...And Dreams Are Dreams

Because there are turn-of-the-century dreams that face the great changes, like vultures beaten by Visigoth winds; syndicated and unionized dreams, condemned to be put into practice, and other, aphasic, unenlisted, internationalist dreams, like hymns with a musical refrain; leitmotiv dreams that recur; Saint Simonic, routine, railroad dreams, idle, centripetal, hard of hearing, vengeful dreams; centennial dreams, constructivist, domesticated or wild, with interest, interest-free, usurious, CIA, and KGB dreams, dreams that have escaped from prison guards; productive dreams that multiply for you, or dreams that, like governments that have lost their base and cadres, dissent from sleep; and others, hypnotic ones, that are outlined by the Grand Interpreter of Dreams; dreams of the Central Committee, of the Executive Office, of sections, of cells; dreams of extreme clandestinity and dreams that are reinstated at Party Conferences long after the dreamers have died; ivory dreams, aphrodisiac dreams that overflow like the froth on glasses of Bavarian beer; dreams without ornaments and others from Susa, made of heavy gold, of Darius and Parisatis; dreams that set fire to the aprons of young girls like magnifying glasses gathering the rays of the sun into one; outdated dreams, narrow dreams that limit the economy of the bed and dreams with sesame seeds that are sold, like jasmine, for a penny; dreams that are tear drenched, teargassed, tearjerkers.

His heart, torn in two this way, was unable to achieve balance. Outside, the rain completed his inner misery. “Since I have nothing left other than this light well through which I receive the tenants’ garbage, in order to acquire a plot of land to build on I have to burn the land I inherited. I have to set fire to the forest to make a dreamport where flying words (my grandfather’s pheasants and my aphasia) will finally be able to land.”

With a mind as sharp as a razor, he shaves the beards off his dreams, and finds himself with naked cheek, scarred, face to face with the grooves of his pain. They both sink into a gigantic sleep. And while prudent people cook before they get hungry, they, lost in a hunger that sometimes reached its peak, gnawed, for lack of anything else to eat, at their very flesh. The brain, that great invalid, was not programming the questions correctly. Thus, they were called upon to give answers to erroneous questions, and the words of the oracle kept coming out wrong. Meanwhile the money was running out.

In any case, a writer’s job is difficult. But her job was even more difficult. “Human beings can live without the word, but not without music. Music is the most profound form of human expression.” And as he watched her, she seemed like a huge, beautiful bird whose wing had once been broken. It would be difficult for the bird to rise again, to take to the sky.

And yet it would. Every door has its nail, but every nail opens a hole when you pull it out, what the Christians call the eye of Judas, through which you can see who’s knocking at your door. If it’s not the north wind. And so, climbing up high, he saw down below his beloved city with its irregular development and violated town planning. “This city is without a heart,”

he thought to himself. “Somebody ought to give it a transplant.”

The White Bear