Stan requests that his name and email be kept with the dream.
stan kulikowski ii <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
DATE : 19 apr 1998 07:02
DREAM : farewell, annie
=( a normal saturday night. my mother and i watched some rented videos, i tallied up the monthly bills and wrote out the checks. the visa bill had not arrived yet which worried me a little since i am already three days late in doing the bills anyway. perhaps it is lost. i bagged about a 100 comics until i ran out of backer boards. went to bed around 01:00ish and read until 02:30. )=
anne marie's new apartment has a strange, alien feel to me. it is a place that i have never known, with new furniture and fresh paint, things that i will never know. i guess in breaking up with me, she needed an all new start, so she left the little place in sharon to find this one.
i wonder why she called me to come back just this one time. i had hopes of a reconciliation when i heard her voice and her request over the phone, but as soon as i saw her, i knew otherwise. she was still stiff and cold, not allowing me to hold her or kiss her. i guess this is some exercise in modern relationships where everyone is supposed to remain dear friends after the dissolution. a good word that. i feel very dissolved, standing here fingering her new clean drapery, holding my aching heart inside with both hands.
i don't know why i had to come all the way to boston, just for this.
annie comes in from one of the other rooms where i have not been invited. "i wanted to be sure that all your things were properly returned to you," she tells me. she had given me back all the little things i had left at her old apartment- several pair of socks, a shirt or two, the extra toothbrush i left on her bathroom sink. a pathetic little bundle in a brown paper bag. all there was of me in her life, now looking like trash.
"i wish you had just thrown them away." i tell her. this is not very easy for me. the silver medallion that she gave, now hangs very heavy around my neck.
"and i wanted to let you know that i am seeing someone else." of course, i knew that was coming too. she always was rather up front when she saw other men. i would rather not have heard about this either, but women always seemed to sense that weakness in me and knew how to drive it home. "he is on his way over here, now, so you had better go."
"yes, i had better go. i do not feel very comfortable here." i mutter with flat affect. fumbling for the door handle, i manage to get out the door before my heart starts to seize in dread. i will never see her again.
"good bye, stan" i hear her say behind me.
it takes a while for me to recover enough to drive. what actually spurs me into action is another car coming in the front entry of the parking lot. i fire up the engine and leave through the back into the alley in the pouring rain. if that is the new boyfriend coming for his date, i would rather not see him. besides, i am to meet bill and paul for lunch before we drive back the ninety miles to the university. the sky is as grey and wet as i feel.
later i am sitting in the waffle house, while the other two men talk between themselves. they seem to understand my depression and make with the usual dry talk, not expecting me to respond. the food comes, but it is tasteless, even the maple syrup. i toy with the pancakes and try to eat.
then across the room, i see exactly what i did not want to. annie is sitting in a booth with some man. he is younger than her, short hair and clean lines. why is it that we have to see the very thing we dread the most? there must be some law which makes us endure what we can least tolerate: a sense of drama to the universe. perhaps this karma is intended to toughen us up on the principle that that which does not kill us, makes us stronger.
i take as much of this as i can stand, then i excuse myself from the table. bill and paul hardly even notice. as i head out for the door, i can feel it when annie looks at me. a tangible touch on my back as her eyes move over to me. i do not look around, but i know that i have not gotten away unseen as i wanted. damn, nothing is going my way today.
but outside, i see that the rain is breaking up and broad beams of sunlight are slanting down through patches of blue. not much blue, but enough to see that clear sky does exist above the gloom. there is an open field across the road and a path that leads into some trees.
when i get to the forest area, i find a small bird has gotten tangled in some branches. i do not understand how it managed to do so, but some thorny brambles have ensnared its wing. carefully i pull the branches away from its trapped wing so it can fly away. i watch it zoom away in the trees without looking back. at least i feel that my presence here was not totally wasted. some good, even a small one, has come of this.
i walk a little further. it feels better to be out in the open with the wet foliage and the slightly crisp air after the rain. i still feel that leaden weight inside, but at least the sharp ache has blunted a little.
but not for long. nature abhors a vacuum, i guess. i hear some foot steps and turn to find that anne marie has followed me into the woods. this is not like her, she never was very oriented to outdoors and nature. a city girl, always with people around.
"i thought i would find you out here, sulking off by yourself." she says to me.
"so? you got other things to do, so go do them. if i want to be alone, i have a right to it."
"i do not understand why you are like this." she says with a sigh "my mother told me that she is a repairman and would fix this if i let her."
i do not understand what that last statement meant, but the guy that annie was with comes up to indicate that he is going to leave. she waves him away. suddenly i realize that she no longer has a way to get home. in my chest, the weighted feeling starts to flutter, like hope struggling to become joy but part of it can not transform and a large part says, no this can not be true. i know how that bird felt just before the branches parted.
=( 06:45 i wake feeling rather depressed. the weighted sinking feeling of this dream has stayed with me for some reason. no particular associations with this. not all of the descriptions of anne marie are accurate here, but the general feelings are. )=
