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| Black Clouds by Alexander Calder, exhibited at The Met |
One resolution for the New Year is to post more original writing on this blog. I once tried writing a novel, but re-reading it lately, it seemed dated. For one thing, the 1980s plot didn't hold water if the main character had a cellphone. For another, I think the narrative was watered down by too many words. So I've cut 70,000 of them and turned it into this short story, with some original photography.
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A
Triptych for Virginia
By Bob Varettoni
By Bob Varettoni
“Killing the
thing you love and spending each night with its ghost.”
– Mark Strand,“Formulas for Oblivion” (1971)
– Mark Strand,“Formulas for Oblivion” (1971)
Panel One (Flight
to New Jersey, 1984)
I waited in my car, taking in strange, salty air as Virginia packed a bag. Locking up her friend’s house on Chincoteague Island after midnight, she was bundled in a bulky sweater with a gaping hole over her heart, where a large scarlet R had been partially torn. Through it, I could see her srevoL rof si ainigriV T-shirt which, earlier that evening, I had been guilty of turning inside out.
In tattered jeans, blue Keds and her father’s vintage California Angels baseball cap – with a white halo outlined on top – she was dressed as if she was running away from home.
I waited in my car, taking in strange, salty air as Virginia packed a bag. Locking up her friend’s house on Chincoteague Island after midnight, she was bundled in a bulky sweater with a gaping hole over her heart, where a large scarlet R had been partially torn. Through it, I could see her srevoL rof si ainigriV T-shirt which, earlier that evening, I had been guilty of turning inside out.
In tattered jeans, blue Keds and her father’s vintage California Angels baseball cap – with a white halo outlined on top – she was dressed as if she was running away from home.
“I’m sorry. Did I wake you?”
“Why are you always sorry?” she asked, yawning
extravagantly. “Where are we, anyway?”
We’re skirting the Pine Barrens, I explained:
more than a million acres of sand-based soil in the center of New Jersey. The
rain here combines with acid from decaying pine needles and leaches minerals
from the sand, forming bog iron that used to be mined in isolated communities.
A few are now ghost towns.
This is the home of the Jersey
Devil, and I told Virginia that most artists depict him with cloven hooves and
a tail but, other than that, he’s an amalgam of animals – the body of a
kangaroo with bat wings, the head of a dog, the face of a horse… or not.
It seems cartoonish until you
realize the Jersey Devil is that much more terrifying because he can take any
form. As soon as you are comfortable seeing him one way, he changes shape. You
can’t pin him down, or sometimes even recognize him. He’s always out there,
somewhere in the New Jersey woods.
While I went on like this, Virginia
barely listened. She curiously inspected the buttons and dials on the dashboard
and adjusted her seat forward and back. Then she opened the glove compartment
and took out the photo I kept there.
“Wow. Who’s this? Looks just like my
sister... Chubby ankles though.”
“I know,” I said. “Her father used
to call her Helen-melon.”
“That’s
Helen?”
I had been one of Helen’s many
suitors, as Virginia was well-aware. The photo she was now holding was a poor
Polaroid, and the colors had grown darker over time. Taken at a Halloween party, Helen is wearing an
orange rain slicker, stuffed with my bed sheets. I don’t know where she got the
green tights or the matching beret.
“Why,” Virginia asked, “would you possibly keep a photo of your old girlfriend in your glove
compartment?”
“Because,” I said, “it reminds me of why I loved her...”
It
was just a fraction of a second, the blink of a camera; but the image personifies my first love.
“…Dressed like a pumpkin, she almost
looks vulnerable.”
“You’re very sweet,” Virginia mused after a silence. She
had carelessly flipped the Polaroid to the floor mat. “In a strange sort of
way.”
“How’s that?”
“All this stuff about your old girlfriend... I feel sorry
for your future wife. I’ve never met anyone so affected by their past.”
“It’s nothing,” I said. “Sometimes it makes me try to be
better.”
I told her about how, with my irregular
heartbeat, I had trained for several years to break the freshman Warren County
high school cross-country record of the boy who eventually replaced me in Helen’s
heart. The time and distance had been enshrined on a plaque in the front
entrance of the gym. A grown man, I eventually bettered the time of my 13-year-old rival.
“I got the idea from the poet Byron,” I said. “When he was
young, he swam the Dardanelles to impress a woman, and years later Edgar Allan
Poe swam the James River in imitation.”
“Byron… Poe… quatsch...” Virginia recited dreamily. “I wonder what you are. I thought you said you were an accountant.”
“That’s right. I haven’t lied to you yet.”
“Yet? Well, what are you trying to become?”
“An auditor.”
“No. Really. Are you a writer?”
“What’s a writer?” I argued. “Blake worked as an engraver;
Milton – before he went blind and wrote ‘Paradise Lost’ – was a propagandist
for the English Parliament. Andrew Marvell was his assistant.
“Dante was a politician. Poe, when employed, was a magazine
editor. Matthew Arnold was a school inspector, and William Carlos Williams was
a doctor who lived about a hundred miles up this road. Oh, and Wallace Stevens –
that’s my favorite – he was a vice president for an insurance company in
Hartford, Connecticut. He composed poems while walking to and from work...”
I paused. “...You can stop me from
babbling at any time.”
“I don’t want to. I do
think you’re strange – but nice.”
“Don’t be so sure. I think that if I ever did write a book,
it would be about me, as a middle-aged man, being seduced by Helen’s daughter.”
“That’s a perverted idea for a plot.”
“Blame Goethe. It’s his idea. I rarely have an original
thought. Anyway, what makes you think I’m nice?”
Virginia turned to face me.
“I trust you,” she said.
“You shouldn’t trust strangers.” I barely knew her,
and already I was dispensing protective advice.
“I trusted you from the moment you looked directly into my eyes.”
“Trust at first sight?” I shrugged, then exhaled an indifferent breath. Like
Old Faithful.
“Beats love,” she said.
“Beats love,” she said.
Another silence followed as we sped
through the woods. Then I heard her soft, dissonant voice in the darkness.
“Will you promise to write something
for me someday?”
“Sure, I promise,” I chuckled. “So, you think I’m a writer,
after all?”
“No,” Virginia yawned. “I think you’re the Jersey Devil.”
It was almost dawn, and Virginia
closed her eyes, adjusted her Angels’ cap and curled in her sweater for warmth.
In my mind’s eye, looking back, I
see the bright morning star of Venus on the horizon as I continue to drive up
the Turnpike. Upon my sleeping Hester’s face, ancient Hesper has combined with
the waxing moon to cast a shadow that flickers and trembles, like my long-ago
desire, as starlight shimmers through the thinning ranks of pine trees along the side of
the road.
I wish I may, I wish I might, now,
make the sun stand still below that distant horizon – as if my car were a Mason
jar and I could punch air holes in the top and look through the window to see
this curiosity named Virginia, in the seat next to me, lazily stretching her
butterfly limbs.
Then I would take my car in my hand
and hold the both of us up to the faint and heavenly light.
I want to examine that tiny version
of myself I am now trying to preserve – still so very young... yet blissfully aware
of being teased by the Hand of Fate which, at that moment, casually rested in my lap.
Panel Two (In and
Out of Love in New York)
Virginia was an artist. She often
dragged me to galleries and museums in and around New York and talked about diptychs
and triptychs, perspective and ideal points. I’d call them dipsticks and TripTiks,
just to annoy her.
“Yeah, well,” she said, “I feel like
the one on the right.”
Looking back, I realize how on and
off our relationship had been in real life.
One time Virginia plucked a scrap of
paper from my back pocket, waved it in the air and mischievously accused, “Ah-ha, another woman’s phone number!”
It was.
When that casual relationship ended
too, the other woman taunted, “Go ask Virginia out again; she’ll always love you.” Bad enough, it was a
vindictive thing to say. Worse, it didn’t turn out to be true.
I used to be good when I was a younger,
but now I live my life by rote. My good intentions are like all the poems I’ve admired
and memorized. Useless. Only Virginia had a sixth sense about my true nature.
I used to be a romantic devil. Now I’m
just a devil.
Consider, for example, this scene
one autumn night in 1986 when I lived in New York and excitedly dialed Virginia’s
familiar phone number. It was during a time we were both in love.
“I need to see you tonight,” I said.
“Why?”
“Because there aren’t any clouds,
and there’s only a quarter moon.”
“Oh... Sure.” Sometimes Virginia
could be so trusting.
“Meet me at nine at the rock by the
park.”
“It’ll be dark.”
“So what? Chicken?”
“And cold.”
“Bring a sweater.”
“Just don’t leave me alone.” Other
times she could be so prophetic.
I didn’t leave her alone that
particular night. In fact, I arrived early at Mount Tom, the rocky, 30-foot
hill overlooking the Hudson River at 84th Street and Riverside Drive. It was
named after Thomas Brennan, whose family owned a farmhouse there in the
1840s.
Virginia
was already waiting.
I approached from the park side of
the street as a row of lampposts lit. The craggy hill is clearly visible from
the street, and the clearing on top has a smooth, cool surface of slate. It’s
just high enough to look out over the treetops of Riverside Park for a clear
view of the western sky, but far enough removed from the street to ensure
privacy. Neighbors often gathered there to sit and talk, drink and share
cigarettes. Then, in a puff of smoke, they’d disappear.
“I’m coming to get you, Barbara,” I
said, imitating a monster-movie voice and placing my hands around Virginia’s neck fom
behind.
She shrieked. “Hey! You scared me!”
“Where have you been?” she asked,
after we kissed. “And who’s Barbara?”
“It’s ‘Night of the Living
Dead.’”
“How romantic. I’ve been sitting here waiting. My heinie’s cold!”
Her untamed contralto broke sweetly
as it rose in melody... in imitation of no one. The unique pitch of her voice –
combined with off-handed, off-key German words and phrases borrowed from her
grandmother – made her a knock-off of Gatsby’s Daisy: not a voice full of
money, but a voice full of loose change.
“Loose change under a mattress,” she’d add, before anyone else could tease her the way we all always did… me, her sister, her friends… all in the guise of loving familiarity. We were a rotten crowd, and she was worth the whole bunch of us put together.
“Loose change under a mattress,” she’d add, before anyone else could tease her the way we all always did… me, her sister, her friends… all in the guise of loving familiarity. We were a rotten crowd, and she was worth the whole bunch of us put together.
“You’re early,” I said to her at
Mount Tom. “And don’t you think you should have worn pants?”
Virginia rolled over and stretched
negligently on the rock, striking the pose of Courbet’s “Woman With a Parrot.”
“I thought you liked my legs,” she
teased.
“That’s not the point.”
“The bus was early,” she said,
indefinitely nodding in the direction of the stop on the corner. “Besides,
I knew you’d be early too.”
I bent down, nudged her gently
aside, and whispered, “Your legs drive me crazy.” Then I spread out a picnic
blanket to lie down by the side of my darling, my darling, my life and…
“My sweater!” I exclaimed.
“You told me to bring one.”
“You mended it!”
It was the Rutgers sweater I had given her
when we met in Chincoteague, to protect her from the cold.
“Like it?” Virginia asked and thrust
her chest forward in a provocative pose even Courbet couldn’t capture.
“Hell, yes,” I said. “But I didn’t
know you could sew.”
“My sister sews,” she said. “I’m the
sister who rips.”
From the clearing on top of the
rocky hill, we had an unobstructed view of New Jersey, especially the trees of
the Palisades to the northwest. We didn’t see many buildings, except for a few
high-rises, and we were above the cars and lights of the West Side Highway.
It was my favorite spot in Manhattan for stargazing.
I lived nearby, in a sublet on a
street lined with brownstones and filled with signs... those on front doors
requested no menus and those in car windows offered no radios. A sign on one building noted that it once was the site of the Brennan farmhouse, where Edgar
Allan Poe lived when he finished writing “The Raven.”
“I love to watch the stars,”
Virginia said, as I rested my head in her lap.
“They love to watch you too,” I
said.
“God, you’re so corny,” she said,
playfully swiping my wandering hand. “Who says stuff like that?”
I kissed her, and she giggled.
“I like it here,” she said, cuddling
close. Then, uncannily, she asked if I’d recite a
poem.
We were in the exact spot where Poe
used to linger for hours. I’m fairly certain Virginia didn’t know this, but she intuited the significance of my every furtive impulse.
“Not now,” I replied. It would have
been sacrilege. “I’d rather look at stars.”
I had brought my binoculars, and I turned from her to point them at Polaris.
“Well, that’s the Little Dipper,”
she huffed. Rejection at short notice was my specialty.
I
followed the imaginary line from the Pointers in the nearby Big Dipper through the
star on the tip of Cepheus’ crown. From there, it was easy to adjust my sights
on Cassiopeia, the oddly shaped W, and, finally...
“I can’t see it,” I said. “Too many
lights. The city is too bright.”
“You always think it will be darker
than it is. What are you looking for, anyway?” she asked.
“A princess with her hands bound.”
“Excuse me?”
“It's a constellation of a woman chained to a rock. If you
look to the side of her right knee, sometimes you can see a blur of stars...”
“Like Van Gogh.”
“It’s another galaxy – three million
light years away, with a hundred billion suns... It’s the furthest thing anyone
can see with the naked eye.”
“Well, you’re cheating,” Virginia
said, reaching for the binoculars. “That’s technically not your naked eye, and
I don’t see any princess.”
“Yeah, neither do I.”
She stopped trying to yank the
binoculars away.
“Stop making fun of me,” she pouted,
then sat up and gave her knees a Freudian hug.
“Wait a minute,” I said. “Stand up.”
She awkwardly struggled to her feet…
an angelwing emerging from a cocoon.
“Turn around,” I directed.
She folded her arms, shyly,
reminding me of when her bra snapped apart in ruins in my car right before we
arrived at a late party. She nobly spent the rest of the night self-consciously
and imperceptibly trying to conceal the front of her blouse... while in fact
illustrating her flair for unintentional seduction.
“This is getting kinky,” she said,
dorsal view. “What? Did I sit on something?”
I was staring at the underside of
her knee.
“No, look...,” I said in amazement. “I
never put two and two together before, but you have a...”
“What? My birthmark?”
“Yes! Just like Andromeda...”
“Oh, great. Who’s Andromeda?
“It’s
the constellation I was telling you about. The galaxy, right here.” I touched the birthmark behind Virginia’s knee.
She
eyed me suspiciously. “I still think you’re trying to make fun of me.”
“Oh yeah…” I challenged. “What are you going to do
about it?”
“I’m going to kiss you to death,”
she said, pecking at my ear, my neck, my chest.
“Hey! Stop!” (“Take thy beak from out
my heart!” whispered the voyeuring poet in my brain.)
“You
stop!” (One of us had been tickling her in retaliation.) “Besides, I’m serious,”
she said while laughing. “You don’t really love me.”
“Of course I love you.”
“Oh yeah…” she parroted. “How
much?”
“How much do I love thee? It’s like this: if
you take all the great love affairs of all time... Petrarch and Laura, Paolo
and Francesca, Othello and Desdemona...”
“Hey, he killed her...”
“OK, forget Othello. Think Romeo and
Juliet…”
“Both dead.”
“They’re all dead.”
“Then what does it matter?”
I shrugged, then continued, “Catullus and Lesbia, Dante and
Beatrice, Edgar and Virginia...”
“You know about Edgar?”
“I meant Poe and his wife.”
“Oh, of course... that's who I meant too,” she said, enjoying her joke. “Try naming a
couple from the 20th century.”
“OK, Gatsby and Daisy...”
“And her husband Tom?”
“You’re missing the point,” I said.
“There’s a point?”
“It’s all about us. If you take all the great love
affairs of all time and you considered how much they loved each other... if you
take all those love affairs and rolled them all into one... Catullus and Lesbia, Dante
and Beatrice...”
“Yeah, yeah... You talk too much,
you know that?”
“...They’re like that streetlight
over there.” I paused. “And we’re like the light from the North Star.”
Virginia kissed me.
“They’re that abandoned car. And we’re
Detroit.”
She kissed me again and tried to put
her hand over my mouth.
“They’re that plane heading for
Newark,” I said, pointing to the sky. “And we’re a plane heading for Florence.”
She kissed me yet again. This time,
she grabbed my pointing arm and pulled it down with two hands. I laughed as she
tumbled on top of me. We shrieked like children in a playground, and she jabbed
at my back with her claws.
“Hey,” I said, and she screeched
even louder. “OK, OK, I give up.”
“That’s better,” she said. We were both
out of breath, and I was flat on my back with a clear view of dozens of stars
flickering over New Jersey. Virginia had pinned my hands to the ground and was
straddling my hips with the bare flesh of her thighs. She put her finger to my
lips to stop me from saying another word.
She leaned over me and whispered,
but I couldn’t make out what she said.
Looking back, I think she was trying
to tell me the secret of real, not fictional, love. I think she was trying to tell me we should
have talked less, and fought more.
I last saw Virginia two years later,
long after we had broken up for good, when I found myself in Inwood, the
neighborhood where she lived when we were dating.
Trying to avoid a traffic tie-up on
the George Washington Bridge on my morning commute from where I now lived in
suburban New Jersey, I wound up heading into the primordial heart of upper
Manhattan. Like one of the discoverers of the New World, I made a wrong turn.
I pulled over and found parking on a
street where, 345 years earlier, I would have heard chilling screams from
across the river, echoing in a primeval forest of steep rocky slopes and
glacial potholes; caves and schist outcroppings; huge tulip trees and hemlocks.
To this day, I’m not sure why I got
out of the car and started walking to the east. I was sure, somehow, that Virginia still lived here.
A bright morning sun appeared from
behind rain clouds and reflected off bits of broken glass on the ground, as if
the sidewalks were flecked with diamonds instead of round, spiked chestnut
seeds and drowned, conquered worms. A swallow flew overhead, and I crossed the
street to avoid a roaming, unleashed dog. Long spring shadows preceded the
people walking toward me, while I had no shadow at all.
Soon I was approaching Virginia’s
apartment building.
I saw a woman – a Juliet without a Romeo – leaning from an open window on the top floor. Longfellow was right; forests do shout. A broadcast from a Spanish-language AM radio station competed with the wailing of an unseen baby. At the edge of the street, at the bottom of a hill, I thought I saw a Haitian madman flailing his arms, but it turned out to be just someone struggling to put on a backpack.
I saw a woman – a Juliet without a Romeo – leaning from an open window on the top floor. Longfellow was right; forests do shout. A broadcast from a Spanish-language AM radio station competed with the wailing of an unseen baby. At the edge of the street, at the bottom of a hill, I thought I saw a Haitian madman flailing his arms, but it turned out to be just someone struggling to put on a backpack.
It was sometime before 9 o’clock,
and I waited and watched the workday begin.
The rocky hill leading to Virginia’s building didn’t seem as steep as I remembered it. Still, the top was far enough away so that one person was indistinguishable from the next as residents descended on their way to the subway station on 207th Street, where the A Train began its journey south into Manhattan proper.
The rocky hill leading to Virginia’s building didn’t seem as steep as I remembered it. Still, the top was far enough away so that one person was indistinguishable from the next as residents descended on their way to the subway station on 207th Street, where the A Train began its journey south into Manhattan proper.
An endless variety of people
approached and passed. The diversity was astounding. All had come here today,
just as the Dutch, Chinese, English, Germans, Hungarians, Italians, Poles,
Russians and Syrians had arrived decades and centuries ago. Yet none have been
able to claim this part of the island as home. We’re all immigrants here. We
all just come and go.
I stood amid the last
remnants of a deep forest that has held hope for so many, simply because it
provided the best perspective for me – Zaccheus in Inwood – to try to catch a
glimpse of Virginia.
Then, from precisely nowhere,
I saw Virginia at the top of the hill, and I recognized her immediately, even
before I could see her face.
I ducked for cover before she could
see mine, and followed her as she turned the corner to the A Train. As she
passed over a subway grate (where, again short-skirted, she once imitated Marilyn
Monroe), she was shrouded in steam so I couldn’t see her feet touch the ground.
I pursued her as she descended the
stairs to the station. I gave a stranger a $20 bill for a single token because
I didn’t want to wait in line. He started laughing at me, and I had to dart out
of Virginia’s eyesight as she turned toward the commotion.
I watched as she headed for the
middle car, near the conductor, where I had always told her she’d be safer. She
took a seat alone on a metal bench.
Unable to bear it any longer, I
followed her into the subway car.
I didn’t know what I intended to do
or say. She even glanced at me as I made my way toward the open doors, but
didn’t react.
I stopped short, a few feet right in
front of her, and was about to say, “Hi.”
“Hey, watch it!” said someone who
bumped me from behind. It was an old man, wearing a bedraggled raincoat.
He smelled as if he hadn’t bathed in weeks.
“I’m sorry,” I said automatically.
When I said this, Virginia recognized
me immediately.
In the same moment, I awkwardly
pirouetted to avoid the homeless man’s bag of worldly
possessions.
“I’m sorry,” I repeated, now looking
directly into Virginia’s eyes.
“Get lost,” said the old man, wildly swinging his bag to lift it to the bench opposite her. This forced me backwards yet again, as an efficient
two-note tone sounded.
I was completely out of the subway car when its doors slid shut between me and my other life.
I was completely out of the subway car when its doors slid shut between me and my other life.
The conductor poked his head out the
window and looked at me. I realize now that he was about to open the doors to
let me back in, but at the time I was shaking my head “no” because what had
just taken place wasn’t what was supposed to have happened when I saw Virginia
again.
A low flame numbed the movement in
my arms and legs and even took control of my tongue. I couldn’t speak, and I leaned against a pillar for support. Virginia had, quite literally,
taken my breath away.
The train started to pull away from
the station without me, as the homeless man flashed a toothless smile.
The lights inside the subway car
flickered like my arrhythmic heart. In a blinding flash, the train approached
the tunnel at the end of the station, and I saw Virginia hunched in her seat
with her elbows drawn tightly to her stomach as if she had been shot.
It was a grotesque pantomime,
followed by darkness.
If this were fiction, I would
conjure someone else to sit beside Virginia, put an arm around her and comfort her
as she sat on that train. I’d write about someone who loved her the way she
deserved to be loved.
I was never that person. Not even
once.
Panel Three (Holy
Thursday, 1991)
After a fitful night, I drove in
early from Jersey and parked my car on Manhattan’s East Side, intending to head
straight home after work. Instead, since my walk back to the garage in the evening spring rain took me in the direction of St. Patrick’s Cathedral, I felt compelled to stop inside.
It was illogical. I pass so many churches without giving them a second thought and, theoretically, a man can pray anywhere. But I couldn’t pass by St. Patrick’s. I suppose, after all, that’s why they build cathedrals.
It was illogical. I pass so many churches without giving them a second thought and, theoretically, a man can pray anywhere. But I couldn’t pass by St. Patrick’s. I suppose, after all, that’s why they build cathedrals.
On a cold December night more than seven
years earlier, when these doors were locked, Virginia and I had huddled for
warmth against them. She was sandwiched between me and Mother Seton, and it
looked as if Virginia’s bohemian aspect and dress were being captioned by the
scroll meant to identify the statue: “Daughter of New York.” We were with her friends. The whole group of us sang Christmas carols to passing
strangers on Fifth Avenue and those gathered on the cathedral steps.
Tonight, I ventured inside these very
doors and lingered in back among the milling tourists. At the front altar, a
cardinal was washing the feet of an old priest in a wheelchair. One altar boy
precariously lit a high candle with a taper, and another let out an echoing
cough amid a billowing cloud of incense.
I stepped forward to get a better
look, and in an instant left New York behind. I seemed to be in ancient Babel, surrounded
by a din of voices without meaning. No one was paying much attention to the
still-distant cardinal. I could hear the gift shop doing a brisk Holy Week
business, and an usher offering envelopes soliciting donations. Several women clutching
rosaries cut in front of me past the center aisle like a gaggle of squawking
geese crossing a country road.
In the middle of this tumult, I
whispered Virginia’s name.
Years ago, I had felt embarrassed
while singing the Christmas carols. My hollow, out-of-tune voice had trailed
the others by half a beat, and I tried not to let anyone hear me. But I was not
embarrassed tonight.
In fact, I called out for Virginia
again – louder and with more urgency, so that those around me could clearly
hear. When I said her name yet a third time, I felt sure that Virginia herself,
wherever she was, could hear me as well – as if, by some magic, I could summon
her once more to the cathedral.
But no miracles happened there
tonight. There was just a man, pacing among the inattentive tourists, babbling
to himself.
Why did I call out her name?
I didn’t plan to; it was more an
impromptu attempt at an exorcism, I suppose.
I’ve been writing more and more lately;
stirring old memories. For the past few weeks, when I have managed to sleep, I
have had vivid dreams of Virginia. Unfortunately, they are vividly dull.
One night, I am living in her Inwood
apartment, and on the kitchen table I find a half-eaten apple, teeming with
roaches. The next night, I hand her the string to a kite, but when she takes
hold, it turns out to be a literal loose end. On the third, I kiss a drop of
blood from the tip of her ring finger.
Symbolic, yes, but nothing magical.
If these dreams were fantastically choreographed or blatantly sexual – say, for
example, if I had tasted Virginia’s body before I tasted her blood – I could
abide them. Instead, their monotony… and monogamy… is unrelenting. Virginia and
I often go through the routine motions of a real-life marriage... while, wide
awake, I’m just like everyone else, routinely going through these same motions.
If these dreams were all I had, I
would awaken myself nightly, slip from the bed where my wife is sleeping with
the cat curled on her chest, and let my dreams go on without me. Then I would
sit at my desk and finish writing my love story. It would have a predictable happy
ending, based on all my unfulfilled and unconsecrated desires.
But last night… last night, I had a better
dream than this.
Last night I had a dream very much
like others I have had at odd moments over the past few years. These dreams,
when they come, have a consistent theme: No matter what the plot or
circumstance, Virginia and I are always, in some way, arriving “home.” I wake
up feeling as if my sins have been forgiven.
In these dreams, as in real life,
Virginia is neither friend nor lover. She is, instead, a curious host of
salvation.
If there is something missing in my
life, at least I can take dim comfort in its recognition. This longing for a home
that isn’t where I live tells me that nothing can be truly understood. I find
this reassuring. Through Virginia, I can put a face on my most deep-seated
longings. Without this… obsession, I would be consumed by petty day-to-day
worries, and even my dreams would be just like everyone else’s.
In real life, today, Virginia is surely
imperfect the way I am imperfect alone and without her, and the way we were
imperfect together. But in rare dreams she touches a diminished chord that
resonates with some part of perfection that lies deep within me.
I believe this to be my soul: my
link to a real, deathless place beyond an ethereal, timeless horizon where
anything is possible. Artists might call this the ideal point. Churchgoers call
it heaven. My unguarded mind calls it home.
This Virginia, my Virginia, is a grubby, sensual, underdressed and unredressed version
of what an old-fashioned family Bible depicts as a winged spirit in a flowing
white gown. She proves there are parts of me that, for all my introspection, I
still cannot fathom. This angel strips away the layers of my ordinary life. She
is absurdly unrelenting in guiding me toward a greater destiny. At night, when
I am least protected, she imparadises my dreams.
Had I but world enough and time, I
would write something grander for Virginia than this triptych in memoriam. I
would place rock upon rock, word upon word, to form solid walls with Byzantine
mosaics of aurochs and angels atop a carefully planned foundation. I would
imprison her in a Yeatsian tower and free myself to become the kind of person
who could love someone in real life the way I love Virginia in my dreams.
Had I but courage equal to my
desire.
But I’m no hero. My Andromeda has no
Perseus. I’m merely an alchemist. Using dissonant dreams as base metal, I summon these words to transubstantiate past into present, blood into ink,
body into soul.
Lord, you’ve had your chances. I’ve
surrendered my desires, but no one noticed. I’ve longed for your forgiveness,
but it eludes me. I’ve even ranted in your cathedrals, but you didn’t hear me.
But you – even You – can’t take
Virginia away from me. No one can make me forsake her, and no one can steal
what I can turn into gold.
Because no one can ever love her as
much as I do when I write.
---------
Photos (from top): New Jersey woods, two views of New York from New Jersey, St. Patrick's Cathedral.Related posts:
- An earlier version of the last part of this story, read by me
- The only sonnet I wrote in 2017
