A cry for help

As with so many things, I have tried to figure out the point of this. It's from a very bad movie starring Mitzi Gaynor, whose name I could never stand, called The I Don't Care Girl. In this number, which strains to be avant garde and flamboyant and all that uninhibited shit, she flings herself around in a slutty outfit and repeatedly shrieks, "I DON'T CARE".  How they got one of America's foremost concert pianists to put on a dog suit, or a wolf suit or whatever it is (first I thought it was a cat suit, but I don't think so) is beyond me, but he may have been stoned on pills. Alarmingly, I seem to be travelling backward in time to 2012 and my Oscar Levant phase, which was quite fascinating, at least for me.

Oscar Levant in drag. He still has that saturnine Slavic face, melancholy crumpled brow and incredible profile even when wearing this ridiculous old-lady suit. There was something truly poetic about him, original, and sad.

I almost want to apologize for this post, and for the last one about my dream, which came pretty much straight out of my journal. Though my life isn't bad now, my attitude toward my work couldn't be worse. Frustration and failed dreams are beginning to curdle into cynicism and bitterness. So what do I do?

Turn again?

That dream about talking to Harold - well, analyzing a dream can puncture it, leave it limp and lifeless. But I found it strange, or I do now,  that though I was fairly interested, I was not wildly excited nor even surprised that I could meet a man who had been dead for 40 years. He didn't really look like HL, though I knew it was him, in that weird way that people can shape-shift in dreams. He looked almost like a cartoon of himself or one of those standard 1950s black-and-white businessmen on TV sitcoms, the Dad on Dennis the Menace or something. Pulling out that list of ten questions was killing. If this was supposed to be some sort of interview, the dynamics had been completely reversed. He had taken control utterly, and obviously didn't really want to know anything about me or have any sort of real exchange. Just answer the questions, like a quiz. I grabbed the paper and crumpled it up and threw it away, and at first he looked disconcerted, but then -

BLANK.

The most crucial part of a dream liquefies and collapses like the centre of a caramel chocolate left out in the sun too long, or microwaved to see if it'll make it taste better. (I do that all the time, even though it's fairly idiotic and usually ruins the item in question.) We talked, yes, in a little more relaxed way, and I felt a bit hopeful, but I don't remember ANY of the content, though obviously that should have been the whole point of the dream. He got up to leave quickly - God, he WAS in black and white, though I wasn't. - and when I shouted after him, "Can I send you a copy of my novel?" he said, "Oh, no" in a sort of bright, breezy, utterly dismissive way.

What does it all mean? Well, what do YOU think it means? This chimera, this rare unicorn in the woods has retreated back into the mist. Now I feel a bit ridiculous to have taken this on. I should've written about Oscar Levant, instead. Or anything else. I allowed my imagination to go wild, as you are supposed to. Writer's imaginations are damnation, like a muscle that has been worked and worked, a huge grotesque bicep good for nothing except completely disabling your arm.

Dream-Harold's dismissal represents pretty much the reception of my novel, and at the same time, my lovely torturous Facebook experience grinds it into me daily how much more successful all other writers are, how they are wined and dined and laugh buoyantly out on the terrace while sipping rare champagne and smoking cigarettes in long holders. With those long white gloves on, you know, Deborah Kerr-type gloves that are sort of wrinkled, and immaculate as if you never touch anything because you don't have to. I however am left with my nose pressed against the windowpane. It was that way with my two other novels, and as a matter of fact, it has been that way throughout my entire life with the majority of things. The feeling is, I should go away now and not embarrass myself any further. For my failure embarrasses THEM, you see, and intimidates them, for hungry dogs lurk around the outside of the terrace with the men wearing their top hats and the women in the wrinkled gloves. Hungry dogs who never "made it", though everyone else did, of course, because God loves them and doesn't love you.

And that's what the dream means.

Postscript. I forgot about the Jerusalem part, watching the choir at the beginning of the dream. This may have just been some sort of crazy-ass thing that wasn't even connected, and it was full of the Dali-esque symbolism (speaking of melting) that suggests dada or theatre of the absurd.The hymn was significant to me in the past, quite significant in fact: it was on an old Christmas album of mine, and I used to thrill to it, cry, etc. It was Special in that I only listened to it at that time of year. Then I remembered more about it: it was on an old LP that I transferred to a tape, but the sound quality got worse and worse over the years. I made the mistake of sending the LP away somewhere to get it transferred to a CD, as was common then when nobody had any equipment to do it. When it did come back months later, it was a worse mess than the original. The album "faded in" at the start - in other words, it didn't just start normally, so it sounded like  ". . . oy to the WORLD. . ." When I complained about it, they said they did that with all their transfers "for effect". Imagine losing the first couple of bars of every song - this is effect?

So what does this have to do with anything? I suppose it's just part of my odd history with the song.

Which is all about the present world passing away and a New World, a new Jerusalem taking its place. The afterlife, as I understand it. It means crossing over. Leaving this world forever for greener and saintlier pastures, where the music is better and somebody listens to you.

Literal death, or just the death of my dream? The death of my dream is bloody painful. The theme of my life is family, with all its monumental struggles and irreplaceable rewards. That's it, that's  my assignment while here on earth, and I guess I'm not going to get beyond it no matter what my efforts. I often say, well, when you're lying on your deathbed (speaking of crossing over), is your career going to walk in and say, "I love you and I will never leave you until the end"? I don't see it.

And once again the scene was chang'd
New earth there seem'd to be,
I saw the Holy City
Beside the tideless sea
The light of God was on its streets
The gates were open wide,
And all who would might enter
And no one was denied.
No need of moon or stars by night,
Or sun to shine by day,
It was the new Jerusalem
That would not pass away

It was the new Jerusalem

That would not pass away
Jerusalem! Jerusalem!
Sing for the night is o'er
Hosanna in the highest,
Hosanna for evermore

Hosanna in the highest,

Hosanna for evermore!

(I don't set out to do it this way. But I don't like to do a whole lot of separate posts on the same subject, or, worse, incorporate new information into the original post. This whole blogging thing is a process, with deeper layers uncovered and connections made - perhaps the most valuable part of it. So sometimes I end up with a P. S. to the P. S. With all those hosannas at the end of The Holy City, I remembered something I had heard in a Bible class somewhere. The leader looked around the circle searchingly and asked, "OK, who knows what hosanna means?" Of course all the hands shot up and someone claimed it meant "Praise God!" or some-such. Then, shaking his head with the intense pleasure of proving everyone wrong and himself right, he said, "Oh, no, it doesn't."

And it doesn't.

Nothing comforting about the original meaning: it is a cry of anguish, fear and near-despair. Somewhere along the line, someone found that definition too "strong" and softened it. On Palm Sunday, the crowds were really shouting to Jesus, "Save us! Save us!" Kind of puts a whole new spin on it, doesn't it?)

Strong's Concordance

hósanna: save, we pray

Original Word: ὡσαννά

Part of Speech: Hebrew Form (Indeclinable)

Transliteration: hósanna

Phonetic Spelling: (ho-san-nah')

Short Definition: hosanna

Definition: (Aramaic and Hebrew, originally a cry for help), hosanna!, a cry of happiness.

HELPS Word-studies

5614 hōsanná – a transliteration of the Hebrew term (hôsî-âh-nā) meaning "Oh, save now!" or "Please save!"

[The -na suffix in Hebrew expresses intense emotion. 5614 (hōsanná) comes from two Hebrew roots meaning, "Save now!" (= "Save I pray!").]

Alice in Horrorland

I was going to play the lead in a stage play about Alice in Wonderland.

I don’t think I was me in this dream. I was much younger than my present age, and in fact, much younger than I have ever been. I was some sort of innocent, almost a waif. I was running around with long blonde hair flying behind me. Other people from the play were kind of milling around in various settings, mostly in a high school (I think this was an amateur performance), but I had no idea who they were, even though we had apparently been rehearsing this play together for months.

Though I remembered the rehearsals and I seemed to remember knowing the play very well, I suddenly realized I had no idea how the play started, what the first couple of pages of dialogue were. It was simply blank. Since I was playing the lead, I had to know. I knew I was in it somehow and wondered if it was kind of like the scene where the White Rabbit (always late) rushes past her before she falls into the rabbit hole. Or did she step through the mirror?

There was a director of the play somewhere but I couldn’t find him. No one seemed to know where he was, but I could picture him, what he was like. None of the other players seemed to recognize or acknowledge me and brushed off all my anxious questions. At one point I (who at this point looked like a little girl living in the 1960s) went on a sort of strange computer that reminded me of the Wizard of Oz's contraption behind the curtain, and tried to find out something about the play on the internet. I thought I could download the script so I could at least read it onstage and not be a total fool. I pictured myself just improvising my lines but realized it would throthe other actors completely off and infuriate them and bring the play to a grinding halt.

I saw a sort of glass plate with lettering embossed on it and wondered if I could make one with my name on it, if it would somehow help. The glass was sort of amber-colored and it was plate-sized but irregular, like a blob of sealing wax. I think it had some sort of emblem or crest on it. As I became more bewildered and frantic about what was going on, I suddenly realized I had no idea of the content of this play. I could not remember a single line in it, though I still remembered rehearsing for months. I started running around desperately asking people if they had a copy of the script. All of them shrugged and went on talking to whoever they were talking to. (All these people were young adults, maybe 20s or early 30s, much older than me.) They acted as if I had no connection to the play whatsoever and should just go away.

Then I found a plastic bag and it had some sort of report written on it, printed on it. It said something along the lines of: when she first arrived here, she looked very unkempt and dishevelled. Now she has improved her appearance greatly and is obviously much more attractive. I realized I was reading a psychiatric report and that it was about me.

  

I kept trying to figure out who the director was. He had an unusual voice and it seemed English. I kept thinking of the movie/book 1984 and George Orwell. Though I never saw him, I kept thinking I heard his voice. I thought that if I asked HIM if he had a copy of the script, I could at least get the first page. I knew he didn’t have one however, because nobody did. Then I decided he must be that guy on Mad Men, the Englishman they called Moneypenny, Lane Pryce. Lane Pryce committed suicide by hanging himself in his office during the last season. He tried to commit suicide with carbon monoxide in a new Jaguar his wife had just given him (Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce had just landed the prestigious Jaguar acoount), but it wouldn’t start, one of the drawbacks to effectively marketing it. 

Just now I realize I only saw this Lane Pryce actor in one other thing, the movie about Sylvia Plath with Gwyneth Paltrow. It was a very poorly-done thing and Paltrow was pallid and uninteresting as Plath, but in one scene, this Moneypenny was talking to her about suicide and how he had tried it once, “but you’ve got to keep going!”. This seemed ironic in light of the Lane Pryce character’s suicide.

But maybe it wasn’t Moneypenny at all: it seemed more like Oliver Sacks, the bizarre genius who studies people with mental disorders like so many insects impaled on pins.

The whole dream was a vague nightmare of pointlessly bustling around, realizing that the play was about to begin, that I was playing the lead, and that I had absolutely no idea of what was in the script. I was trying to scrape together some sort of knowledge of Alice in Wonderland and kept coming up with a rabbit. At one point all the cast members were supposed to produce a picture of what their spouses looked like, and I tried to find a picture of a rabbit, just the face, a brown one. 

It wasn’t until I woke up and grogged out of bed that I made another connection, with the Marina Bychkova Enchanted Dolls. My current favourite is a doll named Alice, who represents Bychkova’s “reimagining” of Alice in Wonderland. The doll has enormous blue eyes brimming with tears, elaborate costumes and long blonde hair. She both enchants and scares me because along with abandonment and terror, I see anger in her eyes, even a hint of rage.

Unlike Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz, Alice does not have comrades or companions, just a series of encounters with grotesque figures like the hookah-smoking caterpillar, the Queen of Hearts and the Cheshire Cat whose smile hangs disembodied in the air. She fell into this twilight nightmare down a hole, or, in another story, was sucked into a reverse world behind the mirror. In neither case did she choose the journey.

And then, the final realization.  My mother's name is Alice. It's also my middle name.

BLOGGER'S NOTE. I had a lot of trouble with this post. It just did not want to co-operate. Since I love fonts, I sometimes try to transfer a post from Word into Blogger, and usually the "foreign" font transfers OK. This time it seemed to work - God, how I hate "seemed to", it's the story of my LIFE - until I previewed it and saw that it had flipped back into boring old Times New Roman, my least favorite font.

I fucked around with it, screaming, as it jumped all over the place. Google Chrome has its advantages, but it does weird things. I notice that if I go back on Internet Explorer, however, half my recent gifs don't work or don't even appear at all. They view fine on Chrome but either don't move on Internet, or just jump a little bit, half a gif.  WTF??? It can't look one way on Explorer and another way on Chrome, can it? A post is a post, isn't it? What sort of demon lurks in my computer?

I fought and fought and compromised, but then saw that parts of the text hadn't changed over to Georgia (the least-obnoxious fonts on Blogger) or had even changed size. I hate to look even now, for fear of what else it has done to my post. The gifs may be totally useless, after spending all that time making them.

Anyway, I hope the spirit of this transfers somehow, because it was one of the more interesting dreams I've had lately, with a few of those "ohhhhhh" moments, odd bits of significance that still don't add up to very much.

Rocky's last stand

Dreams are strange things - no, scratch that, MY dreams are strange things. Slippery, often incomprehensible, with imagery out of some Salvadore Dali painting (or sometimes Van Gogh), they usually defy any sort of interpretation and soon recede into the thick fog from which they presumably came.

Freud called dreams "the royal road to the unconscious", but what did that doofus know? He hated women, said they were incomplete creatures, just castrated men, and couldn't even breathe properly because they breathed upward into their chests. Brilliant doctor that he was, he didn't notice that all his patients were wearing extremely tight corsets (see my corset post, which so far nobody has even looked at).

So Freud was full of shit. Where does that leave us? With the jumble, the ragbag: seeing a giraffe in my back yard (or at least, seeing its head and neck as it leaned over the back fence); going to meet myself at a train station (I never got there); and, last night, something that reeks of significance even if you don't believe in dream symbolism at all.

A dead horse.

It must have been Rocky, my shaggy friend, a non-prepossessing but game little creature with whom I had an intense bond. I've written about Rocky before, and he was an extension of my childhood, the factor that made my pre-teen years bearable. Before we sold him when he got too old and expensive to keep (both boarding and farrier/vet bills were starting to pile up), he was my comfort and solace. I'd longed for a horse as a young girl, and here he was, not exactly a snorting Arabian but nonetheless sweet-natured and dependable.

So when I had this dream, this horse lying on the ground shuddering and apparently breathing his last, it must have been Rocky: I knew that sorrel coat with white stippling through it (for he was a true strawberry roan, just like in the song). I was sitting on the ground leaning over his head and stroking his neck, knowing that a downed horse wouldn't last long and probably should be put to sleep.

Some anonymous people were around (and just who ARE these anonymous people in my dreams? I don't know, they're just there), and I asked them to call a vet. The time had come. His eyes were milky and fixed, and he only breathed once in a while, if at all.

And then.

A big shudder ran through him, and he performed that motion that horses have been doing since time immemorial: starting with his front legs, he began to heave himself back on his feet.

Foals do this when they are born, if awkwardly. It's a practiced movement, and kind of impressive to watch. But this was like literally watching a horse come back to life.

He seemed fine. His eyes were warm and bright again (Rocky always had what horsemen call "a kind eye"), and he started wandering around looking for stray wisps of hay. Soon he'd be lipping them up and chewing with that gratifying hollow crunching sound. All seemed well.

And then: the vet arrived, a woman in a white coat literally wielding a giant syringe with squirts coming off it. "Don't kill him, he's fine!" I protested. She looked at him, then looked at me as if tempted to use the syringe on me instead.

Then the dream sort of wandered into weirdland: the vet hitched up a crude sort of wagon with chains instead of reins. Then she made another one for me, but the chains were all wrong, different lengths, and I had no control. There did not seem to be a horse involved, so I am not sure what was supposed to propell this ersatz chariot. She fixed the reins/chains, so it all worked, but WHAT worked? Where were the horses? Why were we doing this?

And that was the end of it, or at least the part of it I remember.

OK then. . . let's get symbolic, shall we? I know it's early in the morning. The dead horse which is not really dead is my "dream" - in another sense (and why do we use the same word? I've never been able to figure that out), my dream of being published again, of feeling like an author instead of a near-totallly-unread blogger wasting my time every day.

It's Rocky, not just any horse.  And I had author dreams from the very beginning, from the first time I realized, with a shock of wonder, that someone actually created these magic carpets I held in my hands.  

It amazes me how little support I've had, as my parents wanted me to be a musician and were automatically disappointed by anything else I did. Now people try to talk me out of wanting to do more. Just be happy with what you have. At the same time, they are constantly saying, "Well. . . ?", a sort of "what have you done lately" thing. What have you done lately to justify all this time and grief?

I learned today that a publisher I had completely given up on is still "considering" my novel. I don't know what to think about this. It's distressing because it has been a very long time and I had almost given up, to the point that I sent them a very strongly-worded email yesterday. I got "a" reply, but nothing definitive. This is not a hand-cranked press, but one that is larger  than anything I would normally deal with.

Will the horse stand up again? Walk around and snuffle for food as if nothing happened? I don't know. I bounce back and forth between excitement and depression/despair. I tell myself not to hope.

The picture of Rocky and I at the top of this post was taken in our front yard in Chatham in about 1966.  It has a misty surrealism that I love. The four corners of the original, which is one of those old Instamatic things that's barely  2" x 3", were cut off, maybe to fit into a small frame. I know almost nothing about photoshopping, but in this case I really wanted to restore it. If you look very closely at the corners you might see evidence that I didn't know what I was doing: the program was a strange one that plastered "cloned" material on the photo surface like a paint roller. But when I was done, it seemed to pop out at me in 3D in the eerie way of very old photos (such as the header on this blog, also taken in my front yard).

Rocky didn't like being tied in the back yard - in fact, I didn't tie him at all, just left him loose without saddle or bridle or anything - and while we were having dinner he nudged the gate open and took off. Never had he run at such a clip. He galloped all the way back to the barn while we feverishly  pursued him in the family station wagon. I remember my father saying, "I never knew that horse could run so fast."

When he reached his destination (the barn) with unerring accuracy,  he stopped dead as if putting brakes on his hoofs and moseyed on over to a bale of hay.

What does it all mean? Oh, probably nothing. I'm just trying to make my Wednesday a little more bearable.

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