Holy socks!

Jardinière

It's December now, and father came back to me.  I was walking out of the farmhouse on a bright and sunny morning.  The trellises on each side of the staircase down to the gravel of the yard told me that it was sometime in the 70s - or must have been - because the Marigolds were in their little pots.

It was warm there, but the temperature this morning is zero centigrade and it's still dark at 6.50 a.m.  The solstice, that old lady of the winter, will come calling soon.  My Scandinavian bones can enjoy the darkness for a time longer, until the diurnal spin of the planet brings us round again.

I was holding in my hand three wooden matches, unstruck, and I could feel the dry pine splints in my fingers.  As I walked I looked down at my palm.  Like a man looking for a cut, I held my palm open and saw the matches crossing each other, like the creases in one's open hand.

Then, instead of facing the barn that would be in front of me, I was coming to the crest of the hill.  The shifting perspective of dreams one must take into consideration, for space in that realm is infinite.  In the yard, beside the second willow of the five, my father had placed a large piece of wood when my brother I were children.  It was like a modern piece of art.  It was actually a tree stump, the thick radiating roots he had stained a deep burgundy in order that it survived the winters.  Pitched on its side, it became something of a planter in a little hollow by the turn in the road that led down to the street.

I remember one morning in early summer before I was ten coming out of the farmhouse to find Homer, our Samoyed, engrossed.  He was laying by the stump, using it as a sort of shield.  My brother and I were about to start out for school.  For some reason Homer's lack of attention for us drew our attention to him and I went to investigate.  I found him with his paws in front fixed in the process of devouring a field rabbit.  All I could see of what was left of the Cottontail were its bulging eyes between Homer's gnashing jaw, its ears turned down in sad defeat.  As I approached, Homer let out a slow cruel growl at my presence.  Keep away, I have my prize, he seemed to be saying.

This morning in my dream though, my father was in that little hollow.  Floating like an Indian god in the sunlight he had decided to appear for me.  He might as well have had beams of light radiating behind him, which he seemed, anyway, to indeed have.

He never wore a beard, ever, but he had one in my dream.  Upon reflection I realize now he reminded me of Dan O'Herlihy in Brunel's Robinson Crusoe.  It was a crazy unkempt thing, growing wild, as if he were a tramp.  And on his face was a bright smile.  My father rarely smiled.  He liked a good laugh, but to smile to himself about something, or walk down the street with a beatific grin like you see some people do, he never did.

And of course, he never spoke to me.  He never does.  Was I supposed to divine some message from that smile, which oddly, did not suit him at all, which I in fact found disconcerting?

Since 2022, when I posted the previous dream, he may have come into my head just once in my sleep, but it was a blurry mess, not worth a mention.  Having just recently seen him floating so benignly in my subconscious, he was vivid.  The dew was on the grass.  It was a wet warmth that enfolded me like a blanket and he floated, glowing, with an almost electric hum suffusing him.

But he said nothing.  I wonder, do I want him to speak?  And if he does will I understand him, or even appreciate what he has to say?

In that blinding morning, as I stood there he held his hands like a yogi, palms out.  Whether dressed in rags or clothed only in colours I could not tell.  I mostly only saw his face and that annoying idiot smile.  The hum grew louder and his lips moved, but I heard nothing.  Then I woke.

You say you never compromise
With the mystery tramp, but now you realize
He's not selling any alibis
As you stare into the vacuum of his eyes
And say do you want to make a deal?

Bob Dylan
Like a Rolling Stone

Ramón 69

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