palace of winds

I dream all in fires lately, in lost friends found, children to rescue.

Last night my cat was there, curled casually in an armchair under a pool of sunlight, and I didn’t remember until minutes after I woke that he’s dead, has been for a while, and the heartbreak is that I took no special note of him while I could, no extra time; I didn’t realize until it was too late.

Last week I dreamt of an old friend, someone I haven’t talked to in months, someone I probably lost years ago. We quarreled, and I woke weeping. I remember my dreams often, carry the texture of them whole into my waking life — sights, sounds, feelings, sometimes the most vivid sensations of touch — but there’s only one other time I can recall physically reacting to one: nearly two years ago, when I woke up laughing. Of the two I’d much prefer laughter, thanks.

Last week I got a new saddle! I’ve been half thinking about it for ages now — my old saddle really wasn’t suited to me or Everett: too wide for him, flap not long or forward enough for me (the flap’s the part under your thigh/knee — or it’s supposed to be under your knee, anyway, which wasn’t the case with my old saddle when I shortened the stirrups for jumping). So I tried a couple of my friends’ saddles for fit, to see what I liked, and just started chatting with people about it. Two of my barn buddies swear by Bevals, and lo and behold a woman out at the barn had one, with a long flap!, for sale.

Sunday I had a jumping lesson — Everett’s finally sound on that right hind that’s been sore the last few weeks. We did a baby course, and he was So. Good. Amazingly good. I loved him, loved the saddle, loved the lesson. I left feeling uplifted, hopeful, believing again that we might one day be eventers.

Yesterday it was gloriously warm — just above freezing when I left work, the sun out. I rushed to the barn, tacked up in record time (I’m notoriously slow getting ready), then hopped on and went up the road. I’ve only had Ev up the road once before on his own, and it’s been a looong time since we’ve ridden outside at all. He was pretty relaxed down the long driveway, but once we got to the turn onto Kuntz, he was on high alert. We tip-toed up to the Luce Line, stopping a few times to make sure no bushes or distant joggers or mailboxes were going to eat us. He was really tense but he did not spin and bolt at anything, so just beyond the trail crossing I turned and went back. It was a short ride out but it was a ride out! in February! I think lots of little successful solo jaunts will go a long way toward building his confidence. (He’s already very comfortable being out with other horses, but I really don’t want that to be a crutch for us.)

And now this afternoon we are getting lashings of snow, buckets of it, inches stacked on inches, so it will probably be quite a while before we venture out of the arena again. Spring, we wait ready!

Nighttime. I’m walking to visit some friends at their rented house in a crowded college suburb; the whole neighborhood is being struck with the disease (zombie-ism, I suppose, for lack of a better term). Many of the houses I pass have lit windows, music blaring; a few front doors hang open. People stare from front porches and I’m careful to meet no eyes. When I get to my friends’ place they’re talking about it in hushed tones — they’ve all been exposed, and expect to become zombies by the end of the night. Robin is just coming into the living room, walking stiffly.

“You’re shuffling,” I say, pointing to her dragging right foot.

“I am not!” she shoots back, straightening up with effort, placing her feet more deliberately.

“Yes, you are. You’re definitely shambling.” I look closer, inspecting her face. It’s ashen, her pupils ringed faintly with red. The rest of us exchange glances.

The waiting is terrible. We have mac & cheese out of the tiny kitchen, not knowing what else to do. Hoping for a cure, just waiting for the tanks and the sunlight to roll in. We tolerate Robin’s increasing intensity — the feral edge in her looks, her insistence that she isn’t changing — knowing that we are probably just hours behind her.

The night gets deeper. I leave for a while, driving the neighborhood, and return some time later. Everyone except Robin is gone; she corners me in the kitchen, looking manic, eyes gone all red now. She tells me she’s hungry. I tell her she can’t, to remember herself, but yes she can, she says, and she will. She’s advancing on me and I say yes, of course, only she has to finish baking the cookies first. There’s a pan on the counter, a bowl of dough. I need a cookie, I say, and then of course she can eat me, like it’s the most natural thing in the world.

She reaches for the bowl, and while she is looking away I go for the door. On the way I discover my three-year-old nephew is there, standing alone in the dark living room. I feel a jolt; I can’t tell if his eyes are red, his steps disjointed. I hesitate only a split second, then scoop him up and we are out the door.

“I got better,” he whispers in my ear as I stride down the street, his little arms squeezing around me. I look at him, at his huge brown eyes. I believe him, mostly; I have hope that this is something everyone will recover from on their own. But more importantly I find I don’t care. If he’s lying I’m dead, he’s dead, the wide world into which I’m taking him is doomed. But he’s my little nephew and I keep going on down the street out of town.

Over the crest of the hill in front of us, the first faint flush of morning rises.

I dream a family reunion, all of my mother’s relatives gathered at a sprawling, remote farmstead. In a cool, half-lit warehouse we fill our plastic plates at the long buffet, then wind through a warren of rooms to the one filled with picnic tables. We sit with the B– family, who aren’t relatives at all but are, inexplicably, at the party.

Later, bottles in hand, we pile into wagons and are pulled out through the farmfields, flushed and laughing, each tractor heading toward a separate horizon. They are fall fields, all dead and golden, and far out in the dry straw our wagon comes upon a little carnival game. As we approach it the curtains draw back and a wooden attendant jerks to life, beginning his patter. There is a small target at the back of the booth; you must hit three bulls-eyes in a row to win a cake — German chocolate, a thick rectangle slathered generously with coconut frosting. It’s an impossible task but my mom’s cousin Adair steps up, laughing and passing off his beer to pick up the darts. He throws nonchalantly and each, unbelievably, strikes the target’s center.

There is a drawer at the back of the booth; its clockwork triggered, it comes out and out and out and at its very back is a large wooden chest, ornately carved. We lean toward it and there is a sense of growing brightness from within; it doesn’t open, but we half-dive and are half-pulled inside.

I arrive with my brother and little sister elsewhere: a world of old magic in its twilight.

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Two nights ago I dreamt of my sister with her pregnant, jutting belly, skin stretched so tight you could see the whole outline of the baby beneath, the curled limbs and face scrunched in discomfort. She was stroking the twisting baby; Soon, soon.

She went into the hospital early this morning. I haven’t heard anything since, but I am all excitement.

The same night I dreamt S– and I were strolling in the sun along an oceanfront beach, and ran into a young Tom Hanks and another celebrity. S– went off with the other one, and Tom and I sat just beyond the tide, making out.

Yesterday S– and I planned a June trip to Fort Lauderdale. I have not yet had a random encounter with a hot young celebrity, but I will keep you posted.

My dreams last night were all tangled. Full of escalators. I was a child with a baby who disappeared in an errant wind, leaving me with an armful of black blankets. I sat at the base of one of the endless escalators and despaired, not knowing where to even begin looking for her. An old woman with gold hair crouched next to me and explained something about the interconnectedness and endurance of souls, and something about letting go, and showed me how to enter the collective consciousness of the universe but I still wanted that baby back.

Later I was preparing for a space mission, and met my partner on the way into the massive apartment complex where we were staying. We collided, literally, and immediately began bantering as if we’d known one another forever. He was charming and handsome but soon turned menacing, violent, eyes hard and staring and I kept fending off his fists, backing through restaurants and bathrooms and hallways while he whispered threats and I caught his wrists again and again and again.

I was feet behind a friend on a crowded beach, both of us walking in a thick crowd, and I was trying to call but as I scrolled and scrolled through my cell phone’s address book the number was inexplicably not there.