When Moses Found Me in the Bushes
This dream unfolded over three days last week (overnight slumber and “power” naps). My sense is that it roams from the present to the past to the future tenses, so I will record events, as they seem to have unfolded. The dream has already spawned one painting. More may come.
Moses was wearing a fashionably wrinkled linen suit: double-breasted and cut in the relaxed Italian style. He wore no tie but his silk shirt was buttoned at the neck. He pushed his way through the brush, moving horizontally along the slope of the hill. Occasionally, when they snagged his sleeves or trouser legs, he cursed the branches and twigs. Periodically, he stopped and peered over his sunglasses. Then, with an angry, resigned grunt he lurched onward into and through the chaotic web of undergrowth.
Finally, long after I’d seen him approaching, he discerned me lying across his path. He registered no surprise. He seemed to have considered the encounter inevitable – perhaps even overdue.
I sniffed a yellow rose that lay incongruously on my chest and tried to feign indifference. I understood that this was my moment, but felt that any enthusiasm would be undignified …sort of like giving high fives after winning the door prize at a funeral. I stared at the rose like Lana Turner contemplating her drug store Sundae.
I could hear Klezmer music gurgling and swaying and tumbling giddily in the distance behind Moses. A quintet of Romanians struggled into view. A clarinetist, who looked exactly like a Jackie Mason accidentally collided with a tree trunk and swallowed far too much licorice stick. Moses looked back at them. With a shrug of his shoulders and a roll of his eyes he withered their spirit and silenced their nasal polka. The musicians jostled and shoved, organizing themselves in a semi-circle behind him.
Now they were a Mariachi band. They readied their instruments, shaking spittle from their mouthpieces. The clarinetist limbered the valves on a fine, if battered trumpet. I noticed they all had Zapata moustaches and a lot of silver embellishments on their bolero jackets.
Moses was mumbling into a little tape recorder that he held very close to his lips. I had the impression he was performing a “conspiracy to self”.
One of the musicians stepped away from the others and into an old fashioned British phone booth to answer a telephone that had been ringing unnoticed for some time. Thinking back, I’m pretty sure what I thought were clarinet noises were actually coming from the booth.
It was for me. I asked the musician to take a message. He couldn’t because of union rules. Instead, he offered to save a message. Later I learned that it wasn’t that particular message he saved – it had been more of a general offer. He saved messages all the time, it turned out, but couldn’t remember for whom. For some reason my mother and two women I can’t identify but somehow am sure are family are standing off stage(?) and making frustratingly undecipherable hand gestures. What is particularly exasperating is that I know they are telling me that the message is either from them, or about them – and that it is extremely important.
It was somewhere around the time he explained why the union forbade message-taking for Roman Catholics that my sister was sitting with me in the back of our family car. It was parked in our driveway and my father, who now looked like Moses Znaimer was honking the horn and shouting for my mother to hurry up. I knew it was my first communion day …that’s why it was 1954. But why was I bearded and wearing jeans and a corduroy vest? Why was my wife on the verandah with my mother and my Aunt Loretta? They had been dead for decades. My wife knew that! What was she thinking? For God’s sake, sound religious for Loretta, I telepathically pleaded with my mother and my wife.
For no logical reason the car jerks ahead and I am thrown over the front seat and into the dashboard. There is a small cut between my eyebrows that doesn’t bleed until I widen my eyes then it gushes and splatters the rear view mirror with a pink mist. My father is not pleased. My sister is not interested. I am worried that I will be singled out at mass. Somehow this wound seems sinful. Is there a prayer for the dashboard indented?
The pews in the church are a maze and once we get to our seats I realize that I won’t be able to find my way out after mass. Worse, the entire room is on a turntable of sorts (it reminds me of a railway roundhouse) and is moving so fast that, even if I were to get to the edge, it would be impossible to step off. A lady tries and is thrown against a statue of the Virgin which instantly cracks and bleeds. I watch as the Stations of the Cross flash by and think, “I bet Christ would have liked to get through them that quickly.”
Moses is carrying a suitcase and cradling a small white vase as he walks along beside the spinning church. There are many children singing in the windows, silhouetted against the stained glass. He acknowledges them with a nod and a sort of tipping gesture with the small white vase. He says you must forgive children and I look at myself and wonder why I have a beard and smell of Indonesian cigarettes. This has to stop and I wake up – I think. Because, although I am looking at my bedroom furniture, I hear Moses saying cheerily, “don’t be a stranger.”
I am cutting the lawn, sweating as I struggle to maneuver the lawn mower around iron fence post topped with razor wire, shrubs and neighborhood children standing around in a tableau vivant of a baseball game. There, sipping tall cold drinks on the verandah are Ian Fleming (or a reasonable facsimile), a CSIS media spokesman (I just know that) and (by request) Moses Znaimer. Every so often one of the children darts in front of the lawnmower and leaps onto the verandah carrying a note written on a rigid yellow card. The men on the verandah study the note and make a ruling about …something or other.
A taxi pulls into the driveway and I get out with a clothing bag slung over my shoulder. I am dressed impeccably in a blue suit cut like Moses’ and (I know this too) a $100 hand painted tie from Hong Kong. The taxi driver compliments me on my lawn and asks if he might use it for his prayers. I think that’s cool, and very flattering. My guests are uncomfortable.
“There are rules,” the CSIS man (who I now recognize is James Carville) keeps repeating.
“Of propriety and decorum,” Ian Fleming adds each time. To me he says, “you only think you know what I look like.”
By this time Moses has retreated to the kitchen. I decide to follow him. We look around the room and, in unison (which evokes a girlish giggle from both of us) declare it to be smaller than we remember.
“Your wife is famous and I can’t remember her name,” I apologize.
“Ruth,” he says.
“Really?”
“Why the hell not?”
“Barbecue? Pork,” I suggest.
“Why not, it’s Friday,” Moses grins mischievously.
“Surf and Turf,” I offer by way of unsolicited compromise.
I am in the living room, which is huge. It has no ceiling and there are vehicles and livestock scattered about on carpeted knolls. I am standing behind my gallery owner who is at a roll top desk working on his tax return. I recommend he carry the seven. He swears at me and reminds me sarcastically that taxes must be calculated with the new math.
I start to worry that I haven’t seen Moses in eons. I feel incredibly guilty – ashamed. I scan the room frantically, only to see him boarding a bus (not a city bus, but a 1950s style military bus with a sloped back and a ladder up to a luggage storage space on the roof). In one window of the bus I can see my brother. Behind him at another window is Elvis Presley. They are both wearing summer issue Khaki uniforms.
“Moses can’t carpool,” I explain to Dave the gallery owner, “he’d be recognized.”
Now the dream has me back in the kitchen. For what seems like an eternity and despite my effort to stop myself doing it, I keep opening windows. But the smoke won’t dissipate. A crowd has gathered and is peering dispassionately in through the all the windows. Each time I crank open a window I am mere inches from one of these spectators, yet we do not communicate. Are they heartless? Am I an idiot? Panic is rising in my throat. My blood is too voluminous for my veins (which is both a bloated and an hungry sensation, curiously enough). I decide this is getting too scary. It must be a sign of something happening in the real world. The prudent this is to wake up. Still, a little bit longer and the dream may skip back into the groove and progress if I persevere. What am I thinking?! That never happens.
I wake up. I am having a sugar low. For an instant I think I might just go back to sleep and ride it out. I’m not sure I can lift my eleven tonne, sweat-soaked body off the bed anyway. Decisions.