last night was very strange…for most of it I was caught
somewhere between sleep and waking. My mind just kept pacing around the rim of
sleep, like a panther stalking its prey. Pacing, pacing, pacing, tasting the
edge, then back to pacing. When my mind finally plunged into the inky depths of
sleep towards dawn, I had two dreams. I only remember a part of the first
dream, and the second one was very short. In both dreams I was myself, which is
a rarity indeed.
A Very Merry Unbirthday
There was a house in a dying wood. All of the trees had lost
all of their leaves and the ground was cracked and dry and disintegrating into
a fine white powder that the wind would suck up from the ground and fling
across your nose and mouth. The house
was oddly shaped, like the entirety had been built at different times, room by
room. It was longer than it was wide, and each room would end abruptly where
the next began without a separating wall. I walked through the house from the
front door to the back yard. In each room there were different people doing
different things; in one room there was an old couple watching a T.V. program
on an old out-dated television set. The furniture was old, the upholstery worn
and filled with holes which were covered by crocheted throw blankets in a
multitude of colors. A white screen door led out onto the backyard where a very
long table was set out beneath the over-arching branches of the white parched
trees. Faded paper flags had been strung between the skeletal branches of the trees,
and they fluttered in the dust-strewn wind. The table had been painted white at
one point, but the paint was now peeling and had been worn off with age. Teapots
and teacups littered a white lace runner that ran the length of the table and
white plates were laden with cakes and sandwiches. Dean entered the backyard
carrying stacks of paper in muted colors. He said that we needed to make more
paper flowers and birds for decorations. Apparently, we were preparing for my
birthday party…and then…the dream ended and another one began.
Despite (or more likely because of) the faded colors, the
peeling paint, and the bare trees, I have to note that the whole scene was
quite unusually beautiful. And for some reason, the presence of paper was
incredibly important.
これは日本の書店ですか。/ Is this a Japanese Bookstore?
I found myself in a maze of folding tables, all filled to
the brim with old books. Heaven. There were other things for sell in this
haphazard store other than books, like metal teapots, and antique lamps, but I
wasn’t interested in anything but the treasure-trove of books that lay in wait
for my discovery. Though I say this was a store, the whole place was open-air
with a large canopy draped on poles for shade. I was on an outer edge of the
store which was pressed up against the outside of a building where the walls
were all made of panels of glass. I then realized that I had not put on any
make-up, so I decided to use the glass as a mirror. I quickly slapped on some
concealer and blush before anyone could witness me in the midst of a beauty
routine. I finished putting on my make-up and continued browsing. Behind me I
heard two women talking in Japanese. I turned to glance at them. There were two
women and one girl all conversing in Japanese; a mother, an aunt, and a
daughter. The mother and aunt both had long black hair tied back into a low
pony-tail, but the girl’s hair was cut short and neat right to her chin. The
mother was going to go into a shop next door and she wanted to know if they
wanted anything to eat from there. They both said no.
The aunt was wearing a draped shirt in various shades of
pale green and a pair of cropped blue-jeans; she had a very round face and a
very serious “no nonsense” demeanor. I
approached the booth and asked the aunt, 「すみませんが、あなたは日本人ですか。」(Excuse me but, are you Japanese?). And
she said, “I’m sorry, but no.”, in English. I was confused as to why she would
want to conceal the fact that she was Japanese, and why she would answer me in
English, which clearly indicated that she understood me. I just shrugged my
shoulders and decided to peruse through the books she had for sale anyway. I
picked up a thick, heavy, paperback book titled Her Sorrow. It had been
slouching up against a brusselsprout colored hard-cover book in a dark corner
in the bookcase. As I picked up the book, the aunt came gliding over, all
smiles, wanting to know if I needed any help and mentioning that this was a
very rare book. Judging form the way it was placed on the shelf like a reject,
I highly doubted that. Her Sorrow was a large compilation of dark fairy-tales written by various famous authors,
one being my favorite author, Tanith Lee. The cover was all dark grey, white,
and black; there were two beautiful blonde women, one dressed in black and the
other in white, and a large black swan. The woman in black was on the left half of the cover. She had her left hand draped across the swan’s neck and she stood strong
and tall looking out to the horizon to the left. The woman in white was on the
right half of the cover and she was kneeling with her whole body draped across
the back of the swan and her right hand curving up across the swan’s chest. Her
eyes were down-cast and tears trickled down her face onto the black feathers of
the swan. Out of the corner of my eye,
behind the rather large rear-end of the gliding aunt, I spotted another
interesting book. What had caught my attention was the art on the cover. I
could tell that it was the work of one of my favorite artists, Kinuko Y. Craft.
I didn’t read the title, instead I looked straight to the author, hoping that it
was one of Juliet Marrilier’s books. The author’s name was written backwards
and upside-down in gold calligraphy. I made out that the first name started
with a “V” and that the last name was Kiles. I was worried that I wouldn’t
be able to afford both, and so I prepared to haggle with the aunt. I began to
inquire as to the price of the books and…I woke up.
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