I dreamed I borrowed a motorcycle to drive home from New Orleans one evening. I practiced driving it around the quiet neighborhood. To speed up, you pulled the handlebars toward you. To slow down, you pushed them away. I wound around the quiet streets, lined with old oaks and shotgun houses as the sun went down. Finally reasonably comfortable that I could drive the thing, I began to try to find my way out of the neighborhood.
I ended up right back at the house of the friend who'd lent me the motorcycle. There were a few people sitting out on the porch, including my friend's landlord/roommate. All of them were pretty amused at me. They gave me directions and I set off again. And I got lost again, and ended back at their house again. I took a break, went in to get a drink, and followed my friend from her rooms over a walkway to the house next door and back, as she chatted with me. I set off one last time, and as the sun rose, I finally found my way out of the neighborhood.
It took me most of the day to get to San Antonio. I kept getting turned around and having to use the position of the sun in the sky to set myself right. I finally ended up getting bogged down in construction at I-10 and Loop 410, and exited the highway. I knew Culebra road was northwest of the interchange, and I could just take surface streets up to it if I kept the sun on my left. I knew there was a patch of pretty bad neighborhood between where I was and where I needed to be, but as there were still a couple of hours of daylight left, I figured I'd be fine.
But I kept ending up going down cul-de-sacs and roads closed for construction and roads that narrowed into sidewalks, meandering through low-rent apartments and rundown houses. I ended up walking the motorcycle through a seedy apartment complex as the sun was setting again, and stopped to get my bearings and watch the children playing. One curly-haired little girl came over to hand me her doll, and her older brother was fascinated by my motorbike. I struck up a conversation, and they invited me into their home. I decided to go with them, because maybe their family could help me find my way.
Instead, I was told off by their grandfather, who found me sitting in the living room. He yelled at me that I needed to stay away from his grandkids, and that me coming into their home as a stranger was really creepy, and if I didn't leave, he'd call the police. So I left. I walked past a large stone church with a dark, wood-shingled roof and bright stained glass windows, but no one was around. I hoped I could cut through the retirement community next door as a shortcut. If I could just get to the other side, I knew I could find Thousand Oaks Drive, and take that over to Eldridge Parkway, which would lead me over to Culebra.
I wheeled my bike through an archway, hoping to find a parking lot and street on the other side. Instead I ended up in a strange room that had an old brass firemen's pole down from the floors above, a few rounded steps down from the corresponding but slightly offset story of the adjoining building, and some slides down to the ground level. The floor and all the steps and slides were smoothly polished wood that gleamed as golden as the old brass. From this room I ended up in the suite of rooms belonging to an old woman. Her grandson saw me and helped me out her front door, which was on the opposite side from where I entered, and, sure enough, brought me out on to Thousand Oaks. He showed me a map, and it looked like Thousand Oaks would take me all the way to Culebra, but then he told me that road construction had that end blocked off. But I pointed out that I could walk the bike around, and he agreed that should work just fine.
It was really late when I found myself headed northwest on Culebra Road. My dad called to tell me that Mom had come into town to pick me up, but hadn't been able to see me, so she'd stopped at the San Antonio Light newspaper offices. I'd already passed those up, but only by a block or two, so I turned back. I saw the blue neon sign gleaming in the dark up ahead, and wheeled my bike into the dim parking lot. A few reporters were hanging around a news van, and I found my mom chatting with them. We loaded the motorcycle into her van and she drove me home.
The next day I walked around Castroville. I went to Super S and found a boxed mix for a gluten free chocolate Doberge cake. The sample cake was at least eight inches tall, and I decided I needed to try it. So I got the mix home, but found out I'd gotten lemon Doberge, instead of chocolate. I made the cake anyway, and it was very good. That evening, I found my friend Roy in the high school gym, doing Karaoke with a few other friends. He wasn't singing, though. The place had a machine that would remove instrumental tracks, too, so he was playing guitar. He stood in the center with his equipment, and the floor around him spun in a circle, and was scattered with rolling office chairs for singers. I sat down in one of them and Jo Dee Messina's "Bye Bye" came on the karaoke machine, and Roy played guitar and I sang.
When the song was done, I pushed myself in my rolly chair off the gym floor and up a nearby freeway exit ramp. I couldn't make it all the way up, which was probably a good thing. A voice began to lecture me that if I thought my suicidal behavior showed some ammount of self-control, in that I appeared to wish to exert control over the ending of my life, I was wrong. That true control came from living in balance. I tried to argue that I hadn't been trying to kill myself, but I couldn't see who was talking, so I just gave up and rolled my office chair back down off the ramp.
When I came to the edge of a lake, I got up. I could see black-robed Bene Gesserit women swimming around the center of the lake. Without taking off my own black robes, I stepped down into the murky water to join my sisters. I swam around, trying to find balance, I guess. I dove beneath the surface, but then found that I'd gone in much deeper than I'd meant. I began to struggle my way back up to the surface, my lungs bursting for air, but I knew I wasn't going to make it, even though I could see the light gleaming silver above me. I woke up mid-stroke, and lay paralyzed in my bed for a few seconds, still holding my breath, before I realized that if I inhaled, I wouldn't be inhaling water, so I took a breath and woke up completely.
No comments:
Post a Comment