Death's Yawning Door

I have a love/hate relationship with Lars Von Trier.
Today I watched Melancholia. By coincidence,
today, I also came across the holographic version of
a bit of a story I had scrawled back in January of this year.

It could be called an apocalyptic dream, kind of like Lars's.

Death's Yawning Door

A dream is all, but the key was its recurrence – over quite a long string of time. I do drink many recurring dreams and this one began amid a pod of self-esteem deflaters, where folk you admire and aspire to, ignore you and laugh gregariously together, in your presence, without having any apparent awareness of you – but I diverge. That time there was the road – a raised freeway, but not clad with noisy speeding stinking cars and trucks, more so, lined with colourful shops full of fabric and barefoot folk – all scurrying under a hot summer urban sky.

And the other relevant recurring transportation dream element was the waterway to a place I could see, or rather reach, from two directions; from a South beach – sometimes with the sense of Nice and other times, the sense of Fish Lake – but boaters would arrive to the beach from around the point to the Northwest where the destination lay. Or, I could find this fairly hidden spot also through the bush, again with two personae – if landscapes can be said to have that – through the dense bush of an adjacent wilderness lake, or through the thin strip of woods skirting a farm country lake. Regardless of the approach, in this case, as always, it was isolated cottage country of modest cabins and people with boats moving East, through lagoonish or muskeggy labyrinths of streams and clods of rich North delta-like vegetation until the tributaries became themselves and I felt relief. My destination.

Somehow – further East – there seemed to be more action – population – in hind site I knew that this place had been special – perhaps a portal or a gateway to something. A hideaway. But as dreams evolve, so do ideas... and dreams of my brother, long since dead, began to occur and like many modern Canadians, he too covets the cottage retreat but, as he was unique, he covets in his own secret and private ways. And I, always eager to please, want to see him be pleased – especially with me. But that is not important to him and so I have to observe.

And the water is always near by.

Suddenly – not in a thriller movie sense, more in a dream sense – there is a dangerous or evil presence and many folk are ducking, hiding, and even fleeing.

The dreams vary through this phase. Sometimes it is renovation or socialization that gets interrupted by the darker mood and the joy somehow diminishes and a sense of urgency ensues.

And this time, I had to call my inner heroine to save myself. From the enclave of safety, I was cast to the water. Fresh water. But vast as the sea. The sea overtook the place and still there was no fear when for sure there were shark fins. A line of them. So I road a fin to avoid being lunch. The water raced toward a parapet with an open yaw and in I went. The water filled and filled the warehouse room so of course there was no air and I was to drown. I could see the mossy blue light above and feel the shame, disappointment of it. The exact instance when it filled, and I was near the bottom of the vat, the East wall of the warehouse unhinged with a clink and fell back into its eternity in one move. The vast water moved out and left me alone with view of a compound and that hot urban sky. I cowered back and hid at the corner, near the unhinged wall – quite skeptical, when quickly and deftly a tall skinny man, a friend, wearing a green coverall, a disguise, put his arm around me and walked me away from the water world along a massive brick wall on our left – that would have been North - toward who knows what. There were others he was hiding me from. They did not expect me to be there. My friend was a social friend. Someone who had seen me before, who knew me and remembered me. A connected person who I had not really known.

So maybe it is all a spiral.

Who we hope to know and who we accidentally ignore. Who notices our lives and who cannot see through their thoughts to engage.

And maybe life is even a series of spiral passages. It's over. It's dead. And finally. It begins again, this stupendous adventure, planting itself over and over until whenever toward where ever, in dreams painting a backdrop for our every day life. I love my life.

Jan. 21, 2011
Nancy Ellen McLennan