One Must Imagine Sisyphus Happy

The plan for my next lucid was to invite The Goddess on to a late-night talk show that I would host. I would ask her a few things, including "Where did you come from?" I scripted a joke for her to deliver: she would point to the stage curtain from which she entered the scene and say "from over there." The audience would laugh. Then I'd ask again and she'd give me a real answer. None of that happened as planned, but I did get my question answered.

I fall awake into a field. This is not My Field, though. My Field is an infinite, featureless expanse of grass. This field looks more like a real place, like a city park. The grassy area is dotted with trees. In the distance I make out a road, cars, and townhouses. Immediately in front of me is a lone young boy sitting on the grass. I've seen a boy like this many times in my dreams. He has a mop of blond hair, a blue shirt, blue shorts, and little blue shoes. He's always quiet, sitting, and playing with a toy firetruck. He seems engrossed with his toy and his imagination. He doesn't interact with anyone or seem to acknowledge anything around him. Sometimes he is in imminent danger but still isn't aware. I think of him as a young innocent version of myself. I don't bother him. I just watch as he plays.

I try to get a better look at his toy truck. It's bright red and shiny. Of course, red reminds me of The Goddess and also my plan that involved her. I look to my right and there she is. Tonight, she wears a simple, casual, sleeveless red dress. Her hair is chestnut and straight.

Most of the scene around us has dissolved into pure whiteness. It seems like The Goddess and I are in a dreamlike art museum. The boy on the grass is still there, but that part of the scene now seems like an animated picture hanging on the white walls of the museum.

She walks up to me, balances an arm on my shoulder and leans her hip into mine. I feel the weight of her body and I know its her way of communicating trust and closeness. She joins me in looking at the boy like we're looking at a piece of art. I look at her and remark that she is work of art. I look at her smile and think about Mona Lisa. But today, The Goddess doesn't have that kind of smile. Now thinking about her whole demeanor, there is something different about her today. No seduction. No tease. No mind games. No femme fatale. She's just casual and happily content. She's not hiding anything. But she must be hiding something, she always is. What do you have up your sleeve? I remark again that her dress has no sleeves.

I am puzzled by the fact that there seems to be no puzzle. I follow her eyes to the boy. Then back to her. Then her eyes move from the boy to me. And something clicks. Is this her son? Is this OUR son?

I don't have to ask, she can read my thoughts. Without word, she nods yes. But there's something else in her expression. As if to say: Oops.

This makes me panic. I don't want to play this role. Fatherhood is a very tender wound in my psyche. She trusts me, but she really shouldn't. Especially, of all things, not about this.

My reflex is to reject the idea. I stagger backward and think to run. But because she was leaning her body on me, she now suddenly falls and lands hard on her knees and elbows. She emits a low whimper. She really seems hurt. Her hair is now tussled and hides her face. I see drops of dark red blood drop on the white floor under her. Maybe she broke her nose or cut her lip.

Now I immediately feel remorse and shame along with my panic. I'm torn between the instinct to run away and the instinct to help. That traps me and I do neither. In trying to protect myself, someone else got hurt. And not just anyone, but the one person I would never try to hurt. That is textbook tragic irony.

I look to the boy and he remains oblivious. In a way, I was trying to protect him too. In my twisted logic, the biggest danger to him is me, so I protect him by avoiding him. More irony.

Paralyzed in this cognitive dissonance, I wake up. Well, that was intense. I try to work through the puzzle.

I rehash, but don't dwell on the obvious Freudian stuff. Mother. Father. Child. Betrayal. Irony. Guilt. Blah, blah, blah. I don't entirely dismiss it, I just prefer to engage the fiction in a more personal way.

I think about the motifs of falling and catching. I "fall" asleep and become lucid by "catching" myself. As for the Goddess, I've "fallen" for her and I "fall" for her tricks and traps. We also "catch" each others' jokes and I try to "catch" the meaning behind her riddles. I think how I spend so much time trying to "catch" The Goddess. I'm always chasing after her, like the coyote and the roadrunner. It is tragically ironic that this time, when I really should have caught her, I didn't.

I also ponder a parallel motif, which is of falling, gravity, and trust. We demonstrate trust by "leaning" on people and looking for their "support."

Yes, interesting stuff, but it doesn't yet gel into anything. I start my epilogue.

Thank you, Goddess. I'm sorry. I will try to catch you next time. I didn't "catch" the meaning of the dream though.

Since the dream ended abruptly, I play the meta-game a bit, which is to try to guess the final outcome and then work backward to how events ought to transpire. I wonder what she might have said next if I didn't wake up. That might have revealed the intent. Maybe she would have said "I forgive you." Or "I still trust you." Nah, too trite. Maybe the son isn't mine and it was all a misunderstanding. That's another kind of irony. Maybe the boy is me, as I speculate, and the meaning of this cycle of birth and identity is more symbolic than literal. Maybe. Too Freudian for my taste though.

What would she say? I start to see that, I'm questioning what she would answer to my question, which was my original plan for the dream with the talk show. This coincidence gives me a glimmer of hope that I'm on the right track. She would say something unexpected. Hence the futility of the meta-game. So what would really break the game?

And then, from the depths of my psyche, a surprising possibility enters my thoughts, as if delivered from The Goddess herself. She would have said: "Run." That's the one thing I wouldn't expect her to say because running was the cowardly thing for me to do. But if she tells me to run and I run, then there's actually no irony. How brilliant. She would take a scenario steeped in irony, only to find the un-ironic outcome. That's very meta.

I think more on "Run" and I recall Jenny from the movie Forrest Gump who tells Forrest on several occasions to run. The relationship between The Goddess and I is a lot like Jenny and Forrest. I flash on the scene in Vietnam when Forrest is in a similar situation to my dream. Given the choice between running to save himself and going back to help others, Forrest chooses the braver path. The "smart" choice is cowardly and the "dumb" choice is heroic (irony). I flash to the scene near the end of the movie when an even more obviously similar situation happen. Jenny reveals to Forrest that her son is his. Forrest's initial reaction is concern because he is afraid this boy will suffer all the same things that Forrest endured, but the opposite is true because the boy is "the smartest in his class" (irony).

Then Jenny dies of AIDS, which is an auto-immune disease. An auto-immune disease in one in which the body's system to protect itself -- the immune system -- turns and starts attacking the body (irony). I wonder, What if The Goddess died? This is ironic because gods are immortal. My recall of the movie flashes on two scenes where Forrest stands over the grave of his mother and then later at Jenny's grave. In these scenes, he considers the metaphysical question of destiny versus randomness and comes to the conclusion that "maybe it's both." He also recalls moments in his life when he witnessed beauty and the divine even in the midst of fear and conflict.

Beauty and the divine. That is surely The Goddess.

I think even more because this word "divine" summons another related memory. Before Forrest Gump was a film, it was a book that I read. There's many scenes in the book absent from the movie. In one such scene, Forrest is a teenager when he is seduced by an older woman, who gives him a type of candy called divinity. This is Forrest's first sexual experience and he doesn't really comprehend it. He just remembers: "I sure did like her divinity." I read this when I was about 12 or 13 and it was one of my first encounters with sexuality. I amuse myself that maybe, this was the moment when The Goddess was "born" in my head. Not a real character, but as the archetype of the femme fatale: the seductive and savvy woman with ulterior motives. And just like Forrest, maybe I fetishized the memory with a connected object (divinity) rather that truly comprehending the sexuality.

And so, I arrive back of the beginning. I wanted to know where The Goddess came from and she revealed it to me, just not as I planned. She sent me an adventure through my emotions, memories, philosophy, and fiction.

Thank you, Goddess. I will try to catch you next time.