The Cake, the Payphone, and the Hollow of My Foot
The dream whisperer hovers near me
Here are two soundtracks for this reading: High Above Me by Tal Backman and Wouldn't It Be Good by Nik Kershaw.
The First Dream
Something rouses me from sleep in the middle of the night. Not violently—just a gentle disturbance pulling me back to waking.
I was having a lovely dream about an old friend named KE. We were at a party of some kind. Everyone was warm and loving and happy. There was no tension or tiredness. She thanked me for loving her and her family all these years. We danced and laughed. She was so happy. I wept tears of joy.
Yes is playing—‘Like leaves we touch when once we knew the story.’
We've grown apart the last year, KE and I. It is not a lot of comfort to know the only way to heal the damage is with time. Patience and letting the healing happen.
Awake, I think of the line from And You and I (also Yes)
Sad preacher nailed upon the colored door of time
Insane teacher be there, reminded of the rhyme
I sleep again.
The Payphone
I dream again. Not a continuation. But a spin-off in the same universe.
This time I am wandering some lost highway somewhere. Under a streetlight in the mist is a single payphone. I am lost. I pick up and call a woman. Not KE with whom I danced, but someone precious to her. A mother and friend to KE, and a woman who feels like family to me—in reality circumstance has thrust distance and separation on us.
A tense voice answers. “Hello?”
I don't say anything. Standing hunched in the dark, afraid my bad posture can be heard through the receiver. I feel like a shadow of failure.
“Please, leave me alone she says.” The tone in her voice is cool and terse. It sounds like anger and disappointment. I understand why and feel very sad.
I say “Aye” and hang up.
I wake and make notes because this exchange is very personal... I don't want to forget it. It is difficult and my notes contain coded words sleepy fingers have punched. Later I will need to interpret what words like psfene and Sgw thsldel mean (payphone, she thanked).
Footnotes
Drifting in and out of lucidity I decide to get up. I am parched and need a drink.
I do my night walk through the dark house. The sshh-sshh-sshh-sshh on the bamboo flooring makes me think of the dark at my grandmothers. Her floor was hard and smooth. The night feet there made sounds from slippers, not bare feet.
I start to think about my feet and how sensitive I always was about them. My whole life, I've been fastidious about clean, dry feet. The sound of bare feet on dusty, smooth surfaces like concrete or wood floors used to feel like fingernails on a chalkboard.
It drove me crazy for someone to touch my feet. I had actual anxiety at the idea of a person putting their hands on them. I would dissolve into hysterics and collapse if a person tried to tickle, rub or touch them.
This fear extended to doctors. This was learned when my sister shoved me off of the bed we were jumping on while I was mid-air and I broke my left tibia and fibula at 7 years of age. They had to sedate me to get that stupid cast on.
My cousins and sisters used to try to torture me by sitting on me while one of them did all sort of unspeakable terrors to my feet. In this context, ‘terror’ meant fingers, towels, or feathers.
They thought it was hilarious.
I was never amused.
Once, as an adult, I agreed to a foot massage—at first, it made me nervous, but the experience turned out to be pure pleasure. Maybe growing up changed how I see feet, or maybe it was just the moment.
A couple of years ago, I went with my wife for a pedicure. I enjoyed it, but found that those old fears were still there. I'm much better at managing them however.
It’s strange how that old fear came back to me tonight, unbidden.
Earlier in the evening when we were sitting quietly in the living room together. She on the couch, legs crossed toward me. I on the chair, legs crossed toward her.
She absent-mindedly started tracing her toe along the hollow of my arch. I stopped reading and watched. She didn't seem to be thinking about it. But I was. It didn't cripple me like it used to, this was perfectly acceptable, even pleasurable.
One of the signs that I truly love and trusted someone, I think, is that they can touch my feet. People like my mother and my wife. This is a very easy thing to keep private as an adult. Just keep your feet shod and no one ever knows you have a psychologically debilitating weakness. A true Achilles' heel—though mine had no mythic river or invincibility, just nerves and dread.
I am always amazed at the quantum nature of thought. This all occurs to me as I cross our living room from the hallway to the kitchen in the middle of a random night in May.
The Cake
Lying on the couch, I quickly slip back into unconsciousness. My dreams go back to the surreal. The same two women I have visited before are back, but now they are together.
The mother-friend and her husband are celebrating an anniversary. It is VERY elaborate. It must be their wedding. Lots of moody lighting and the decor is dominated by a pastel orange with splashes of light purple and white. The music is classical piano of some kind. I don't recognize it but it feels familiar.
The mother who earlier asked me to leave her alone makes eye contact. I feel fear at the interaction but it is ungrounded. I think I have traveled through time. The look is friendly but distant like she doesn't know who I am. I have been forgotten—or not yet known.
She offers me the wedding cake but instructs, “This is not to eat, please enjoy it and keep it safe.”
It is a work of art, frosted with the same pastel orange and white in a creamy substance that has swirls and wisps sculpted into it. I set it on a table next to me in the corner.
When no one is looking, I slice off a small wedge and rotate the cake so the missing piece is hidden.
It is as good as it looks. The interior of the delight melts with the hush of silk, moist, warm, and impossibly tender, as if baked from the memory of touch itself.
It is fantastic. But I dare not risk more.
A phone call comes and it is KE. She's stuck in traffic and arriving by helicopter. She needs me to open the roof so she can land.
I find the handle beneath me that with slow cranks opens the ballroom to a glorious starry sky. A silent craft descends and KE floats via umbrella into the crowd unnoticed. No fanfare, no interruption.
KE greets me warmly and happily. I recall the moments previously when we danced. But then her expression shifts when she asks why I have eaten the cake. I have no answer when I try to speak.
She doesn't ask me to leave, but I feel unwelcome. I feel sad because everyone was so kind and the cake simply amazing.
It is now that I look down and notice that rather than the pastel and white everyone else is wearing, I am in a crusty and filthy pair of work pants and a neon green work shirt.
I am so embarrassed that I shrink and hide.
Return to Sleep
I wake and fumble more notes of the experience. It is difficult to concentrate, this is learned when I drop the phone and it lands squarely on the bridge of my nose.
The pain is dull though. I’m too tired to come to full consciousness just yet. Though I consider it.
Being up early is a good time to write. But yesterday was so long. I know I need the sleep.
Fleshing out as much as I can recall in as few keyswipes as possible, I drop the phone, roll over and forget the world again for a few more hours.
Awareness
Some hours later, I wake completely.
The room is bright with sunshine.
“Good Morning Sunshine” is among my favorite greetings in the morning. But my bedmate is absent, I having finished my night on the couch.
Conscious and thoughtful, I am now quite surprised at the dream and how my little disjointed notes bring it back. The cluttered tale makes a lot of sense. It is more anxiety manifesting now in my subconscious.
Thanks a lot, asleep-me.
I was hoping for a dream about bread. Wait... didn't I SORT OF have a dream about bread? What else is cake than bread?
Elijah, under the broom tree, afraid and exhausted. Fed by an angel. Sent back into the world with quiet strength. Is that what this cake was? Not a punishment—but provision?
This is a new and exciting thought... I've been thinking about this dream in its most 1:1. What I experienced and how this dream is manifesting it. But, I'm going to meditate some on it in the context of 1 Kings 19.
I wonder if it's just a coincidence, or something more?
Probably coincidence. But, nothing wrong with a little fantasy.
Now, where is my tin foil hat?
WIWL
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Thank you for coming here and walking through the garden of my mind. No day is as brilliant in its moment as it is gilded in memory. Embrace your experience and relish gorgeous recollection.
Into every life a little light will shine. Thank you for being my luminance in whatever capacity you may. Shine on, you brilliant souls!
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