How I tried to reach out to the outside world but couldn’t make it, as depicted by a dream I had in 1964. It portrays my alienation, the wish to feel connected as other people were, and my attempt to do so by imitating their behavior.
I sat in a rowboat. The day was an even, whitish gray. The air was thick with a fine mist. Nothing was too clear until you came up to it. It was neither warm nor cold, and the sea was choppy.
Four young couples got into the long wooden rowboat. None were familiar to me. I observed their relationships and did not understand them. I was under the impression that they were rich, but later I found out they were poor. I thought they were haughty, but later I found out they were struggling to cope with life and with their marriages.
I didn’t know where they came from or where they lived. I knew, or was told, they lived in houses along the seashore. I had been in those houses when the boat stopped to pick them up, but I didn’t know they were houses and only recalled them, as in a flash.
Glaring patches of light appeared and disappeared along the shore, the boat rocked, and big puffy clouds were in the sky. The wind was on my face, and the thick air seeped through me. This was the seashore, I was told. I glanced back and saw the beach and rocky edges. This is the seashore, I said to myself, trying to touch the surroundings with my mind. The boat rocked as it moved forward. My head spun away from the shore.
The couples were around me. Someone was rowing. The boat stopped, and we disembarked. We entered a house, where we took off our damp coats. The house was warm and cozy. My eyes roamed around the room and skipped from face to face. Black and gray shadows appeared and disappeared, a kerosene lamp blinked, a fire crackled, footsteps shuffled.
Cope, cope, said the couples to each other. An iron cozy bed, a warm glass of milk, off with the damp socks, ah, so good to lie down. Quiet conversations in the shadows. Coolness and warmth, an evening chill. Shadows and people and flickering lights and quiet voices crowding in. Peace, let us understand, let us attempt again, for the hundredth, thousandth time, again let us attempt.
Wooden beams and beams of shadows and so many different faces, faces that say to one another, I know you, I trust to attempt to understand with you, through you, and voices that say so many things and arrive at conclusions to keep going and coping again. But I, I cannot hear the logical attempts, only snatches. Here I am in this warmth, wafting at my eyes and ears, and I touch no one and never hear the sound of my own voice.
Wooden beams and beams of shadows, did I understand correctly? If I pretend to understand. Maybe I will. I will appear to understand. I will assume an understanding look, an understanding air—calm, serene, peaceful like the others. It will come to me, the understanding. Soft, soft, soft, move softly around and about; look, look, look undisturbed, keep the ripple of your mind soft, make your eyes soft and your lips soft, let the soft air imbue you and the voices suffuse you as the ripples of your mind yield and the pain recedes.
The pain moves back, palliates, and makes room for a void. Silent open spaces hush around my mind. And still the pain re-echoes as if from a distant chamber.
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