After Yvonne had left Felix
early Tuesday evening, the old producer washed up the tea things, saw to
nighttime matters in the livingroom, and retired to his chair room where he read
Yvonne's poems. And then he read them several times more. Then he dozed with her
pages leaning against his breast. He dozed awhile, thought a while, gazed at the
stars for a while. All night long he dreamed dreams awake and asleep.
Jamie slept like a child that
night after his vigil the night before with thunder and autobiography. He
dreamed dreams that were sad and sweet and sometimes even comic, but full of
dialogue and story. And there was oddity of meaning in the dreams that he
couldn't recall the next morning, but which had a calming, reassuring, almost
opiate effect on him that wasn't to be shed for weeks, even months.
He dreamed that night, though he
wasn't to remember it, that Felix had come and asked him to be in a play. "I
want you to play the head angle, a sort of sergeant-at-arms in an angels'
holiday. A sort of lion of creativity. You will play Leon."
"But Felix," Jamie had demurred.
"This sounds serious. Can I play a lion? A head angel? I'm gay."
"I am not asking you to be my
lover, Jamie. I'm asking you to love creation. To defend art. To be my right
hand angel. I'm asking you to play the angel who gets matters under control when
creativity gets out of hand. You think you're not invited to the angels' picnic
just because you're homosexual? You think you're a separate species? Be an
angel; play the part," Felix laughed.
"I'm honored. When do rehearsals
start?"
"Jamie! This is dreaming!
It's like life. There are no rehearsals. Just stand by. Rest."
That night, in California, Julian
slept in a friend's cabin that stood on the cliffs overlooking the Pacific. By
paths of show business coincidence, it happened to be the cabin where Adam
Adamsky had lived when he first met Angelo McGuire and Kiki a dozen years
before. Julian and Beth laid under their sleeping bags in a slowly warming water
bed, listened to a spring storm ravage the coast, made love tenderly and fell
asleep. Kiki's ghost wandered the cabin habitually. Tonight, upon finding guests
in the cabin, which was used now only a few weeks in summer by the record
executive that Adam had sold it to, the ghost was delighted. It brought Beth
horrendous bride's nightmares that nonetheless were full of excellent advise
that only the most foolish can provide.
Julian's dream, had in fits and
starts of a mostly gentle nature, was a sort of angels holiday, though he
wouldn't remember upon waking. Felix approached him in his first phase of
dreaming. He was asked to play an angel in a dream play. "The angel's name is
Art. He's the angel of Art, of course. It's all very obvious, I'm afraid, but
what's in a name? You are sweet, passionate, innocent, and wise in this role.
Can you handle it?" Felix asked.
"Am I arrogant?" Julian asked.
"Heavens no!"
"Then, no."
"The role is yours then. The main
thing is not to recognize your mother during the dream. Now rest, and I'll call
you. Oh, and hold Beth closer. She's having nightmares...I mean now, with your
body. And find a pretext to move to that hotel down the coast a few miles
tomorrow."
In mid-Kentucky there was a short, freak snowfall that Tuesday night. The small snow melted in the crocuses and daffodils, and briefly striped the furrows while Angelo McGuire slept the fat blank sleep of a demagogue. Felix was not the first great presence to come along in the careful madman's dreams over the years and make sleep rebel. McGuire knew instantly who Felix was. He cried out in his sleep. Felix pinned the slick insane brain to the pillow. McGuire began to smile with his soul's teeth showing, and he began to argue with Felix. "Save it, McGuire. You're coming to a little party. Argue there. It's an angels' holiday, so for nicety's sake your name is Beezly. This is a play, a dream. And you're an angel. Stay put until I come for you; don't slither off." Angelo McGuire than laid impaled on dreams in which he was not God.
Yvonne was dreaming that she was
standing in front of the Paradise Theatre. She waited for Adam. Felix opened the
doors of the theater and stuck his head out and called to her. "I have a part
for you in a play," he said.
"Is
it as good as the Ruth role?" she asked.
"As good. This role is the mother
of all roles. You're waiting for Adam?"
"You know, I've always been
waiting for Adam. Isn't it silly?"
"Sad? Yes. Beautiful? Yes. Silly?
No. So this is a dream, this play. An angels' holiday. Can you fit it into your
schedule?"
"Dreams have
schedules?"
"They run on dream
time. Adam's in the dream play."
"Oh, then it is time. Yes, I'm in. Adam is acting?"
"Acting and dreaming and writing.
He needs the work," Felix said. "Come in. Everything will be set soon. I have a
quorum of angels, a theater, a leading lady and now I have to go prod this
stiff-necked Adam."
"He doesn't
know he's doing a play?" she said, entering the theater.
"That boy knows nothing! And soon
he'll know less. And then know a few basic things. 'The people learn, unlearn,
and learn again,' to quote Robert Frost. But here, rest. I'll bring the dream
back by and by."
Since returning from the doctor on
Monday evening, Adam had been dreaming like a master of the art. In his fevers,
he didn't even remember to stop dreaming when Jamie came to give him pills or
when Jamie came Tuesday morning to tell Adam to wake up when the alarm rang at
one p.m. so he could take a pill while Jamie was away at work. Adam just
incorporated Jamie into his dreams.
From Monday evening until late
Tuesday evening, Adam ran through a series of dreams and nightmares that weren't
the right fit for his troubles, the right style for his redemption.
Among others, he had an epic
dream that he was a British anthropologist born around the end of the nineteenth
century. There was a Victorian childhood, a stint at Oxford. Then he had an
island off India where he studied and lived with the people. Between the world
wars there was an airplane trip to England to raise funds and deliver a series
of papers he had written. When he died in 1970, his spirit ascended in the sky
and he watched the island for as long as he could keep it in view as he rose.
The tribespeople were mourning him, crying and falling down with grief all along
the lovely beaches.
Another dream
was that he was a small boy and he kept opening doors. Floods of blood would
pour through the doors, and a body would float on the tide.
And another dream was that he was
a crustacean at the bottom of a hoary winter ocean.
And another dream was that he had
the play finished.
When his body
woke enough to move to take a pill and shut off the buzzing clock, his fever had
recently broken and a crescendo of dreaming left a windchime effect in his ears
that survived waking and the hideous noise of the alarm. When he laid his head
down having discharged his worldly duties, he searched among the gray daylight
in his rooms for the name of the windchimes. He noticed his sweat soaked
pajamas, and he nearly fainted where he lay at a simple ripple of erotic
sensation coursing through his strep-occupied body. He closed his eyes. 'Yvonne
Yvette' the card on his dream rolodex read. The name of the windchimes was
Yvonne Yvette. Adam determined with all his heart that he would either call her
up or have a wonderful dream about her. But his frenetic subconscious, refuge
artist from the war that raged in him between the germs and the medicine,
scurried off in other directions until a voice came to him in a late evening
sleep of hazy proportions.
"Adam," said the voice. In somewhat an infinite way, the voice was Adam, was
sleep, was dream.
"I'm sleeping,"
said Adam in this dream prelude.
"I want you to dream."
"I'm too
tired, Felix."
"I want you to
dream now."
"I am dreaming."
"You call this a dream?"
"Felix, I'm tired."
"Ok, you can lie down while you
dream."
"I am lying down, aren't
I?"
"Oh, so you are," Felix said.
After having rested for a split
instant, Adam said, "You want me to dream?"
"Yes."
"What must I dream?"
"Whatever you like."
"It's not always the case.
Sometimes I have nightmares. Have you seen the ones I've been having?"
"Awful spectacular."
"Why?" Adam asked.
"Why nightmares?" sighed the
voice. "I am Felix Lord, if my name is true I am a happy god for the purposes of
this dream. You want happiness to explain horror? You want life to explain
death? You want creativity to explain destruction? You want art to explain its
own symbols? There are limits to defragmentation."
"If I dream this dream, will it
become a nightmare?"
"Hamlet
said, 'I could be happy as a king bounded in a nutshell, were it not that I have
bad dreams.'"
"Hamlet? Are
we going to dream Hamlet?"
"He's a good fellow. But no, we're going to dream Adam. We're going to dream a
story about being a man, the first man."
"Some critics have said that
Hamlet is the first man of the modern world. But, wait...I know you don't mean
Homo habilus...My god, Felix, Genesis?"
"Just creation. A few chapters. A
little play. An adaptation in which you write a little play."
"Can I keep making editorial
comments while I write this play, dream this dream? There's something cozy about
this double consciousness."
"Keeps it from being so serious, doesn't it? Well, consciousness is the tricky
part, isn't it? I mean, this is a story about consciousness, so we'll have to
see. You sleep deeply several times in the story."
"Oh boy. So I'm in my real actual
bed, actually and really sleeping during a time when I am writing a real actual
play. And in my sleep I'm dreaming. And in the dream I'm talking with my
producer. My real actual producer. And I'm dreaming I'm going to dream. And in
the dream I'm going to write a play. And in the play I'm going to sleep. Shit,
Felix. This sounds like a nightmare just by its geometry. Where does it end?"
"It ends in integration, of
course. There are limits to fragmentation."
"It's my fondest dream. I
wouldn't argue with you there."
"No? That's good! A relief, in fact. But Adam, don't put too much stress on
happiness. It's only a dream. You're sleeping."
"I can't argue with that."
"No you can't. I want you to
sleep now."
"I am sleeping."
"No, I mean dreamless sleep. I
want you to rest for a while."
"But I want to dream Eden. Beautiful Eden, with the fruits like jewels and..."
"Sleep, Adam. I have to go set
the stage."
"Oh, you mean create
the universe and everything?"
"Ah, sure."
"I'm too tired for
that part. You go dream it up... Felix...?"
"Yes, Adam?"
"When I dream again after this
rest, will there be visuals? I mean, I enjoy talking with you, but this fuzz is
like TV on an empty station in the middle of the night."
"Really? I thought it was like
being in a giant glass of alka seltzer. But everyone has their own
interpretation of dreams."
"You
call this a dream?"
"Goodnight,
Adam. Rest."
"I'm sleeping." And
everything was black and even.
Felix woke from a doze. He was
thinking about Eden. He was thinking about utopian societies, such as the one
Adam had been involved in in Kentucky, and all the utopian societies and notions
through the centuries. "Poor Eden," Felix sighed. "Poor shopworn Eden. Dragged
out again and again as if what was done perfectly in a lovely little story could
be actualized."
And then Felix
thought these thoughts as he sat late in his chair Tuesday night:
"What is Eden? A simple story. A
man, a woman, a garden, a god, a couple of trees. Really very boring. I mean
without innocence. Without the willing god part. These Angelo McGuires think
states of grace can be insisted upon, demanded, legislated. Boring. Murderous.
"Jails are little Edens, too,
sometimes. As opulent and splendid and refined as the prisoner's state of grace.
"Happiness is the great
invention. But it is made out of only one material: happiness itself. The
material of happiness is a gift. It can't be bought, stolen, or found. It finds.
And it comes and goes as the gods present and withdraw the goods.
"'The pursuit of happiness.' Now
there's an interesting concept. Is this the great American hunt? To stalk, shoot
down, eviscerate, and make a trophy of happiness?
"No! This is the greater
interpretation by popular vote. But the pursuit of happiness, I think, has to do
with happiness as a process. The personal and social business of happiness. The
process of being lost in good work. The process of ensuring basic liberties for
all the people of a society so that the business of happiness can occur. Where
there is poverty or illness, liberty and happiness cannot be. And those who are
well and rich say, 'Do you think I am happy?' or 'God gave me happiness and
wealth. It's a free country. If you were good, you'd be like me.' But it's a
finer thing than that. 'Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.' All three
the same thing. Each concept a refinement of the one before. If a child doesn't
know liberty, except in the savage form of license, how can the more delicate
signs of a pursuit of happiness be recognized? Be entered into?
"In the meantime, all people seek
happiness, their own form of Eden. But Eden seeks some out. And then they are
enveloped in it and carry it around with them. But it is nontransferable. And it
is likely to cause envy and attack. And legislating states of grace would be a
joke if it were not the great tragedy. For a state to say, 'We have the grace of
God,' is tantamount to saying God runs this state, God is this state. And every
thing that proceedeth from the mouth of the state is God's word. Elsewhere
Thomas Jefferson might have been foolish, but in the phrase 'the pursuit of
happiness,' he did not claim God's grace as an inalienable right. He said
pursuit of; not life, liberty and happiness.
"Thomas Jefferson was a man of
action and a thinker; a craftsman and an artist; a materialist and an idealist.
He had a sense of the importance of pursuit, the magic of pursuit. He knew that
the act of labor in and of itself is a product somewhat separate from the object
produced. But that there is a thread from inspiration to act to product. That
thread is what is respected in a good society, preserved in good laws.
"Breaking the thread is a crime
against God. There is enough in the world that seeks to do that. Shirking
happiness is a form of cutting the thread of spirit. To willfully not pursue
happiness is to sell one's self into bondage. Stagnation, boredom, and death
arise from hiding from happiness. And pursuit can bring on these states as well.
But is is an easily sprung dilemma: Pursuit is the natural condition.
"Oh, Eden! The great abstraction.
The little dream that lives in every head that sleeps. The little dream that
echoes every waking step. It is a ghost residence where everyone lives while
haunted by it in rooms and real estate where living is pursued despite the
knowledge of death. A billion billion billion sighs and cries and dreams and
thoughts have been spent in escrow fees to get a purchase on Eden. But economics
cannot buy grace, want cannot, doctrine cannot, denial cannot--even art cannot
buy Eden.
"But art can tell the
story, though, and in telling the story the veils and cobwebs and walls of
doctrine, deprivation, greed, pride, paranoia, and the day-to-day business of
forgetting might come down until the glory and tragedy of Eden are glimpsed. And
in this unguarded glimpse is the realization that the sweet impossibilities of
Eden are the human condition.
"Eden is the great cruel hoax. It is the birthday party where the gifts are
death, knowledge of death, and the nervous twitch known as right and wrong. It
is trick or treat where the world is masquerading as a simple garden.
"Eden is the great cruel hoax
equaled where ever and when ever it is forgotten or never known that all people
share the heritage of the original hoax, share cruel consciousness. So one
person or several or a regime and its minions try to impose its version of
consciousness and cruelty on others. A Hitler, a murderer, a thinker bends Eden
to their purposes and imposes it on others. Purveyors of perfection are the
perfect monsters of death.
"Yes
there are some--wise parents, artists, wise administrators of good laws of
freedom--who leave open the gates of Eden. Who do nothing to break the threads
of spirit. Who let others suffer their own mortality, savor their sweet
yearnings of immortality, pursue happiness as the details of their souls and
social demands dictate.
"But
sometimes," Felix yawned, grown weary and bored with pedantry. "Sometimes there
are gifts. And life lights up like a Christmas tree." He dozed off.
"Adam? Where are you?"
"Here. Sleeping dreamlessly."
"I have something I want to tell
you about outside of the play dream."
"Ah hah! I knew there were far
reaching implications here."
"I
want to give you something."
"A
reward?"
"Did you catch a bank
robber? Return a stolen purse? A lost dog?"
"You're trying to tell me there
are no rewards, Felix?"
"Work is
your reward. What I'm going to give you is a gift. I'm going to give you Yvonne
Yvette."
"You can give a person?
Like a slave?"
"You enslave one
thought of her head, one cell of her body, and I'll kill you. Dead, Adam."
"I was only kidding!"
"I am not."
"Yes."
"And in turn I'm giving you to
her. This is in the play dream, but like some other things in the play, it'll
carry over to life."
"Yes." And
everything was black and even.