Dreams of samsara

or, how I had no recollection of dying

“Can it really be you?”

“Yes, grandpa. It’s really me,” I lied.

Consuming slices of a funghi and chilli-infused four-cheese pizza before bedtime took me to some wild, wild places last night: my mother-in-law was having another child with a far younger man; I was donning multiple layers of yellow work jackets to sneak inside a hospital growing illicit coffee in their morgue; a snake had embedded itself through the skull of my cat Mandarin and both animals were seemingly oblivious of their predicament, perhaps undergoing some newfound symbiosis.

You know, the usual stuff.

But then another dream came along, one that ensnared me with its particular nuance of disquiet until I was able to blink myself awake and note it down. You’ll find that short something scrawled below.

Enjoy?

Photo by Malcolm Shadrach on Unsplash

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My fingers wrapped around the scratched brass knob, letting it turn. The lights bit at my eyes as I entered, the glare sudden and needy. The room stank of musk and piss and leather.

The barman glanced up, smoothing his apron. A final wipe with a soiled rag. A long pull on a wooden tap-handle. A beer now there on the counter—a beer for me, I knew. I moved forward through the rectangular room, yellowed in the custard light, the bar with its man dead centre. There was a stool and so I sank into its circumference. My ears had tuned to the cacophony so characteristic of London pubs. The old ones.

But I wasn’t even from London.

Condensation rimmed the pint, newborn amber drops. My hand went to it, the glass lukewarm, and I was cradling it, aware no moisture was yet upon my lips. Others entered the room, just like always. They were nearby, existing.

The toilet door creaked, forming a slow intrusion. I looked up, de-nursed from my ale and saw he was there—my grandfather. Neat as he always was, ironed white shirt under a dark grey suit, grey-white hair combed to the side, cufflinks winking from within sleeves. He turned to me, eyes borne on war’s long inquisition.

“Can it really be you?”

“Yes, grandpa. It’s me,” I lied.

His face scrunched, smothering memory. I was not the boy he knew; not even the teenager. I was someone else, divorced from his world through death. Through a coffin squeaking sombre. Through my mother’s tears. Through something inexplicable, even to me.

I tried to smile as I saw these things. There was some sense of them, but the memories still came false. My own tears had already begun their descent.

Grandpa nodded, the neat stubble of his chin tracing a near-imperceptible arc. Perhaps he understood.

“I’m sorry,” I tried, thinking of how it was for him, for his daughter. Seeing again that trundling coffin, the flowers, the silence etched with echoed footsteps. In that moment, I realised I must have gone through it. I must have truly experienced it, before that casket. Yet, in passing, I had no recollection. There had been a flash of fear, but only then an after. In between was just emptiness, tape smeared with ink. Unplayable. Void.

He nodded again, then turned and walked away back through the toilet door. I returned to stare at my drink, but the room was now empty, the soiled rag the only presence left.

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Well, that was certainly bleak and abrupt. Sorry. I don’t choose what my brain likes to conjure up when I dream, but if you’d like to try and inform my subconscious to happier climbs, you can by all means comment below. (I’ve heard the Like button even somehow affects my mind…)

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A thing I’m reading

I’m adding this in as a postscript. I’d already scheduled the above for publishing, but then had a thought that it might be questionably interesting to keep a running log of things I’m reading—mostly for my own sake but also for you, dear reader, in case it sparks something you didn’t know about or maybe you’ve read and you might have some thoughts on¹. So here I am, doing just that.

I wrote last week (here) about the fact that Samantha Shannon’s The Priory of the Orange Tree was next on my list of reads. Well, I’ve started it and I’m a 150 pages in and it’s as delicious as I was hoping it would be. But first, just look at the cover:

This is actually a really, really small dragon. The orange colouration in the background is an orange up close. You get a sense of the scale of things once you come to realise that on page 45. (Spoilers, sorry.) (source: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/40275288-the-priory-of-the-orange-tree)

This will be a bit of a slow read, because there’s a lot to take in—characters, continents, religion, politics, weird stuff and luscious islands that make me want to live there instead of on this earth—and work is hectic right now, super hectic like a hectagon, but whew the book is making for a lovely escape each day. I had a slight eyeroll at DRAGONS featuring in yet another fantasy book, but actually I’ll take that back and reserve judgement for later. The dragons seem more inspired by traditional myth and folklore of Asia than some of the usual fantasy tropes. But, dragons or no, the main thing is Samantha’s prose has me—thank you Samantha you’re not reading this but thank you—and the slow cold drip of exposition is just the kind of pacing I like.

1. customary if-you’re-reading-anything-interesting-then-be-sure-t-let-me-know-in-the-comments footnote …