Blind Ancestors
for Serena, survivor of a truly delightful family
Dreamed 2007/8/6 by Wayan
THAT DAY
All afternoon, I sculpted Jupiter's moon Io, from fly-by photos. A beautiful, weird, fascinating place, with bubbling multicolor volcanoes.
But why'd I work on it till my head and back hurt? Pushing again.
Won't I ever learn?
That evening, I relaxed with a classic film--AFTER THE THIN MAN, from 1936.
Well, not relaxed. Not that sort of movie. A comedy, but a grating one, about a rich, grotesque family ruled by a jowly old matriarch played by Jesse Ralph. Aunts and uncles scorn their "inferiors" while they act like pigs. A no-good husband who married in for money is blackmailing his own wife. The matriarch beats reporters with her cane, then hires a shrink to dope her daughter to silence her and prevent scandal.
True, the girl did pick two evil lovers in a row--her judgment stinks! But did her mom have to say "You sure can pick 'em"? Who taught her those low standards?
They did--that gargoyle zoo!
THE DREAM
Ghosts are not at night. When you bus off to jobs,
the Ancestors come to your home to smash it: just the reverse of brownies and hobs. But your Ancestors can't efficiently trash it: Zombie-clumsy, zombie-slow,
But ruin's so much easier than making or repair.
tossing the rubble out on the heap.
Acknowledging ghostly home-wrecker fists
Zombie-clumsy, zombie-slow
A lawyer came home at noon to get some folders.
|
The girl curled under vicious blows
that missed point-blank! And now she knows, our Ancestors are blind! Loathing unrestrained by mind. I shiver. Will we too come back
Zombie-clumsy, zombie-slow
Of course the dream was symbolic: how
Eight steps forward, seven back. But, too,
posing the problem for you as a test or
Zombie-clumsy, zombie-slow,
|
NOTES IN THE MORNING
This may be doggerel, but under the cartoon images it's dead serious. I guess my sane readers (all three of you) will find this dream absurd, but the rest of us whose families taught us self-destructive worldviews and habits (and may still be pressuring us and sniping at our successes) will recognize these muscular ghosts trashing our lives while we're out trying so hard to succeed... And often triumph. To come home to ruin.
Eight forward, seven back.
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