“It’s often said that we’re haunted by memories. Sometimes I think it’s the other way around: we’re the ones who do the haunting.” ~ Will Boast, from “Where It All Went Wrong”

#6 UTA Flight 772 Desert Memorial 16.864841, 11.953808 Sahara Desert, southern Ténéré of Niger
This image strike me as being incredibly poignant

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“I think you wear the dusk like a thin veil. I think
your voice rises from the deepest caverns, your touch
settles like the darkness I try to hide inside.” ~ Richard Jackson, from “Self-Portrait As Window”

“Nebudchadnezzar, Rainbow and Waterfall” (1967, oil on canvas)
by Arthur Boyd

In the first part of the dream, my mother-in-law is dead but she hasn’t been cremated yet because Ann wants to give everyone a chance to say goodbye. By the time we get there, it’s been a week, and I pretend that I do not smell the smell of decay because I do not want Ann to get mad and throw me out. My father-in-law is looking at his coin collection, and I suddenly remember a piece of fabric that my mother-in-law said that I could have. It is an ornate brocade.

In the second part of the dream, my mother is alive when she’s supposed to be dead, and I know that I will have to tell her that she needs to die. She take me to a Chinese restaurant where she knows everyone, and they let her order anything she wants not on the menu. The owner, a tiny Asian woman, takes me back into the kitchen to let me sample desserts. While I am in the kitchen I realize that I will have to tell my mother that she can’t stay. When I go back into the dining room, the place is filled with American tourists. While I was gone my mother went to campus to pick up Brett, and I see that he has gotten a haircut, half mohawk in the front and mullett in the back. I decide not to say anything.

My mother tells Brett to order anything he wants, but he only wants chicken nuggets. I apologize to the owner, who has just cut the head off a very large fish. I look at my mother and realize that she is very tired. She nods to me, and I know that she is ready to go, but I want to stay in the restaurant longer. I want to stay in the company of these people. It feels like home.

                   

Take a look at the story of Dillie the Deer

                   

All Days Lost Days

Living
in and out of the past,
inexplicably
so many things have died
in me.

In and out like a tide,
each tear
holds a tiny hologram.
Even this early
I am full of years.

Here are the little gravestones
where memory
stands in the wild grass,
watching the future
arrive in a line of big black cars.

All days
lost days, in and out of themselves
between dreaming
and dreaming again and half-
remembering.

~ Carol Ann Duffy

 

 

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