Dreams and Paper-cut Epiphanies
Ever since starting the University I keep having a reoccurring dream, where I think I am being understood by the world only to open my mouth and speak Latin. As disbelieving and contradicting as it may sound, it isn’t easy for people to see me but at the same time I catch the eyes of many. I like to be unseen and unnoticeable though. It makes getting work done easier; makes writing easier; makes living life easier and writing about life easier.
The questions that are given- What do I do in life? What kind of work do I like doing? Do I feel at home in this country? Do I feel alienated? What does literature really mean to me? What do I love to read? Why am I here? What do home me to me? Is there a single place that means the world to me? Am I satisfied?
Firstly, I am never satisfied because I was spoil as a child. When my mother was dying, the single most important place in the world to me was by her side. If I close my eyes and try really hard I can still smell the decomposing fragrance of her body under the hazy of incents and perfume of our home. Or her husband’s home I should say. I didn’t mind the stank, I never did even at the very end.
As I child I wanted to dance, to be a ballerina. Before my mother married a second time, before we had money, and before my brother and I wasn’t denied much of anything anymore, I took lessons briefly. I will never know how my mother managed to pay for it. I was 6 years old. My cousin, whom I used to think, moved as a graceless newborn kitten, was in the same class as me. I used to envy her before I even knew the meaning of the world, and a small part of me still does this day. Even though I know I am smarter, more well liked, and not a druggie. I envied her greatly, for her magical power of being able to fit in better because of her light skin. I didn’t want to be dance anymore after the other girls started calling me Blackie.
Do I feel at home in this country? I was eighteen, attending a university party of irrelevance and making polite conversation when I found the answer to that question. When my turn came to tell the room my major and passion in life, I was gift with this callous response from the host, “Oh, journalism? Just to let you know seriously that the only reason you will probably be hire in news broadcasting is because you’re black and a woman and they probably need to fill a quota.” Nobody found anything wrong with her statement. No, I do not feel very much at home in this country at all.
The loneliness of my alienation in this country is like a prison. I feel captured and want nothing but to escape pass the overbearing iron gates of my inner isolation but the exit is bolted. I miss my mother when I am awake. Melancholy consumes swiftly and sometimes thoughts of death become a weighted heaviness inside me; it feels like a gilded key resting in my palm. Even if I am too appreciative to actually do away with myself, one can still dream cant they? And if there is one thing that I have learned in twenty-one years of existing is I dream very well and that preferring the company of books over people keeps my dreams vibrant. With each novel painting an intricate mosaic across my mindscape, I find solace every time I look upon its vivid reflection.
Literature means I get to see my mother because I dream of her often. She takes the form of my villain and my heroine of the latest piece I manage to conquer. I see her and I hate her for being so beautiful and healthy and so painstakingly there. She does not smell of decay and if I dare to touch, her skin will not freeze hell over. I know this intimately because my dream tells me so, in that funny way dreams do. I often lie and like to pretend I am not the daughter of a dead mother and delude myself in thinking I am not bitter.
Sometimes, I feel like the tiny black period placed at the end of a Pablo Neruda’s Sonnet XVLL or a Sylvia Plath’s poem. The ones that make me cry when I have thought there was going to be nothing sad enough for me to cry over again. I love to read poetry.
At the age of twenty I stood in the poetry section of a bookshop on the corner of Lake Drive and Robinson Road with no intentions on buying anything but just to smell the old pages. I remember, as I told the clerk I was searching for a mother’s day gift and that I won’t need help finding it, trying not to feel too much satisfaction in lying, but its hard to not smile when they are so easily fooled. I didn’t even fill a twinge of emotion when she replied earnestly, “Oh, you are such a good daughter. My son barely remembers to call on my birthday.”
I randomly pulled tomes from the shelves and flipped through them, hoping to get a paper cut even though I knew most if not all the books had long since lost their crispness. I don’t recall the time of day, but I remember it was warm inside the shop and dim. I stood in front of the poetry section idly flipping through a random book when something to my left caught my attention. It was a man, a rather short and husky man standing on his toes with his arm stretched above his head trying to reach a book that was too far out of his grasp. I was about to help when a painful sting in my finger distracted me. I had gotten a paper cut. I walked out that bookshop with a newly purchased used ‘Where the Sidewalk Ends’, the poems and drawings of Shel Silverstein because I decided along with writing cookbooks food and music reviews I wanted to write children’s poetry and prose books.
There used to be a time when I thought home was in the arms of my mother. The one place where my dark skin was beautiful, my female body was a temple and my passions bright enough to light the world. Now I am not so sure, because ever since my mother died I keep having this reoccurring dream, where I think I am being understood by the world only to open my mouth and speak Latin.