The Pure Life of Dreams

May 10, 2024May 10, 2024

A Christmas Name in Lights

In the village where my sister lives there is a grey stone church on a hill.

The church overlooks the village even though it is low to the ground and I think to look at it one evening, as the light begins to fade.

The church is lit up on all sides with Christmas stalls that shine in bright yellow winter colours, but the highlight for me is the ~~steeple~~ bell tower where Lizzie’s name is in lights. Her name is spelled out in full, Lizzie Monroe, along the length of the tower. I am surprised but also proud to see my sister’s name carved out in yellow neon, prominent, at the highest point of the village.

The only other place where I saw her name was on theatre posters online.

Here, Lizzie’s name is double lit with big yellow baubles like you see in an actor’s backstage dressing room. She must be important in the village, I think.

I’m going to take a picture but instead I walk around the church to look at the stalls, at the yellow christmasy decorations, at the steam of glühwein and red cheeked shopkeepers rubbing their gloves to keep warm.

When I return to the front of the church the bell tower lights have been turned off and some townspeople are in the process of dismantling them. They have brought Lizzie’s name down onto the grass and the neon letters are no longer lit.

“Before you completely take it apart can I take picture?” I ask them. “For my 101 year old mother.”

Two large women in dark blue anoraks are almost silhouetted against the dusk. They stand up the two sections side by side. There is one section for Lizzie’s first name, another for her surname. The sections are unlit but you can still make out the names from the shape of the neon.

I take the picture. Even though I can make out the name, I’m disappointed that they’re not lit. Christmas is closing up, I realize, so I decide to walk around the church again before it’s completely gone.

But when I return to the other side of the church I see that it’s still brightly lit with the yellow tinsel shops that line the church so I take more pictures as I walk, one last time, along its length.

Why is Lizzie my sister? Surely we’re talking about Elaine? Or are we talking about me? Am I all three – Lizzie, Elaine as well as myself?
Photo courtesy of PxHere.

May 4, 2024May 4, 2024

My Holiday was Better Than Your Holiday

It is a thin man, a DJ, who shows Leif and his escort onto a thin embroidered grey carpet that follows the length of the tent across the grey sand.

Leif and his escort walk along the carpet, her arm hooked under his, to the entrance at the near side end of the tent. His escort is demure, her dark Thai eyes turned down to avoid my look. She wears a tight silver skirt and she holds by his side until they reach the entrance, where the DJ parts the curtain to show them to their table.

Each table is long, it fills the length of each tent, and each tent is dedicated to an individual party. Leif and the Thai woman are invited through their entrance.

A gold ornament shaped like a netted leaf provides privacy from the rest of the table. I’m not clear what the other end of the table is for when only a couple are sitting at it. Maybe it is a place to put the courses that follow the usual Harira starter.

The tents are lined up in rows, our tent next to Leif’s, and we wait at our entrance for the DJ, for our escort.

Once Leif and his escort is settled, our own escort shows up at the far end of our own tent, at the beginning of the runner. She too looks Thai, but she is old and her brown thinning hair is plastered across her forehead. She smiles at me in greeting, but her teeth are also brown and she is missing two of her top teeth; only three of her teeth, on the right side of her mouth, remain.

At first I think she may be OK, and though we make not be able to communicate, that too may be OK.

But then, “This will not do!” I tell the DJ.

I think I am with Siobhan, I cannot tell, but we will complain, I think.

We enter the tent, leaving the DJ behind with the old Thai woman, and we push past our table and past the gold leaf ornament, until we we find a back room that must belong to the manager.

On the wall are rare framed pictures of gold and platinum LPs. The wall is maroon and shielded top to bottom by a thin glass wall which protects the mementoes behind it. There is a brown electric guitar, a Stratocaster I notice, behind the glass.

Guitars are propped on stands in front of the manager’s desk and, of course the desk is big and mahogany in the dim lit tent, but the manager is not there.

“This will not do!” I repeat, and I push on the glass wall. I am not sure whether I am trying to break it, but when it cracks unexpectedly, I want to go for it, we want to go for it. I kick at the glass wall, then I take one of the guitars from its stand and wield it at the glass to shatter it.

The whole glass wall falls towards us, and with it, the gold and platinum LPs, and the encased Stratocaster. They fall altogether, towards the desk and the glass smashes satisfactorily into splintered pieces, and spreads around us, across the carpet.

April 27, 2024April 27, 2024

Ana Wintour is my Half-Sister

Ana Wintour who lives in Trotto, Napoli is my half-sister. There is a picture with me and my sister in her apartment and I recognize it because Elaine is wearing her sick dress.

Dad is there too, lying on a couch.

And my mum is in there as well, in a separate old-time black and white photo (the small square postage stamp size ones with crinkled borders) and she does not look quite the same, but still it could be her.

I have to crane my neck as I stand on a chair in Ana’s daughter’s house, looking at the framed photo collage placed high up on the wall above the cupboard door. The wooden chair is rickety but close up in the little black and white photo is my mother, I’m almost convinced. She’s looking square on, and in the photo she has straighter hair than usual, and it is short and parted at the side.

It is the color photo from the 70s that really gives it away though.

My dad is lying on the couch in our living room in Coring Road and he’s holding Elaine as a baby up above him; me, I’m in my green shorts, in the background. And next to that photo is the sick dress photo. The dress was so called because it was a woolen, knee length dress with yellow, blue and red hooped stripes top to bottom.

Elaine had a matching woolen hat, I remember, with a matching multicolored pom-pom. My mother loved that dress. Us, not so much.

Once I saw the dad photo I cried out, “That’s us! that’s us!” as if it was proof.

I got down from the chair and Ana’s daughter came in with two others (was one of them Ana? I didn’t think so), and they sat on stiff backed wooden chairs facing us. Ana’s daughter had thick set black eyebrows, long straight dark hair parted in the middle, and she had a long face.

Anyway, judging by the age of Ana’s daughter I figured at Ana must have been my half-sister, even though she’d have to have been born a couple of years ahead of me.

That’s when I asked Ana’s daughter where they were from and she replied “Trotto… Napoli.” Only I couldn’t quite hear the second word. I had her repeat it, she had a thick rolling Italian accent after all, because first I heard “Trappoli,” but I hadn’t of heard such a place so I settled on Napoli instead.

The dream was clear about the spelling, Ana Wintour not the other one, but why was this so important to me?
Photo from Thought Catalog via Flickr, credit Quote Catalog.

April 18, 2024April 21, 2024

The Woman with Antlers

She’d followed me through the council estate. She wore a white dress that glowed in the dusk as she chased me, and I thought I had lost her, when instead, she surfaced once more.

I was lying on a grassy bank catching my breath, when she pushed her head out from under the grass behind me. Like how could that be? Like the grass was a blanket of sod, parting at the seams to reveal her head first, then her shoulders.

She had antlers that poked out from her long blonde hair. And when I got up to get away from her, she rose up out of the grass and set off after me again.

The grassy area was in the forecourt of the council estate, but instead of double backing I took another route, following the line of the grassy bank towards a brick building that had an entrance into a small dark narrow corridor.

The corridor bent right immediately upon entering, and at far end was a second door that turned right again; and the corridor was only wide enough for only one or two people to pass each other side by side.

As I stepped through the entrance, I saw a small space to my left where I could hide.

Another woman with a plain brown sackcloth dress stepped in after me. She saw me duck left as she continued rightwards along the corridor towards the second door. She looked back at me and I winked at her, winked furiously, trying to signal that she not give my position away. She looked back at me uncertainly, as if she didn’t get it.

Then the glowing dress woman with the antlers entered. She turned right without looking at me (at the same time as I was winking at the woman in brown), then the antler woman disappeared through the other door without looking back. She followed close behind the woman in brown.

“What do you want for Christmas?” Siobhan asked, as I tried to write the story down.

“I don’t know. Why you asking me?” Siobhan pushed a mail order catalog towards me, pictures of beach wear.

“Do you want it?” She pointed at a blue tote bag.

“I’m trying to write, stop interrupting me!”

“Well..?”

“I don’t need to decide now, do I?” I stopped wring.

“OK then fine. Yes,” I said.

“No don’t tell me if you don’t want it,” she replied.

“But I’m trying to write, it doesn’t have to be done now.” I pushed the catalog away.

Fine, I thought. If I don’t wake up to write this dream, I’ll forget about the woman in the glowing dress chasing me.

All images generated using DreamUp AI from Deviant Art.

April 10, 2024April 27, 2024

Young and Pregnant

She is thin and bony, young (like in early 20s), and she’s pregnant; and she’s my girlfriend although the baby is from her previous boyfriend.

We go out fairly regularly though sometimes we’ll stay in and paint the flat. Cans of white paint lie spread around, the walls are half done, but the step ladders are up and ready for us continue.