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Had
a Dream... Had a Dream... Oh and it was the Strangest Dream... felt so real. Could feel it, smell it, taste it, hear it roaring in my ears. I was there. And it was real, felt so real... Swimming in a bay, a Big body of H2o, like maybe the Gulf of Mexico or the Southern Atlantic. Warm. The water was warm, like bath water. And the darkest blue. Dark navy blue. Floundering and dog-paddling under great big docks, huge docks way up high overhead like boon-docks. Round thick dark lumber, creosote lumber. I had on my pink one-pice swimsuit, just like the one I had when I was a kid. Light pink and bright pink 2-tone. I had on boat shoes. Light blue and black boat shoes. Lots of people on the white sandy beaches. There were horses there. It was like on a big plantation that someone lived on and it was their private beach and we were all invited, all these people. We had rented out one of the little houses, way up by the Big House. "We". I don't know who "we" were --- I think maybe my friend Elizabeth, from when I used to carriage drive, which is weird cuz we are no longer friends and we were never that close to begin with, but in the dream we were totally best friends. For some reason, I had left my dog Piglet locked up in the house there. I think we were on the outskirts of New Orleans, right near the Gulf. Anyway, I lock Piglet up in the House, just closed the big thick-screened door. I close it and tell her, "Stay here. Wait here." and she looks at me all quizzical and worried and puzzled and hurt and then me and Elizabeth and my other dog Sony all walk down the old red-painted cement steps of the white-painted wood house and we walk down to the beach --- leaving Piglet in the house. Just me, icky Elizabeth who in reality grates upon my nerves but in the dream is a close friend, and my big black dog Sony, which is my Piglet-dog's Mommy-dog. First, you must know how terribly unusual this is, to leave the Piglet behind, because Sony & Piglet & I ALWAYS stick together. Especially if we're travelling some place. I would never in reality go anywhere & leave my dogs alone --- or leave one of them behind --- while I went galavanting around with the other dog. And I certainly would never leave the Piglet-dog alone, cuz she loves me too much and she loves her mother-dog too much. She'd absolutely freak with abandonment anxiety. And too much could happen. They
could get out, try to find me, get lost --- a thousand miles from home.
No Sir, I would never have left my little Piglet-dog in a place all by
herself away from me and her beloved mother, with just a flimsy screen
door to keep her locked up. Ridiculous. So we go down to the beach and swim under this huge viaduct thing and Sony's running on the beach, back and forth and wading in the water, but mostly just running back and forth on the beach and there's this horse there and me and Elizabeth lead it into the water. One of the guest's horses, a shaggy brown thing, old and friendly. She had brought it down to the beach like I'd brought my dog and Elizabeth & I coax the horse in and we take the lady's gunnysack of horse-treats and we pull the treats out of the gunny sack by the handful and bob them in the water like tiny beach-toys. Little round dried-pellet apple-tasting treats about the size of a ping-pong ball and we toss them up in the air and let them plop in the water and just float and bob there and the horse looks happy and is standing up to his back in the water and he's bobbing for these floating apple-treats and I start to jump up and down in the water, laughing like a kid and so does Elizabeth and I felt like a child again and we sing this little song about, "He's so happy, because he has a TREAT!! He's a Happy Pony because he likes his TREAT!" And we laugh so hard, like it's the funniest thing in the world, really goofy and we're jumping up and down in the water and splashing and twirling and then this big wave comes rushing up from behind us and moves us towards the shore and rocks us with it's force and we go squashing towards the shore like we're in a giant bathtub and then it sucks us back again to almost the exact same spot that we were at before and then the crowd on the beach kind of gathers on the beach and a few people point, silent and I wave one hand and splash with the other like a little kid and I shout, "We're O-kay!!" and me and Elizabeth laugh. Then one lady just kind of goes, "Aw" in dismay and so does a man and there's a couple of kids there on the beach too and one holds his hands to his eyes like he's crying or wiping sand out of his eyes and then a lady on the beach clicks her tongue and goes, "Poor thing!" like at a wounded bird or something. And then everything grows quiet. Totally quiet. And then I see my big black Sony-dog float past me on her side, drowned. She floats right past me, like sea debris. I can see her tail floating on top of the water, completely drenched, and all of her totally wringing wet and I think, "Maybe it's not her, maybe it's somebody else's big black dog," and as she floats and bobs past me, I embrace her to me and I turn the body over and I find the tiny white patch of hair on her chest, her white mark, her zig-zag lightning mark, hoping it won't be there, but there it is indeed --- and it's so clean; shiny brite-white, clean from this surf, bleach-white clean. And I cleave her body to me and I wade up to the shore, trying to squeeze her chest, trying to squeeze the water out of her lungs as I wade towards the beach, but it's no use and I know it's no use but I try anyway --- God I have to try! --- and I am sad and calm in the dream, trying to make the water come out of her lungs though I know it won't. I know it's too late. But I try anyway. So I pick her up and I'm not crying or anything, I'm just really really calm in the dream, and I can feel her wet dead body against my chest and because of my adrenaline pumping she don't seem heavy at all. I take her up to the Big House, where I know Piglet's waiting. I have to show Piglet what happened to her Mother, so she'll know. And I wake up from the couch and there's my big black dog, my Sony-dog, stretched out full-length on the other couch. She's lying there all limp-bodied, with stiff legs sticking straight out, just like in the Dream. So I gingerly go to her and reach out to see, thinking maybe the Dream was a premonition of her Death, and maybe that's why Piglet wasn't allowed to come with us in the Dream. Maybe we were swimming in the River Styx in the Dream and the horse was the Horse of Death and Elizabeth was there because she is a friend who is dead to me and maybe we were on a Plantation because there are so many Spirits there --- voodoo spirits and ghosts from the other world and haunted swamp spirit-world --- and I touch her paw ever so gently to see, 'cuz she's lying so still, not even breathing, just like in the dream --- and she puts her paw in my hand, her paw as big as the hand of a small child --- and she opens up her liquid brown eyes, her eyes now old and glazed with cataracts --- and she gives me her Labrador-girl smile that she has smiled upon me for the last eleven years and she squeezes my hand, my palm, with her paw --- flexes all her paw muscles out and then in again so her paw squeezes my palm, firmly yet gently, and she smiles. ANALYZATION? --- NEVER LEAVE THE DOGS UNATTENDED TO GO FROLIC AND HAVE FUN WITH SOME HORSE WHO'S BOBBING FOR APPLES. On a deeper level, I suppose it's this: cleave to what's important. A chick yer not really all that close to and some stranger's shaggy old horse were the preferred company in the Dream --- over my 2 best friends, my ultimate friends: My dogs. My dogs who have always been there for me, thru thick n thin; my dogs who love me fiercely, no matter what. I shunned them for some frivolous stranger and company that I wasn't even close to. So upon waking, of course you know what I did: went and got a couple of burgers and took the Dogs to the park, where we ate and we romped and we frolicked together in the sun and I sat on the banks of the Kishwaukee River and I wrote it all down: and my little black dog played before me and my big black dog sat beside me, putting her glorious big old paw on my knee, and smiling that Labrador-girl smile. ~ J. St.John 2/19/02 |
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