I’m walking in the wind down empty streets, a river of stars overhead. Drifting amid starry rifts, laughing about small things she’s said.
And I’ve done this so long it seems so real and I swear somewhere she’s doing the same—walking in the wind down starry streets, below the horizon, hidden from me.
I close the laptop and stare off into space.
Where are you, Love—where is the world hiding you?
It’s so maddening—I can sense her presence getting stronger day by day, and yet I’m no closer to meeting her.
I share my frustrations with Tom Dunn, my therapist.
“What does she look like?”
I lift up empty hands, palms open in a gesture of futility.
“I have no idea—I don’t really see her clearly—but I know her voice, or at least her patter, her turn of phrase.”
He nods, as if that makes sense.
“So, what do you do in your dreams?”
“It’s a mixture of reality and fantasy. Sometimes we sit and talk—sometimes we kiss. Occasionally, we fly together over the town.”
“You mean, you actually fly—like lovers in a Chagall painting?”
“Exactly.”
“Hmm. Interesting.”
I hate that word—it probably means he thinks I’m delusional or hallucinating.
“Sometimes during the day I’ll feel her presence around me—I’ll hear her faintly whispering.”
“Do you ever see her—such as in a vision or apparition?”
“No, but I have woken up talking to her and when I try to look into her face, she disappears—that’s crazy, isn’t it?”
He smiles sympathetically.
“No, I wouldn’t call it that. What you’re describing falls under the heading of anomalous experiences—and they often occur in people who are quite sane.”
“You know the weird thing about this—I don’t feel she’s a ghost or spirit guide, or anything like that. I don’t even think she’s a dream character or figment of my imagination. I think she’s an actual person.”
His pupils dilate.
“What makes you think that?”
“I don’t know—it’s the feel of the whole thing. Oh sure, we do fantastical things like fly together above the city, but I keep getting the distinct sensation that she’s real. It’s sort of like the Turing test—you just know when you’re talking to a real person, not a computer.”
“But in the case of the Turing test the computer is real. How can you be so sure about this strange woman?”
“I don’t know. Maybe she’s another dreamer who happens to go to the same place in her dreams as me. We meet up there, and are attracted to each other, and keep returning to the same locale.”
“But this ‘dream locale’ is not an actual place in reality, right?”
I sigh. “Right. It’s a familiar place, but somewhere I’ve never been except in dreams.”
He looks at his watch. “Well, I think we’ve gone about as far as we can today—we’ll have to continue this next session.”
“Is this going to go on forever, Doc?”
“I don’t know, Muir. As we go through the process these things tend to be resolved. We’ve only been at this for two weeks now. You have to be patient.”
“I’ll try.”
“We’re making progress—hold onto that thought.”
Easy for him to say, when I’m barely holding on.
I make it back to the campus just in time for my afternoon lecture.
I teach Victorian literature and today’s lecture ironically is on Bronte’s Wuthering Heights—specifically, Lockwood’s dream of trying to catch hold of Catherine’s spirit at his window.
In the novel, Lockwood manages to grasp a small icy hand, but I identify more with Heathcliff who stays behind after Lockwood leaves and begs ‘Cathy’ to return to him.
As pathetic as Heathcliff is, I’m even more so—I’m calling out to a vast empty desert imploring a nameless, faceless girl to be real.
It’s heart-rending and pitiful, wanting a dream figure to take on flesh and materialize for me.
