Look up

Johnathan and Martha sat in the waiting room, again. Martha reviewed the list of questions on her phone, fixing the grammar of a sentence that only she would see. The doctors and nurses always asked if there were any questions, but there was never enough time to answer them all. Martha never seemed to run out of questions. Johnathan stared at the pile of magazines on the enormous coffee table. He wondered if magazine subscriptions were tax-deductible for a clinic like this, or if one of the doctors just came in to work every six months with a long box filled with fashion, celebrity, and golf magazines. Perhaps they just stole them from the library. Nobody reads periodicals at the library anyway. Wasn’t print media supposed to be dying? Johnathan could not understand how “Fairway Fashion” magazine existed in the first place, much less stayed in business.

“This council has completely abandoned its responsibility for the people of this planet!”

Jonathan sat up and wrapped his arm around Martha. She leaned into his shoulder without looking up from her list. They were used to quiet affirmations at this point. This was round two, or round seven, or round 39, depending on how you count it. After three years, five IUIs, one egg retrieval, and one failed transfer, Johnathan and Martha were still waiting. Still trying. A nurse called Martha’s name and made eye-contact. Martha stood.

“We send war criminals to their punishment, but we ignore the clear indications that the very ground on which we stand is doomed!”

The drive back home was quiet. This was the point where they found out last time. The first blood draw tests for the hormone levels that indicate pregnancy. It’s not fool proof. A lot can go wrong after this hurdle, but this is where they fell down before. Johnathan kept his eyes on the tail-lights in front of him. The truck was low on gas, but he didn’t want to stop. It felt better to go right home. Martha researched. The internet was an awful place to get solid answers or helpful support, but it was a great place to gather data. Martha was good with sorting through data, finding what was helpful, and throwing out the rest. Her most recent diagnosis (she had two now. Johnathan only had one) was asymptomatic endometriosis, which helped explain how this was happening to her. Nothing ever explained why.

“It is patently absurd that even after hearing the testimony of one of the greatest scientists the world has ever known, this council remains complacent!”

Martha could tell by the way the nurse on the phone asked her name. This was the voice of a person who has to deliver bad news today. Johnathan held out hope. Martha made her clarify twice. No. There’s no chance. It didn’t take. Again.

“They wouldn’t listen to me. Our whole world is coming to an end.”

They cried on the porch. Johnathan slowly rocking the porch swing. Martha’s toes scraping the ground. They both sobbed quietly. They said goodbye to another hoped-for miracle of modern science. Another dream-baby lost. They mourned together for as long as they could. Eventually, Johnathan stood. He needed something to do. He walked out to the barn. He was going to take something apart so that he could put it back together. Martha went inside. They both needed some time alone.

“It’s too late for us, but it’s not too late for him. We can’t wait much longer.”

They came back together that evening. They ate and sat on the porch watching the sunset. They sat and talked about what they lost, about the timing of the next transfer, about how many frozen dream-babies they had left. Martha wondered if she was broken. Johnathan wondered if he was being punished. They stayed up until the stars came out.

Just before the doomed planet, Krypton, exploded to fragments, a scientist placed his infant son within an experimental rocket-ship, launching it toward earth!

Jonathan and Martha watched the sky, looking for answers.

Dreamwalking Draft 1

Some nights I can’t sleep, and so I go walking. Sometimes I walk down to the lake, or just around the block a few times. It reminds me of when I used to smoke and angst out about girls that I shouldn’t’ve dated. I went walking that night, must have been 2am. This is back when I was smoking and angsting about girls I shouldn’t’ve been dating. I saw him step out of a tree. At first I thought it was a trick of the light. Streetlights can flicker and buzz in ways that frustrate pupils and make focus and color difficult concepts. He looked like a character from one of the esoteric british comic books I read so much of that summer. He looked like Dream of the Endless, or Shade the Changing Man. He looked at me.

“Ah, there you are.” He said.

I rarely saw other people on my walks, and those who I did see had the decency not to engage in conversation. But, I was young then, and decency was not a large concern of mine.

“Do I know you?” I said.

“No.” He said, “But, I’ve seen you walking about all hours of the night, and I thought you might like a change of scenery.”

“Are you inviting me somewhere?” I said.

“Yes,” He said. “Let’s go on a walk together.” And he held out his hand to me.

“Well mister,” I said, “I’ll walk with you for a little bit, but I’m not going anywhere unfamiliar with an unfamiliar person. And, I’m certainly not holding your hand.”

“Fair enough.” He seemed a little put-out by this, but I didn’t much care how he felt. I wasn’t opposed to making friends with strangers on the sidewalk at 2am, but it would have to be on my terms. I was, after all, much younger then.

We walked around the block a couple of times. I offered him a cigarette (“Oh no, stimulants are no good for my line of work”). I don’t remember what we talked about, but I remember it was pleasant enough. Eventually, we circled back around to my front door.

“This is my stop.” I said, “I’ll see you around, eh?”

“Yes. I’ll see you tomorrow night.” He said, and he walked away.

That night I had a dream. The man who looked like a comic-book character and I were walking again, round and round the outside of my house. We walked all night long.

The next night, I decided that I would not  go out for a walk. Again, any friendship with strange men based around late-night conversations would happen on my terms, not theirs. I was sitting up in my room, playing video games, I’m certain, when he stepped out of my bedroom wall.

“Where have you been?” He said, “I’ve been waiting for you.”

“How did you get in my house?” I said.

“Through the wall,” He said. “Now, you promised, let’s go for a walk.”

“I did no such thing.” I said.

“Okay fine.” He said, “But we’ve spent more than enough time together now, you should know that I mean you no harm.”

“We spent maybe an hour together.” I said.

“Nonsense,” He said, “We walked all night and had quite the pleasant conversation.”

I remembered my dream. I suppose, in a sense we had walked all night, but how could he know that. “Where, exactly, do you plan on taking me?” I said.

“Into dreams.” He said, “Not like last night, that was your dream, you’ve seen those. I mean into other people’s dreams. Come on.” He held out his hand again. And, for some reason, I took it.

We stepped into the wall of my bedroom, and I felt my insides being pulled side-ways. Imagine that the static on an old television set were a place. That is where we were. There were no real shapes, no sense of scale, no color, only allusions of existence, flittering in and out of perceptibility. I turned to my guide.

“Where are we?” I asked.

“We’re in the collective unconscious.” He said. “Or, we’re in limbo. Or non-space. Or transcendent reality. Or sub-reality. There are a lot of different names for it, and a lot of different ways to think about it. Take your pick.”

“Which one do you prefer?” I said.

“Depends on the moment, I suppose.” He said, “In this moment though, I think it’s best that you think of it as the primordial chaos from which everything is created. The materials of all thought, concepts, categories, and experience, are present here, in this place, waiting to be called into being by some kind of will.”

“Why have you brought me here?” I asked.

“This is the best place to start with newbies to help them understand what happens next.” He said, “We’re waiting in this place, like surfers waiting for just the perfect wave. At some point, probably soon, a dream will begin to form out of the elements in this place. When that happens we can ride it right up to the mind of the dreamer.”

“Isn’t that a little… intrusive?” I said.

“Only if you’re a dick about it.” He said, “I didn’t peg you for a dick. You’re not going to be a dick are you?”

“Oh, no sir.” I said, uncertain why I was calling him sir all of the sudden.

“One’s coming now.” He said, “hold on to my hand. It’s okay if you need to close your eyes, just don’t let go. I don’t want you getting lost.”

I felt it then, it was like the ground underneath me was lifting, the formless, random flickerings of being began to harden ever so slightly, not quite at hard as reality, in fact much softer, but harder than the static we’d been in before. Soon there was color and shape and contrast, and for a moment I had to close my eyes so that they could become accustomed to differentiating between things again. When I opened them again, I was standing  in the middle of a forest. I could feel the grass under my feet and the crisp evening air on my skin. I realized I was wearing a tuxedo.

The forest was like something out of a children’s television show. There was no underbrush, only soft grass, and each of the trees was a pole, straight up, with only a few branches here and there, until a huge canopy, high above. It seemed that some of the stars were actually lower than the canopy. There was one major source of light coming from a ways deeper into the woods, and each tree cast a long-dark shadow. I could hear voices coming from the light, and my guide was nowhere to be seen. I decided to hide until I was certain what was going on. I stepped into the shadow of a nearby tree, and immediately fell face first into the grass on the other side. My whole leg extended into a nothingness behind the shadow of the tree. I looked closely, and I saw that I was the only thing that existed within the shadow. There was no grass, there wasn’t even a backside of the tree, there was only void. I wondered for a moment if I was going to fall into that nothing, like Alice, and discover it was a well filled with footracing animals. I briefly considered crying, that always seemed to work for Alice. Then, I felt someone lift me up from under my armpits.

“Must be careful now,” my Guide said, as he brushed loose grass off my tuxedo. “Dreams haven’t always got object permanence, best to stay close to the dreamer.”

He put a hand on my shoulder and led me towards the light in the center of the dream. There, we came upon a tea party, much like the one in Alice in Wonderland, lit by torches atop wooden poles. Various people, some of whom were actually animals, and at least one of whom was not dead anymore, were sitting at a long, white table, talking to one another, drinking tea, and eating cakes. In the middle of the table, was the dreamer. I knew immediately who he was, because the closer a person or object was to him, the more real and solid it seemed. I also saw that, although it had originally seemed that the torches were lighting the party, in fact the only lightsource seemed to be the dreamer.

“I was just thinking about Alice in Wonderland.” I said to my guide.

“That makes sense.” He said, “It often happens that a lot of these dreams can only be understood when you’ve tapped in to some primal association.”

“Did you pick this on purpose?” I asked. “What with me being like Alice and you pulling me into a topsy-turvy world and all that?”

“Perhaps.” He said. “It could also be that the dreamer picked us for that reason, or your thoughts put us in an area of limbo that was ripe for making into a Wonderland tea party. Or, it’s a coincidence.” He smiled at me. “That’s half the fun. Now, let’s have a party, eh?”

He turned and took his place at the table. I saw that there was another open chair a little ways down the table. I took it and sat in and listened. The dreamer, it seems, was recounting some kind of anecdote that had everyone’s rapt attention. Half of it was gibberish, and the other half, as far as I could make out, had something to do with a co-worker of his named Carl. Whatever it was, all the animals and people who were no longer dead thought this was perhaps the best anecdote that was ever anecdoted. As soon as it was over, the dreamer suddenly became much more serious, and began explaining the meaning of life. Everyone listened in rapt attention. A baboon in a top hat began to cry, and a woman who was also a deer rested her head on the dreamer’s shoulder.

“He’s got nothing.” The voice came from beside me.

“Pardon?” I said.

“Oh, what?” The person beside me turned to face me. He was not an animal, nor was he no longer dead. But he wasn’t a dreamer either. He was dressed much like I was, and looked nothing like a comic-book character. “Sorry,” he said. “I didn’t realize there was another traveler here. Pleasure to meet you.”

“Of course,” I said, shaking his hand. “So, you’re a traveler, then? Did he teach you?” I pointed to my guide.

“Who, him?” The traveler said, “Oh no. I taught myself. It was simple really. It started with Lucid dreaming, then I found my way into the collective unconscious. You see, I was trying to find a way to create my own reality through sheer force of will.”

“Oh.” I said, passing the tea-pot to a heartbroken pidgeon.

“I found a way to remain in the collective unconscious as long as I liked,”  He continued.  “But I could never make anything stay solid. You need a dreamer to do that, you see.”

“But, weren’t you dreaming?” I said.

“No, of course not.” He said, “haven’t you been paying attention. I was traveling, can’t dream and travel at the same time, now can you?”

“I suppose you can’t.” I said, “This is all very new to me.”

“Well, then,” He said, “let me teach you. If you really want to be a god, you have to find a way to take over a dream.”

“What?” I said, “I don’t want to be a god.”

“Bullshit.” He said. “That’s why we’re here isn’t it?”

“I’m here because he brought me.” I said, pointing to my guide again, or rather, to where he should have been.

“It appears your mentor has wandered off,” the traveler said. “Watch closely now. See how this dreamer’s been extoling his ridiculous philosophy of life. He’ll finish any moment. They always do, that’s where I come in.”

The traveler was right, the dreamer came to the end of a sentence and the gathered partygoers sat in moved silence. A frog with a monacle began to clap, and soon the whole party was clapping and crying. The dreamer kissed the deer-girl on the snout, and I have to admit, even I got a little swept away in the beauty of the moment. Then, the traveler spoke up.

I can’t remember quite what he said, at first he seemed to be praising the dreamer for what he’d just said, but then, he began to offer counter points to the dreamer’s philosophy. I could follow none of this. It didn’t help matters much that the longer the traveler talked, the dimmer the light became. Shadows started to grow, party guests began to waver between being themselves and being someone else entirely. The dead people went back to being dead. I felt my chair begin to soften and I suspected that this dream was coming to an end. Again, I felt my guide appear by my side.

“Hold on.” he said, as he grabbed my shoulders and we fell back into limbo. The traveler was there with us.

“Damn.” Said the traveler, “I nearly had it that time. Did you see how close I was? I’m pretty sure I turned that pidgeon into a parakeet there right before it all fell apart.”

“Come along,” said my guide. “There is more I’d like to show you.”

“What about him?” I asked, as we wandered away from the traveler, or he from us.

“He is a poor dreamer.” My guide said. “He will never make anything interesting, or helpful, or meaningful. His highest goal is theft. Is that the kind of person you’d like to hang out with?”

“Not at all.” I said.

We walked for a little while. “Remember when you asked if I was going to be a dick?”

“Yes.” He said.

“Is that what you meant?” I said.

“In part.” He said, “there are myriad ways to be a dick. That was a particularly dickish one. Ah, I feel another dream rising. Hold on.”

Again we were pulled up. I kept my eyes mostly open this time.   We were in a laboratory of some kind. The dreamer was sitting on an examination table, and she was surrounded by doctors. I was wearing a lab coat. My guide was standing with a group of other people in lab coats, over by the examining table. I walked over to him.

“This dream doesn’t have nothingness in the shadows.” I said.

“Yes.” My guide whispered to me. “Some dreams do, others don’t.”

“This is most likely a recurring dream.” One of the scientists in the cluster said. He turned to us. “Greetings fellow researchers of the unconscious.”

“Hello,” I said. My guide said nothing.

“Empty shadows are often signs of surface-level dreamstuff.” the researcher said, scribbling in a notebook he held close to his chest. “the more fleshed out a dream-space is, the more often the dreamer visits the dream-space, either in waking or sleeping life. Often these dreams are deeply rooted in early experience, trauma, or anxiety.

“This dreamer, for instance,” He pointed to the subject on the examining table. It was a woman, she was naked and the doctors were poking her with needles. “Has been having this dream ever since she was 6 years old.”

“That’s terrible.” I said. It was clear that the poor woman was in pain. “Isn’t there anything we can do?”

“Don’t be ridiculous.” The researcher said. “Note how the head doctor is a representation of her father, see, they have the same eyes. And, the examining table is her mother, a distant, and cold surface that she is pinned to, stuck inside of. In this dream, her father takes her blood and clones her. Her clones come and sleep on the table where she is strapped down, sometimes they attack her. It’s a dream about her younger sister who her father loved better, but due to her mother’s depression, this dreamer was forced to be the in-between for the littler one. She became the soft, warm, space that protected the little sister from the cold mother. Also, because of the father’s love of the younger sister was much greater than for the dreamer, the dreamer must have her lifeblood (her father’s affection) taken from her in order for the younger clone to exist in the first place. It’s a fascinating study, no?”

“I suppose.” I said, “how do you know all of this?”

“I have been studying this particular case for the past ten years.” He said. He reached into his lab-coat and began to pull out notebook after notebook, which he offered to me, by the time he pulled the last one out, I could barely see over the top of the stack. “And these are just my notes on her. I have a fascinating case that’s just begun. He’s only 10, but his dreams are already full of such aggression and sexuality, probably caused by his own victimization-“ He reached into his coat again.

“Enough.” I said, dropping the stack of notebooks. The notebooks hit the hard, concrete floor with a bang. The dreamer, and all the other elements of the dream, turned and looked at me. I froze, and slowly the dream resumed. I whispered to the researcher, “Enough of this. I didn’t come here to be traumatized by other people’s psyches. I don’t even know why I came here in the first place. What’s the point of all this anyway?”

“The point?” The researcher said. “The point? You philistine. The point is to understand!” He began picking up the notebooks and putting them back into his lab coat. “The point is that we have, through the feats of modern science, been granted access into an entirely new reality, realities even. Human curiosity is the universe’s attempt at understanding itself, and this is the next step in that path of enlightenment. Study is its own reward. I’m surprised you would even ask such a question. How long have you been with our program anyway?”

“What program?” I said.

“Are you not…” The researcher said, then he looked up at my guide with suspicion. “Do I know you?”

“I’m afraid not.” My guide said. Then, he turned to me. “I’m sorry about this. Try to stay out of sight, and I’ll come to get you in a moment.” With that, he shoved me down and sideways and I was in another dream.

At first I thought I was in limbo again, but then I realized that the static was actually rain. Incredibly heavy rain. I was standing in a city street, surrounded by a mob of people without faces, all of us were wearing hats and long jackets. It was very cold. The rain was rushing down the gutters, flooding the street. This dream didn’t have object permanence, like the first dream, except for the water. Where there were holes in the dream, the water would fall into the void, creating a kind of glistening pillar into the nothing on the other side. The mob were all staring in the same direction, toward the dreamer. The dreamer was a ways off, it was hard to tell what was happening over there, but there seemed to be another person with him. The other person was laying on the ground, and the dreamer knelt over them. When I looked at them, I felt like crying, and I knew that it would not help anything. I don’t know how long I watched this dreamer and cried from behind the wall of faceless people, but at some point, my guide appeared.

“My apologies.” He said, “About that whole mess, you see there are these people-“ He stopped when he saw I was crying. Then he looked around the dream. “Oh my.” He said, “come, lets get you out of here.”

“Isn’t there anything we can do?” I said.

“Perhaps,” He said, “But not yet.” And he grabbed my shoulders and again we were in limbo.

“What was that all about?” I said, wiping tears from my eyes, my composure slowly returning to me.

“You’ve already met one who was able to find a way into this place through weasling and exercise,” He said, “the one who destroys dreams in attempts to colonize them. The cuco as it were. There are also some who have found a way in through scientific consensus and communal curiosity. They’re just as bad as the first.”

“Why?” I asked, “Shouldn’t we be curious?”

“Why yes!” He said, “Be curious! But, remember, don’t be a dick about it. These people examine and observe and dissect and are all very un-engaged with the dreams they enter. They’re psychic clutter. They understand everything about a dreamer except for who they are and why they dream. Would you study the chemical makeup of a glass of wine and never drink it? Would you do a spectrographic analysis of a Monet and never gaze upon it? They would. They do. And all they have to show for it is papers, reports, institutes and accolades all given to and by one another, for one another. None of them have left the dreaming world since they came in. If they used their knowledge to some practical end, if they engaged dreamers, or hell, if they left the dreaming world even once and told anybody a damn thing about it, maybe they’d be worthwhile, but as it is, they are stuck in their ivory tower. They actually made one you know, an ivory tower. I don’t think they understand the infuriating irony of it all.”

I could see that my guide was rather upset, so we walked in silence for a minute while he calmed down and I summoned enough courage to speak again. “What did you do with him?” I asked.

“Hmm?” My guide said.

“What did you do with the man we met in the last dream,” I said. “After you pushed me out, what did you do to him?”

“I chased him.” My guide said, “I became a form he recognized and he ran from me. I chased him all the way back to his tower. He dropped notebooks along the way, and I devoured every one.” He seemed to be remembering the chase, and I saw a fire in his eyes that frightened me. “This is why I brought you here,” He said. “I believe that you will be different.”

“So there is a purpose to all this,” I said.  “To be honest, I didn’t really think there would be.”

“Yes,” He said, “there is a purpose. In the dream where we met the slime with the notebooks, what did you want?”

“I don’t understand.” I said.

“What did you want to do in that dream, if you were to change it?” He said

“Well,” I said, “I suppose I would liked to have freed the dreamer and probably given the horrendous doctors a solid beating, father figures or no.”

“And how do you suppose that would have played out?” He said.

“I don’t know.” I said, “I still don’t know how any of this works.”

“Let’s find out.” He said, and he lifted us up, back into the dream. It was continuing as before. The dreamer was strapped to an examining table naked, the scientists in lab coats were all around her, save one who had been chased off by my guide, and they were drawing blood. My guide was standing beside me.

“Alright,” He said, “Do your thing.”

I walked through the group of scientists and up to the examining table. I began to look for how to release the dreamer from the straps that were holding her down.

“Hello,” I said. “Don’t be alarmed. I’m here to help.” She didn’t say anything. “I’ll just get you out of here, and then we’ll get some clothes on you, alright?”

I felt a hand on my shoulder, I ignored it, but it spun me around. It was the scientist who had been drawing the dreamer’s blood. “What are you doing?” he said.

“Get off me you sadistic projection.” I said. I shoved him and turned back to the straps on the examining table. I got most of them off when I felt his hand on my shoulder again.

“You must stop.” He said.

This time, I just hit him. I’ve never been much of one for fighting, but I had enough of this torturer. I clocked him in the side of the head and he fell to the ground. The rest of the scientists took a half-step back. I turned again to the straps. There was only one left when I felt a sharp pain in my shoulder. The son of a bitch had stabbed me. He pulled the syringe out of my arm and pulled back for another go at me, but I ducked out of the way. I tackled him, and the syringe went flying across the floor. We wrestled for control, the group of scientists moved  over to circle us and watch as we fought. I got on top of him and began to punch him in the face and head again and again.

“You will stop this now!” I said, “You will stop this now!”

The dream began to go fuzzy. Lights started to dim and scientists started to disappear or meld into one-another. I turned around and saw my guide walk over to the dreamer.  He knelt down and looked her in the face and spoke to her. I couldn’t hear what he was saying. The scientist under me began to melt into the ground. I walked back to the examining table.

“You’ve been very brave.” My guide was speaking to the dreamer, “You were strong for everybody. You don’t need to do that anymore.”

“I just wanted everyone to be happy.” She said. She was crying.

“I know,” he said. “You did your absolute best. Sleep well.” Then he put his hand on her forehead, and the dream vanished.

“What did you do?” I said. “Why did the dream melt away? Why couldn’t I free her?”

“Where do you think that scientist came from?” He said , “How many dreamers were in that dream? There is ever only one. When you fought that man, you fought the dreamer.”

“I was trying to free her.” I said.

“You were trying to free her by trying to kill part of her. That’s not freedom,” He said, “that doesn’t work.”

“I thought you said I could engage these dreams.” I said. “I thought you said I could change things.”

“When you enter someone else’s universe you do so as a guest.” He said. “Dreams can be changed, but the change must come from something internal to the dreamer, not external.”

“I don’t understand.” I said.

“When we enter dreams, we are with a person who is utterly alone.” He said, “the busiest and liveliest dream is populated by the dreamer. In dreams like that one, dreams of pain and terror, sometimes the best thing to do is let the dreamer know that they are not alone. That there is someone with them, someone else who can see their pain, even as they can do nothing to change it.”

At this point, I noticed that we had entered another dream. I wasn’t aware of when exactly we made the transition, but we were there. We were back in the rainy city street, surrounded by the faceless mob in hats and long coats.

“Your presence here,” my guide said, “is not to steal other people’s dreams and make them your own. Nor is it to observe from a distance out of complacent curiosity. You are here to be with the dreamer. That is all. It is a very difficult task.”

I turned and looked at the dreamer, so far away down the street. The pillars of water seemed to me to be pillars of grief that held the heartbroken scene together. I walked through the faceless crowd and approached the dreamer. As I got closer, I began to see that the dreamer was a man, perhaps in this forties, and the other person was a woman. I knew it was his wife, and I knew she was dead. He knelt over her and attempted to reach out to touch her, but he never quite could. I sat on my heels next to him. He looked over at me.

“I can’t touch her.” He said, “I can’t touch her anymore. I’m trying, but I can’t.”

“I know.” I said.

“Why can’t I touch her?” He said.

“Because she’s gone.” I said.

The dreamer grabbed me by the collar of my coat, and pressed his face against my chest. He began to sob.

The rain came down harder, and the street began to flood even more. The faceless people in the distance began to go inside the buildings until the only person left in the street was my guide. The street was so full of water that the woman’s body began to float. The water rose and the body rose with it. The water level rose above my ankles and my shoes flooded. Still the dreamer cried. The body eventually started to flow downstream, toward the end of the street and out into nothingness. I wondered if it would disappear once it was out of sight, or if it would fall forever into the nothingness, swept along by an endless rain of grief.  We sat there all night.

That was six years ago now. My guide eventually taught me how to enter dreams by myself. We met a few others who walked through dreams; some of them were there for entertainment or by accident. A few of them were really monsters. We even got one of the Ivory Tower folks to go back to the waking world and share a bit of what they’d learned, so they weren’t a total waste. And we met a few others who wanted to help people, some of them were a little misguided, but we were all trying. Those were good times. I still go into dreams sometimes, just for a walk about, usually when I have a hard time falling asleep.

A Story About God and Me

In the beginning there was/is/always will be God. God has a way of messing with tenses like that, but let's use present for reasons of immediacy. God is relational, the mystery of the trinity revealed to humanity through the emergent evolution of inspired interpretation. God is love. God is self-sacrificing on behalf of Godself, and on ours. God is.

Then there was James. James was a monk who lived in Phoenicia in the 6th century. As a young man, it was discovered that James had a the gift of healing. People came from miles around to be prayed for, and to be healed, and it was good.

God partners with James. Like a candle and a torch held together, the synergy of James and God makes a healing flame that blessed all those who sought it. Perhaps someone with more chemical awareness could parse what of the flame was from candle, and what is from torch, but James was not a chemist. And, God is always keen to team up with healing.

Back at the ranch, a young woman was brought to James by her parents in order that her insanity might be healed. James prayed for the woman, and her mind returned to her. Then, he slept with her. Overcome with shame and fear of discovery. James murdered the girl, and threw her body into a nearby river.

There are no reports of a conversation as with Cain over the body of the murdered beloved. God is heartbroken by the violence. God is enraged by the injustice. God watches with sorrow and anger while one of his children is cast into fitful and unjust sleep as another turns and walks away from the flame.

James wandered.

God is doing God's own thing. Chilling beyond the realm of human understanding, drawing folks into mystery only to extend past whatever borders that category might have. Ever being, eternally the same. The divine fire, the uncreated light, bathing creation in warm invitation to return to what it is completely, a flame.

James stopped, and dug a hole in the ground. Six feet deep. Six feet tall. Three feet wide. A grave that was denied to another, he would take as his own.

God waits, limitless by time and space and whatever other measure of distance a person can be. God sits in the grave and waits for James to return. 

James waited ten years. He was brought water and food by those who used to call him brother. But even those he used to call Abba could not bring him absolution. Perhaps he prayed. Sometimes the penitent do that, sometimes they do not.

God attends liturgy and evening prayers. God attends the funeral of the girl whose name is lost to history, and to her soul that will never be lost again. God attends to tears and laughter. God rejoices in forgiveness, and weeps over harm. God creates the universe in a rush of radiation and light, creating time and energy and matter all in an instant. God is the last one left at the end of it all, turning out the lights and locking the door behind at the end of this universe. God waits in the grave.

Ten years into James' self-imposed life of death it stopped raining. The farmers, which is to say, everyone, were none to happy with this, and so they prayed for rain. But, it didn't. The priests, who were also farmers and in need of food, also prayed for rain. But, it didn't. The monks and the abbot who were equally corporeal and reliant on grain prayed for rain. But it didn't. Somebody told James about the drought problem. Something he was already aware of due to the fact that all he had to look at were dirt and sky, both of which were unusually dry. James prayed. And, it did.

God sends rain, and God sends drought. God waits in the grave, and God invites James to pray. God forgives. God burns. God heals. God reconciles and fills the hole dug in the name of death with living water. God floats the dead out the graves and lifts them up to the light.

St. James the Faster (or St. James the Obscure as Reader Paul likes to say) is commemorated by the Eastern Orthodox Church on the 4th of March, every year. The 4th of March, 1989 was the day I was born, and the day my parents named me Tyson James.

A Distorted Image

(Note: this was an assignment for my Therapy I class. The purpose of the assignment was to identify and write about our therapeutic "north star," as well as our understanding of human nature and the goal of therapy.)

Gradually it was disclosed to me that the line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either – but right through every human heart – and through all human hearts. This line shifts inside us, it oscillates with the years. And even within hearts overwhelmed by evil, one small bridgehead of good is retained. And even in the best of all hearts, there remains… an unuprooted small corner of evil.
– Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Meaning exists in the space in between. Nothing has meaning all by itself. Meaning comes from interaction, discourse, context, and relationship. Human beings are meaning-makers, which is to say we are relationship makers. Even the most elusive hermit or the most comatose schizophrenic without any meaningful contact with another person maintains internal relationships.  This relationality is why the doctrine of The Trinity in junction with the belief in the Imago Dei is so important. The Trinity tells us God is relational. We contain the divine image, and we find our divinity in relationships.

In an ideal world, all relationships between people would be open, honest, and clear. There would be no distortion in our varied attempts to connect, to give and receive love. The world as it exists, however, is full of distortion. Sin is the cause and consequence of these distortions. Sickness is the cause and consequence of these distortions. Humanity is a complex cybernetic beast. Change in one aspect of our system leads to change in the entire system. If one of us is sick, we all are. One person’s distorted attempts at giving and receiving love reverberate across the entire human network. In a sense, there is no such thing as individual pathology. Every sickness is interpersonal.

But, our disease is not ultimately fatal. The Imago Dei seeks after the same. There is a Gaelic saying, “one beetle recognizes another.”  The divinity in each one of us seeks to bring out and commune with the goodness in others. The Imago Dei is not a small icon of Christ buried in the rubbish heap of our bodies. All of our being is made in God’s image. The disease of sin is a corruption that can be cleansed, a distortion that can be corrected. The Fathers called this process theosis. The cause and consequence of theosis is love.

The goal of therapy, in the broadest and most general sense, is to assist a client in the process of theosis, to wrestle distortions, to heal sickness, and to love unto the possibility of more love. Interpersonal psychodynamic psychotherapy in particular seeks to delve into a person’s internal, primarily unconscious world, and to bring into the light that which has been living in darkness through the genuine connection of one Imago Dei to another. In these Imago-Imago meetings we seek to further reveal and strengthen both. The process sounds very mystical and ethereal, but in practice it tends to be messy and confusing. It had better be, otherwise it wouldn’t be real.

It may seem counterintuitive. We may think that the Imago Dei is only the good parts of a person or at the very least, that the distortions, disease, and corruption would not be counted among the image of God. I disagree. The image of God cannot be destroyed. A corruption of the image is still the image. We cannot help but be what we are, relational, love seeking and giving, divine beings. We can, however, help one another to be more what we are. We can help to strengthen and enliven the relationships between people, the place where meaning is born, and in so doing give more meaning, more love, more life. This is the goal of therapy.

Adultery and Murder

This is the story of Saint James the Faster.

St. James was so perfect in pleasing God that he cured the most gravely ill through his prayers, but the enemy of mankind lured him into great temptations. Once an immoral woman was sent to him by some mockers. She misrepresented herself to James, pretending to weep yet all the while luring him into sin. Seeing that he was going to yield to sin, James placed his left hand into the fire and held it there for some time until it was scorched. Seeing this, the woman was filled with fear and terror, repented, and amended her life. 

On another occasion, James did not flee from his temptation, but rather he fell with a maiden who had been brought by her parents to be cured of her insanity. He indeed healed her, but afterward sinned with her. Then in order to conceal his sin, he killed her and threw her into a river. As is common, the steps from fornication to murder are not very far. 

After this, James lived for ten years as a penitent in an open grave. At that time there was a great drought which caused both people and livestock to suffer. As a result of his prayers, rain fell, and James knew that God had forgiven him. Here is an example, similar to that of David, of how wicked the evil demon is; how by God's permission the greatest spiritual giants can be overthrown; and how, through sincere and contrite repentance, God, according to his mercy, forgives even the greatest sins and does not punish those who punish themselves.

(source)

Alternate versions of the story exist involving caves and wandering in the wilderness (link). But the heart of the story remains the same.

James the Faster is my patron saint. Those of you who will be at my wedding will hear the priest refer to me as James. This is not because Father Yuri has memory issues.

Ideally, a child will be assigned a saint from birth, usually carrying the saint’s name as their own in some form. For converts like me the process is a little trickier. A Saint isn’t chosen as much as discovered. The church teaches that we are all assigned a Saint by God at birth. They watch over us, and pray for us. They are personally invested in our lives and spiritual wellbeing, and, hopefully, we share something or other in common. They’re spiritual life coaches. They’re personal connection to the great cloud of witnesses. We ask for their prayers on our behalf and we study their lives and their words (if any were recorded) in order to learn to better follow Christ.

When I first set out looking for my saint, I originally set out looking for a Tikhon. It’s the closest thing to Tyson in the Orthodox Canon, and it sounds really really cool. When I spoke with Father Yuri about this idea, he suggested I look for a James. “James is a good name.” He said, “There are many Jameses.” So I looked.

Saints all have feast days. There are more Saints than days, so every day is a feast day for someone or other. James the Faster’s feast day is my birthday. It used to be that a child’s Saint was determined by whoever’s feast day matched up with a child’s birthday. That’s not always the case today, but I took it as a sign. I picked James the Faster, or as my friend Paul recently called him, James the Obscure. But, that’s another story.

You may have noticed this phrase from the above story, “As is common, the steps from fornication to murder are not very far.” If you’re anything like me, you scoffed at this, and chalked it up to a bit of editorializing on the part of the wiki-editor. Sleeping with someone usually doesn’t lead to murder. Thing is nearly everything I’ve found that mentions James the Faster makes this same connection. Even the hymn that’s meant to be sung on his feast day.

James the Faster, according to the height of his soul, a giant was he,
But, he, from the heights slipped, and the devil toppled him;
One sin, to the other hastens, adultery rushes to murder,
James the Faster, himself, punishes, and God comforted him.

I would like to ignore this. I would very much like to see the story of James the Faster as a simple story of the power of penance. I can’t do that though. There is a deeper truth here, and it won’t leave me alone.

School’s been hard recently. We’re being asked to see darkness and engage it. In our future clients and in our present selves. We are told that we can only take a client to places that we have gone ourselves. We can only help mend adulterous hearts if we have wrestled with our own adultery. We can only find comfort for murderous souls if we have studied our own murderousness.

James was a healer, a wonderworker. He healed a young woman of her insanity. I do not know the specifics of how things went down between James and the young woman. But, his is not the first story I’ve heard of a therapist sleeping with their client. James’ shame turned to contempt. He murdered the woman, further victimizing the very person he was meant to help. James, the faith healer, the counselor and man of God, was exposed. He succumbed to the evil that infects every heart. The evil that, when unengaged, spreads like a termite colony, slowly destabilizing the most solid structure. James’ house was large, and when it collapsed, it collapsed hard.

In some stories, James wanders in the wilderness for a while, nearly abandoning the life of a monk. The stories mention no investigation that uncovers the murder. James is not discovered by anyone but himself. The darkness of adultery and murder was his own, and he is unable to ignore it. James the Wonderworker, man of God. James the Adulterer. James the Murderer. James the Hypocrite.

In the stories of wandering, James comes upon a monastery. He confesses his sin to the monks there, and they encourage him to stay with them, be penitent, be forgiven.  He chooses a cave, or, as in the above story, an open grave. James has chosen to live in his own death. Confronted by his own darkness and sin, he inhabits the grave where his poor victim was not granted rest.

James’ ten years of penitence do not “undo” his sins. They do not bring the girl back to life. Other saints raise the murdered from the dead, but James story is not one of undoing, it is one of repentance. James the Wonderworker became James the Murderer, but he didn’t remain there. Human darkness is not permanent. Sin feels like gravity, always scheming for the fall from Grace. James chose to live in the darkness of his sin without succumbing to it. He lived at the bottom of an open grave when the bottom of a bottle would have been easier. He fasted and prayed. He knew his own sin intimately, and he did not try to hide it again.

This is a man that the Church recognizes as Saint. An adulterer, a murderer, one who took advantage of those who trusted him to heal them. He fell hard, but yet his icon hangs in my bedroom. What is this? How can it be that a man so filled with violence, contempt, sadism and masochism is held up as an example for the faithful? Is redemption really that powerful? Or is this just another patriarchal story where a man literally gets away with murder? I want to believe the former.

In my coming work I will see people who have seen such darkness. I will sit across from the abused and the abusers. I will see so much harm, so much hate, contempt, violence, shame. I must believe in redemption if I am to keep my head. I must believe that James the Murderer, once James the Wonderworker, can become James the Faster, Saint and intercessor for my soul.

Most importantly (right now) I need to see myself in every aspect of James’ story. I must see my own hubris that leads me to open the door to my own adultery. I must see my shame, which becomes contempt, which becomes violence that will drive me to victimize the powerless. I must see my own grave, and live in it in prayer and fasting. I must see my own redemption if I am ever to hope to see someone else’s.

SAINT JAMES THE FASTER
Who from the greater height falls, is injured more,
To the heights whoever is lifted, let him cautiously shield himself.
The holy apostle writes: "Whoever thinks that he is standing secure
should take care not to fall," let him fear God.
James the Faster, according to the height of his soul, a giant was he,
But, he, from the heights slipped, and the devil toppled him;
One sin, to the other hastens, adultery rushes to murder,
James the Faster, himself, punishes, and God comforted him.
All virtues, one sin, is able to erode;
One hole in the granary, all the wheat pours out.
A house filled with fragrances, one handful of filth
Empties it of redolence and fills it with stench.
One-hundred victories nor one-hundred celebrations do not help
When in the final battle, the head is lost.
The spiritual life is a struggle against the hordes of the devil,
In this battle, from the beginning the proud are defeated.
Whoever invokes the Name of God with profound humility
That one, in battle, will be protected by God's mercy.

The Beautiful Misfits Brigade

We come without capital. We come without cool. We come without cleanly defined parameters of where the one thing becomes another but we know that we are here, or are we? Sometimes we get confused. We come with rhetoric and shout, but with whispered poetry, sometimes. We come all of us, and by all rights we should not get along.

This is why we are beautiful. This is why we are misfits. Our fit, it has, it missed, it has. Our fit is missed and we miss having a fit. Some of us never really did, have a fit that is. Some of us have had far too many, and the miss is more or less intentional now, missing the fit that is. In any case, we are miss matched, patchwork people, straw and bubblegum, duct-tape people. Different people with the same haircut, and different haircuts on the same people, and some of us haven't got much hair at all. And still, we come.

We come bringing only what will fit in our prosthetic-robotic-post-hydroponic lunch-pales that we got in grade 3. We come with our tales, long and fluffy, short and sleek, they are our tails, tales, trails. Oh, we do get confused. We are a thrift store tie-rack. We are here because we don't have anywhere else, and it is in our nature to find the place where everybody don't belong.

We come with ourselves and one at a time (or sometimes all at once) we explain what that means. We stand (or we sit on the floor [or a chair]) and we tell ourselves who we are. Or rather, we tell one another who we are. Or rather, one of us tells the rest of us who one of us is. But then, I just said the same thing thrice, didn't I?

In our telling of our being we become a bit more. In our listening to our being we connect, if only for a moment to the fit that was (ostensibly) missed. We find our fit and we fit with the other unfitted folk. And, this is why we are beautiful. It is the beauty of a kaleidoscope, of a leaf pile, of a lost-and-found bin.

We shouldn't fit. And we don't. We all don't. That's why we came. That's why we're beautiful.

I Wonder

I wonder what will happen to the Shaman in my head, the little boy who still hasn't figured out who his people are, the one who returned the shadows to their bodies, the one who scared away the tommyknocker with the help of his brother bear.

I wonder what will happen to the wizard in my head, the vagrant who whistled cider into existence, who turns his lovers into nymphs and ice eagles, who plays music that tells the story of the beginning of humans and the death of magic, who travels with the silver dog whose eyes burn blue.

I wonder what will happen to the bridge in my head, the girl who unlocked the fremont troll, who outsmarted puck and saved her boggart, who marked her own forehead with the unbreakable seal.

I wonder what will happen to the poet in my head, the hopeless romantic who joined forces with the cowboy and the scientists, the one with the flying monkey, who saved the princess and defeated the lich, but lost his leg in the process.

I wonder what will happen to the strong one in my head, the woman who opened the forbidden door, who unlocked a lifetime of pain, who saw things she never asked to know, who was erased, but refused to be forgotten, who may be the salvation of her eraser.

I wonder what will happen to the werewolf in my head, the fiction who scares my friends every Halloween, who gibbers and creeps, who leaves just enough up to the imagination.

As I get older, and as I learn to live in the world outside my head a little bit more than the world inside it, as I learn about attachment and z-scores, missiology and marriage, as I spend less and less time with my old buddy Neil, as I fall farther and farther behind on the adventures of my beloved Constantine, as I begin to dream more and more of schedules and schoolwork, and less and less about faeries and fireflies, I wonder what will happen to the stories that only live in my own head.

I guess I’ll throw them out into the world and hope that they take seed in someone else’s mind, or at the very least, take them somewhere else, somewhere closer to the truth but father from reality. I wonder if they’ll find anything worth keeping.