Authors: M.B. Julien
I think about what he says, then I ask the white shade,"Doesn't
this mean that there is no fact or fiction? If I believe there is no gravity,
will there or will there not be gravity?"
"In this place, there is gravity and there is no gravity. Depending
on what you believe, you will witness one or the other."
At this point, in my mind I'm debating and comparing the real world to
the dream world and trying to understand what this person is saying. The white
shade tells me that I'm on the right track but going in the wrong direction,
that I should be thinking about how similar these two worlds truly are.
"Now you need to pick up the gun, and then ask yourself where you
will go when you are done with this life, and then you will or will not be able
to pull the trigger."
I think about the question before I pick up the gun. I always believed
that our bodies and our minds were separate, and that when our bodies died, our
minds would live on. That we created our own afterlives. That what we truly
believed in the unconscious brain is what would happen after we have passed.
Those who believed in Heaven and Hell would go to Heaven or Hell. Those who
believed in reincarnation would be reincarnated. Those who believed in a place
where there is unlimited candy would go to a place where there was unlimited
candy.
So I picked up the gun, and I tried again. This time I pulled the
trigger, and I could almost feel the metal in my brain. After it was done, I
was still there, in the same office with the same white shade and the same man
who was covered in darkness on a big screen. "Don't be afraid."
That's what the white shade says to me.
A few seconds later, the white shade begins to explain to me that this
man who is covered in darkness in this photograph is a bad person, but that the
real problem is that he can't die because of what he knows. He murders, he
steals, he rapes. "All that bad guy stuff."
So I ask it what this has to do with me. The white shade says that I
have to stop him. "But you just told me that he can't be stopped."
The white shade then tells me that I have to convince him that what he is doing
is wrong. That he cannot take advantage of a life with no consequences. That I
need to show him that "every action has an equal and opposite
reaction."
I ask the white shade why it can't try to convince him itself, and it
says that it's for a personal reason. The white shade then says that it's not
forcing me to do anything, that I have to want to do the right thing of my own
free will. I look down and begin to think about what the white shade is saying
and realize that there is a piece of paper before me. On it there is a small
stamp that says "Welcome to the rose city." Portland.
Right now it's two a.m. and I can't sleep. This happens every once in a
while. So instead of sleeping I find myself staring outside my window into a
vision wrapped in street lights. A part of me ponders the vast amount of dreams
going on right now in the world, or at least on this side of the world. Not
three seconds later after the thought is born someone pulls into the parking
lot.
After they park, and after one of the street lights cast a white light
on the car, I can see the color of the car and I realize that the owner of the
car is Lynne. Where do people go at two a.m.? What do they do?
I'd have to say about ten minutes have passed by and I'm still looking
at this car and Lynne still has not gotten out of it. Did I miss that part. I'm
tired, but I don't think I did. Ten more minutes go by and nothing has changed.
Lynne is sitting in her car but I have no idea why. Is she asleep? Maybe she's
too tired to get out. Maybe she is thinking. Or, maybe it's not her.
Five minutes, and now I'm falling in and out of a daydream. In the
daydream Lynne walks pass me and she smiles along the way. I'm getting tired of
seeing that damn smile. For a second I want to punch her in the face in hopes
of never having to see it again. When I realize I'm daydreaming, after I find
myself staring at the same car I've been watching for the past thirty minutes,
I ask myself if I'm bitter towards Lynne because I'm jealous of Silvio, or if
it's because I'm angry at her for being so stupid. For falling into a trap that
is clearly labeled "Trap."
Now the car door finally opens, it's Lynne. She walks towards the
building. That slight limp due to a foot that has said goodbye. Before she
enters the building, she admires her flowers. For the rest of the night, I'm
left thinking about why she could have possibly spent that much time in her
car.
After the darkness of the night begins to lift, I hear arguing from my
window in another apartment building. It's a little after six a.m. and I can't
tell if I had slept or not, the only thing I knew was that I was awake now.
The arguing continues until one of them leaves and then there is finally
silence. This is not the first time and I'm certain it will not be the last.
The frustration of not being able to sleep properly, it prompts me to go
outside for a walk in an effort to tire myself. It has worked before. As soon
as I hit the first sidewalk, that's when I hear it. Real silence. No cars, no
birds, no Sun. No people, no wind. Everything is still. I stand there and
admire the scene because I cannot believe it's past six a.m. and the world has
not yet gone to work. I must be dreaming.
On the walk, along the way, I think about the dream I had several months
ago and how I'm still convinced that the white shade was some kind of
representation of God. Was God speaking to me?
There are some who will claim to hear the voice of God, or in other
instances claim that God interacted with them in some way. It seems to me like,
considering the stories from the Old Testament of the Bible, God use to speak
to its creation time and time again, but as its creation began to multiply it
became very difficult to keep moderate social levels with every single human
being, so maybe he stopped trying. Maybe now he only speaks to the people who
need to hear his voice. The people that need to know he is still out there
somewhere. Of course these sentences may implicate that God is not all-powerful
and that it is possible for him to give up.
Without the presence of a higher being or someone to hear our words and
answer our questions, life becomes a mystery, and because of this I believe it
is possible that even the wisest person can spend their entire life searching
for something they will never find while the most foolish person dwells in a
lifetime of prosperity. Sooner or later we will all have to learn to fend for
ourselves when there is no one there to guide us. We will have to find our own
way.
Somewhere in the pages of the composition notebooks there is a story of
guidance. Dreams about a society that is now, depending on which side of the
line you stand on, completely run by a corrupt government. In the same dreams I
am part of a group of outsiders, and somewhere along the way this group
searches for a leader. Someone to guide them while they continue to evade the
efforts of such an evil civilization. A civilization that barely seems civil.
After such a long time of running, we all begin to see these
"civilians" as monsters, and when you come across any of them, it's
better to run than to fight because they will certainly not welcome your ideas
and beliefs. That's the mistake that Gary made. He thought he could convince
them that they should be friends rather then enemies, and their reply was to
imprison him simply because of the way he looked. They could not understand our
language. I mean they could, but philosophically, our perceptions were not in
tune. We may have spoken the same language, but we were two entirely different
species.
Because Gary had gone and got himself caught by the civilians, for
Stephanie's sake, we had to get him out, and where there is a plan, there has
to be a person to mastermind it. As much as I didn't want it, the outsiders
looked to me for leadership in hard times because of the things I had done
before, and because of this, the rest of Gary's life was in my hands.
Metaphorically.
By the time I get back home, the world had begun its day. Cars on the
street, people and their dogs on the sidewalks. School buses eating children
one by one as their parents watch with that distasteful smile and that
redundant wave goodbye.
I wish someone could give me mathematic or scientific formulas to apply
to these things that I see so I could figure out why people are always smiling
when there are few things to smile about in life. Maybe I don't understand
because I don't smile enough myself. Maybe I don't have the right people in my
life who can tell me why smiling is so popular or important. People do it all
over the world. It's one of the few words that share the same meaning in the
perception of a civilian versus the perception of an outsider.
Why do these human tendencies plague me so much. No question mark. I
accepted who I am a long time ago, but I'm starting to think that maybe
accepting who you are and knowing you are this way simply because you are this
way and you might never change may be the first sign that you should not accept
yourself. That is, of course, only if you despise the pain you receive for
being this way. Some people don't.
Chapter 45:
BLOODTHINNER
You can keep pretending to live these lives that are not yours, believe
you are these people that you are not, but the fact of the matter is your
dreams will not save you. They will not fulfill your desire to live. These are
the words of a therapist I was suggested to see many years ago.
"Everything is an illusion." Those are the last words of a woman
before her execution.
Depending on who you ask, dreams may be many things, which is why it is
almost pointless to ultimately define them. This notion that a certain thing
may mean one thing to you while it means something completely different to me
does not only apply to dreams but to many other things. You know this because
you've been in at least one debate or argument in your life.
The therapist doesn't tell me what dreams are, but he does tell me what
they are not. Of all the sentences he's said to me, the ones I've previously
mentioned were the only ones that stayed with me. Even though I chose to argue
with him, even though that was my last visit, in the end I knew he was right.
"Your dreams will not save you."
Never "my" therapist, using such a pronoun would implicate my
submission to the idea that I actually needed to see one. I never agreed with
Maria, but I did it for her. Instead, I often use the definite article
"the" when referring to him. The therapist. Just another proper
nounless character in a story within a story. The aim with the whole therapist
idea was to help me more easily and socially express myself, to not seem so
indifferent on every subject and so cold to the people who loved me. To escape
the stoicism.
My question then was, how can I function in a society that is constantly
clotting my blood. A society that all too often disappoints; where the stories
of redemption are much too few and too far between. How can one who suffers
from misanthropy find a cure to stop the clotting. Eventually, one can die from
such a disease.
There was a Winter night where I had a dream in which I was interrogating
someone while my father watched. I couldn't see him because the darkness of the
shadows hid him well, but I knew he was there. The son of a bitch who I am
questioning doesn't believe that I am willing to go as far as shooting him to
get what I need to know out of him. So now he's taunting me, telling me that I
don't have it in me. He's right, I don't. At least not yet.
He keeps talking, and I'm thinking of something I could do to shut him
up and get him saying the words that I actually want to hear out of his mouth.
Now I'm taking a pocketknife out of my pocket. "Oh, now you're going to
cut me?" He laughs. No, I'm not going to cut him.
I put my hand on a table, and now he's quiet. I start to hack away at my
one of my fingers, and I know I have his respect and attention now. After a
while he is completely silent. I pick up my now unattached finger and wave it
in his face. Then I put the gun to his heart and give him a cold stare that you
could only get from someone who has ice-water in their veins. Someone so cold
and so far gone that any attempt to save them would only further progress their
destruction. Something like a therapist who fuels the part of you that needs
therapy and ultimately is successful in doing the complete opposite of what is
listed in his job description.