Dreams and Awakenings
Last Saturday evening…
I took a late afternoon nap, after lunch with the family. It was one of those sublime, two-hour underworld trips, in which you go down while the sun’s up, and awaken to the night. I’d earned it. The night before, Kok Schok — a party I’d attended once and remembered to be rather tame — hit a venue on the edges of town, with the theme roughly translated to “Jews and Arabs should be fucking in the bathrooms.” It’s a play on a slogan from the current protests. You get it. Anyways, this venue was far out. I walked past old men smoking shisha on the sidewalks, into the sort of drab hovel that location scouts in Bushwick would kill for.
One gin & tonic, at the beginning of the night, and that was it. I danced for five hours. The music was that good, and the whole smoky scene felt raw and ravishing — which is to say, this late in the game, God can still blast me off my fucking tits. Naturally, the pièce de résistance came around 3:30am, when the DJ introduced Kylie Minogue into the hardcore proceedings. We’re talking “Can’t Get You Out of My Head” at a trance rave.
I want to say something. As we voyage, through continents and dimensions, we understand that the gifts given to us by Kylie Minogue and Madonna are as luminous and eternal as those of Galadriel. No matter how dark the dungeon, they will always light our way forward. And we must prove ourselves worthy of them.
Anyways, back to the nap. As you know, I’ve been reciting the Orphic Hymn to Dream every night, and keep my collage on my nightstand. And the quality of my dreams has indeed changed; they’re no less vivid, but they’ve shifted (mostly) from violation and horror to…fun? I’m listening to Caroline Casey’s fucking unreal Visionary Activist Astrology (you really have to do the audiobook to get the full Kathleen Turner smoker’s voice effect), and she says that television numbs us from the adventure of dreaming. Lately, I’ve been treating my dreams like the greatest show on earth (and let’s face it: I’ve seen every movie at this point). But this was was next level…like…Six Feet Under level.
I was in Central Park, and running for my life. A stinky old man slowly trailed me. He had a bulbous hunchback and wore rags that resembled Brillo Pad; he pushed a cart full of crap. His beard was gray and filthy.
I couldn’t escape him, no matter how far, fast or high I ran. He was like the Terminator, only slow and incredibly old. I heard him saying, in exasperation, “why does this fall on me?” I recognized that exclamation of martyrdom. Someone I know talks that way. A lot.
The terror was so severe that I bolted awake, just as I was escaping the park. I knew that this spectre was me, a self from the future, a self within. He’s me if I continue on this path.
For some time now — at least in the two-and-a-half years since I started recovery — I’ve embraced a bitter resignation to my higher powers, and their will for me. In turning over my future and my dreams, I’ve also (unnecessarily) turned over authorship and agency. My stance has been to accept what is thrown at me, all the while suffering in resentment, as if to prove my piety. I’ll watch my life go to shit, my ambitions fall to ashes, if that’s what they want. But last week, Emily pointed out that my guides want me as a co-creator. Huh?
Anyways, that night I took myself to see The Flash (we don’t have time to get into this but I’ll say that the costume is exquisite and that I’m sick of alternate realities and Spider-verses, let’s just run on a linear trajectory from now on). I came home and I knew what I had to do. It was time for a Soul Retrieval.
VII Pentacles (reversed) - Knight of Cups (reversed) - Princess of Cups (reversed)
And so I met him, that part of me I have so feared, and we embraced in peace. He clarified that he doesn’t want to hurt me, that he is me, that he is in pain but he is happy. I asked about the money. He said he was rich in other things. I followed with: why did you mention that this was your lot, your calling? He said he lived his life in total surrender to the will of the higher-ups. If this is what they willed for him, so be it.
And then it hit me, just as I was asking him. If the gods are ambivalent to us, isn’t putting everything in their hands a choice in itself? Isn’t electing choicelessness a choice?
And so I told him: Look, I want to take individual action. It’s important to me. I want to provide for myself, and for my parts (including him). I want to know what it’s like to cultivate experiences for myself. Would that be OK? He didn’t see why not.
After this profound interior integration, I dedicated the following week to seething anxiety and self-disdain, and, in the spirit of individual action, to punishing myself for all the ways I have failed in my career. The best I could do was to get stoned on Thursday and go to the mall. I got Kosher McDonalds and went to see the Julia Louis-Dreyfus movie. On Friday, I sent out some emails, which felt like pulling teeth, and praised myself for making an effort at agency in the face of crippling anxiety.
This Saturday evening…
I went back to Phi for a party I didn’t know: “Gender Blender.” Just in time for the full moon, I’d finally received a paycheck I’d been expecting since April. Back to the dance floor, to toast Tyche and my good fortune.
Before the arena could fill up, I saw him. You know who I’m talking about: my supreme Sephardi one-night stand from last September, the object of months of fantasy and delusion. I’d imagined this run-in a hundred times.
It was fine. Nice. Lovely, even, like seeing an old friend. He’s certainly gorgeous, but maybe not my type, necessarily. That hadn’t occurred to me before. It wasn’t so disappointing, or devastating. In fact, this time, I understood: whatever I was going through, I had needed this fantasy. He was irrelevant. My relationship with power, as projected through his likeness, was the real star of the soap opera.
Anyways, it was nice to have a familiar face in what would soon be a slamming crowd. I handed him a Mento at one point. And may I just say: this DJ played “Deeper and Deeper.” Can it be possible? Do I really have everything I need?
It was one of those nights of dancing which feels like a psychic car wash. You may only sleep five hours, but all the shmutz has been cleared away.
I’m rewatching Sex and The City, season two. You know, I never thought much of the earlier seasons. You have to understand, for those of who lived through turn-of-the-millennium television (Buffy, SATC, Gilmore Girls), there tends to be a shift in aesthetics, when the sensibility swings suddenly out of one decade and into another. I used to judge the early seasons of SATC as messy, favoring the more serialized, glossy look of the later years. But now that I’m the age of Carrie and company, and now that I have been in the presence of Melissa Rich (and read the New Yorker profile on SJP), I think it’s fucking brilliant.
She’s so fucking raw. I’ve been hearing for years how Carrie’s life is ridiculous, how it’s impossible, etc. Credit it to the Capricorn full moon, but something in me believes it all, now more than ever — more than I did when I was watching this show in eighth grade. I can live like Carrie Bradshaw. What if this is what I co-created? A life of exploration, synthesis, romance and beauty? And what if I could own it, and afford it? Could it be that simple? Could I elect this dream as my reality? What if this was what I chose?
