Dream
Last night, I lay in bed after a few drinks, chugging water. I wondered what it was like to believe in Jesus. Not God, but a person with a name, who, as a believed-in person, is always accessible. It made me feel relaxed, as if nothing in the world mattered. I don’t care to believe in Jesus, I thought, but somehow this felt alright. And I felt desire burn inside somehow. Heart on fire. I wondered if I could swap Jesus out for Michel de Certeau’s anonymous “everyman;” a post-structuralist, secular Jesus, with the same structure of belief. I fell asleep.
I dreamt in a warehouse, cardboard boxes, palettes everywhere. I fell asleep on a Saturday. In the dream, Pastor Luther, always lurking behind me for a while, tried to supervise me setting up the livestream for this Sunday’s service, which was difficult and technical. I walked through palettes, like a maze, where a megachurch set up (no infrastructure, only palettes, but people wearing clothes and hoodies like young megachurch attendees do—in some sense, I knew). We borrowed ideas from their technology. And I ran around doing nothing, while men climbed on boxes and palettes, and cruised and signaled to me, as we wandered into the darker parts of the warehouse, and we made out, and I rejected some. One man followed me around, and we kissed but I was busy and not in the mood. I walked by the megachurch, walking by Luther, in and out of darkness. I fell asleep.
I woke up. I woke up and checked my phone. 12:35PM. I missed service; I drank too much; I overslept. I panicked. So I walked outside of my room into a small, dark, green, lobby of a motel. Guests passed by me, checking in. I checked out late. I asked the receptionist where I was. No reply. She checked someone in. I asked a couple where I was and they did not bother to tell me. I checked my phone: New Mexico. Or Arizona. Between Nevada and Utah. The location fluctuated between deserts. I texted Mike to ask him where I was, if he could check my location on his phone, and I got no reply. I asked the receptionist how I got there, and when, and with whom. She said someone brought me here, and I felt, all of a sudden, like I had been drugged and raped. The man from the palettes. I walked outside to call my dad for help. The phone felt cluttered and awfully designed for an emergency, so I walked back into the motel. My dad’s hand pulled me into a room. Inside, my mom sat next to my dad’s mom (whom I have not seen since I was young: she is dead), my mom’s dad, my mom’s aunt. And my grandma radiated detail, vivid, austere, as if I had seen her yesterday. She looked serious. And Jason, my brother, sat next to my dad, with what looked like a beekeeper hat, or a self-contained head of a hazmat suit, with medical tubes attached. He was seizing. His body sat limp and his face was seizing. Under the hat, his head shook back and forth in tiny shakes, with a subtlety and he frothed in the mouth. And he wore my old 1990s-styled hat under the other hat. The red, patterned, colorful one. I sensed he was dying. “You know what is happening,” my dad said, and I tried to rationalize it—Jason was just seizing, which is harmless. But I knew he was dying, along with everyone else in the room. I woke up.
I did not fall back asleep immediately. I drank water and grabbed crackers. My side ached and my mouth felt dry. I did not pray again. I thought of how fragile our bodies are, how subtly Jason seized, and how death took his body with a silent violence. Our bodies are vulnerable, I thought. After an hour, I fell asleep.
We were on a plane like a bus. It made stops. New Mexico to LA. And my family, after the shock of the last dream, were all attached to IVs in the arm. We were all also attached to one thin, metal wire through the finger. And one wire through the wrist. They were meant to stabilize us, after the shock of dying, to help us recover. And one by one, my mom’s aunt and my grandpa off at the first stop the plane made, to the hospital, then mom and others on the next stop, then Jason and my dad at the next stop. My dad told me “you’ll have to find your way home alone.” And the plane took off and landed again, and I was exhausted. I told the flight attendant to take out my IV, take out the wires, and let me go home. I was fine. I am fine. And she took out the IV, which slid out with a pinch. She pulled out the wire from my wrist, which I could feel, applying a bit of pressure. And finally, the wire from my finger, and I walked out of the plane, dizzy. I was dizzy walking towards Brock, who appeared in front of me. I have not seen Brock in ten years. I have no connection to Brock. And he told me about his life, and I told him, “my family is dying,” and began to sob. He did not know what to do. And I knew Jason recovered quickly, then my dad, but I did not see them. I ordered a taxi, heading forward, and woke up.
I woke up with the feeling that my life had changed. I woke up with the feeling that I must keep this dream intact, not through writing but by living it. I woke up and told my family about this dream and began to tear up, and wonder how to keep this feeling alive. I cannot argue with you now that there is more than a body: that our bodies will fade soon. I do not believe in a soul. I do not really believe. But death will come one day, slowly and silently for each of us. My grandma understands this, watching.