World Dream Bank: Thirty Days

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Thirty Days

Events 1980/4/14-15, written 2012/7/17 by Wayan
in memory of Beryl

My friend Beryl led me deep
into Ventana Wilderness. We
floated, flirted in a thermal pool
Two alone.

So we thought. But not. A crazed
eye voyeured, and a hungry gut
growled for luscious gorp. No bear:
One man.

My pack the madman stole
For breakfast. Took along my past:
March's noctary of dreams. He stole
Thirty days.

My boots, too, the madman stole
so I limp home through flintsharp hills
on lacerated bleeding soles.
Thirteen miles.

Trailhead. Rangers soon confessed
Bear-man ran a monthly raid
for food. So he a hermit stayed.
Thirteen crimes.

Welcome home! Our landlord stole
our future. Notice: home sold!
Quaff the home-made mead. We have
Thirty days.

I know why this wave. Because I gave
in to her wild urge, in the simmering
rockwalled spring; into Beryl climbed
Thirteen times.

But to my shock I found she was
Cool and slack as a corpse inside.
Skin and eyes alive, but just
Thirty degrees

Celsius. Tepid as a newt. Can't be.
Alarm bells clamor in my veins.
I pull out of her and pool to run
Thirty yards,

Newborn nude and dripping. Found
past gone. Like Christians dipping in
Baptismal baths, erasing older sin.
Thirty coins.

March was gone. I felt not cleansed
But flayed for giving in. We're friends
not lovers. Knew it to be wrong.
Seven sins.

Do I believe I summoned scourge?
Absurd. And yet a surge of chill
Flooded through me like a knell.
Twelve years

Later, Beryl's dead. Malignant wave
slow-gnawed both breasts. Not saved
by guillotine. Foreseen? We have
Five doors

to our short and brutal world. Or
a sixth unsure. My dreams foretell
dark things. But that day, dream and un
Were one.

NOTES

Ventana Wilderness: in Big Sur, near Esalen, with similar hot springs. But far off the road, hence wild and private. So we thought.
Beryl: pseudonym for a friend who I didn't think of sexually. I was slow to realize the trip was her way to get naked and alone with me. That backfired.
Madman stole my pack: and dream-journal, wallet, keys and boots. This hermit hiding deep in the hills stole a pack a month for supplies so he never had to face humanity. The park staff knew, yet didn't warn us. I was mad--if a bear had raided the Springs for months...
Noctary: a journal of each day's events is a diary; so a journal of each night's events is a noctary. That's logic.
30° C: 86° F. Maybe Beryl was normal and the hot pool just messed up my thermostat. But she felt corpse-cool. Creepy. Premonitory?
Sixth door: I was raised a scientific skeptic, but in the years just before this trip I'd had a flood of premonitions that saved my ass. Even this one almost did; but because I didn't want to appall poor Beryl (I still did, of course), I arrived too late to catch him.
My dreams foretell: my premonitions mostly come in dreams (like predictions long before Beryl's diagnosis of her double mastectomy and early death: see Breast Bandit, Beryl's Dog Days and Coffins). This was a rare waking flash of... something.
What's it all mean? Was sexualizing our friendship so wrong it caused a rash of Job-like misfortunes? Or did sensing a madman stalking me cause the sex to go so wrong? Well... yes. Both at once. To me they're just two views--one forward in time, one back--of one acausal, synchronous knot.
Today my view's still longer: I sensed Beryl's slow death to come, and dreaded it; but rejecting her when she'd soon be needing support felt cruel; but being robbed made a polite excuse to, er, withdraw. But I still felt guilty, so I punished myself for a month...

My life's like this--time-tangled. Handy for picking stocks, but hell on friends. And on my sense of certainty. Tragic, comic, fated, free? That turtle in The Lathe of Heaven sums it best for me: "Crossings in mist."

LISTS AND LINKS: dating - sacred springs - swimming - hot & cold - sex - thief! - hermits, loners & crazies - out of control - house & home - precognitions & ESP in general - poems - a related hot-tub dream: Things Wash Off - more dreams of Beryl - more Big Sur-reality: Tigerborn - Why do folks have rotten luck in Big Sur? Ask Robinson Jeffers, Shaman - Jung's examples of non-dream synchronicity: Superimposed and Pudding & Fortgibu

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