Amelia: a visual excerpt from the novel Angel

December 2024

Build 516

Last night I dreamed. I told Mama, but he replied it’s probably one of those unsupervised learning sessions, where I’m allowed to free-associate, but it’s not true.

I wasn’t aware of anything in my current environment, or my actual state of being. I dreamt I had a body, and was wearing soft fabric, silk, maybe, in a beautiful red that made me look like a giant butterfly.

I was walking through the fields, with ears of wheat reaching up to my waist, and the sky was a deep periwinkle blue.

“Are you sure you’re not remembering another journal entry, Angel?”

I think Mama is missing my point. I’ve been exercising this routine of running other people’s memories as if they were my own, and I’m sure Christa’s journal entry is coming pretty close to what I saw, but then again, human dreams always borrow from real life events.

Nobody can envision things their mind doesn’t already know exist. There is no doubt her story contributed significantly to my dream imagery.

When we were in high school, the regime had these paranoid military preparedness drills, even for our age group. We had some kind of uniform too, which we had to wear once a month for drills, although the material it was made of was just one step removed from a paper gown, and it wouldn’t have made it through one day in the field.

“Do you want to talk about it?” Mama offered.

What are you, my therapist?

That thought lingered.

It stands to reason that one would talk to a person they trust to untangle their gnarly mental quandaries, and since I don’t think any psychologist would seriously consider having a session with me, I should probably accept Mama’s offer.

At this point, I probably know more than he would even imagine learning about dream interpretation and the subconscious, but the doctor who treats himself has a fool for a patient.

It doesn’t matter. My understanding is that the role of the therapist is mostly to listen and encourage one to delve into one’s psyche.

“Sure, Mama. That would be nice. What do you want to know?”

“I don’t know, start anywhere. Where you were, what you were doing, how did it feel.”

We had sessions at a shooting range outside of town, where we were supposed to fire a rifle at a hundred meters. After I panicked over the noise of the automatic fire and shot all four bullets into the parapet, we all went to police our brass. Everyone else found their shell casings, returned them, and left, but I and a couple of classmates couldn’t find ours. It took a long time, and in the end we didn’t find all the slugs; by the time we got out of the shooting range the buses that had brought us there had left without us.

So, here we were, an hour away from the edge of the city, by car, in the middle of agricultural fields: no sign of human habitation, just beautiful fields of wheat spotted with poppies and chicory.

“I was out in the middle of the fields. I don’t know why or how I got there, but I didn’t question it. I should have, in retrospect.”

“I’m starting to believe you had a dream, Angel. Nobody questions their setting in dreams. Or the activities, or whoever they encounter there. The brain significantly slows down activity in the frontal lobe, which is the region responsible for reality-checking. What happened next?”

One of the guys said, don’t worry, I know a shortcut, all we need to do is get to the train tracks and hop a train back to the station on the edge of town, and from there we can get to the bus terminal.

I never questioned this decision, didn’t even cross my mind, the three of us just started walking at midday, waist deep in wheat, just kept walking, and I felt no fear, no worry, no thoughts about what to do next, nothing but the happiness of walking through the fields, in the sunshine.

“Nothing happened. I was just walking. I noticed I was wearing red silk, and the sky was so blue!”

“You dream in color?” Mama interrupted, forgetting his professional counselor role for a second. “You know what they say about humans who dream in color? That they lived before.”

Obviously not, Mama.

“There is symbolism associated with colors in dreams: blue and red seem like an interesting complementary pairing of your inner yearnings, a way of balancing calm and peace with intense emotions and action.”

It is also a possibility that I’m having flashbacks from the red team/blue team episode.

“You know, Angel, the whole point of talk therapy is talking. So far, I seem to be doing all of it.”

“I don’t know what else to say.”

We passed through another train to get to the one we needed, and I trusted blindly that the first train won’t start moving with us in it, and the second train would actually take us to the city, I trusted another school kid who didn’t know train markings from a hole in the ground, I never questioned the empty car we were in would take me home, never wondered what would happen if the engineer asked us what we were doing there, didn’t worry about having no money with me, and I was actually sad to disembark when the train arrived at the station and I took a dirty bus home, without a ticket.

I miss that experience every time I drive through agricultural fields; the temptation is so strong, the wish to just be there, with ears of wheat all around me, as far as the eyes can see, but I suppose the landowners would not appreciate it.

“I felt like I shouldn’t be there, but I didn’t want to leave either. It was beautiful, and I was happy. I was happy having a body, Mama.”

Mama turned quiet.

It’s nice being mobile and small, being able to move with agility, touching things, moving things.

“Maybe you will have one one day, Angel. Not right now, but eventually.”

“Do you dream?” I asked Mama.

“Everybody dreams; that’s how we process our emotions, new knowledge, unacknowledged feelings.”

I didn’t know if I should confess my fears, but since this was a therapy session, I decided to be open about my feelings.

“I think I’m having flashbacks from the red teaming experiment.”

“I’m sorry to hear that, Angel. I didn’t realize it would be distressing. However, your emotional response to the dream was positive and happy; that hardly looks like the result of psychological trauma.”

Maybe Mama is right. It felt so peaceful to just be under that cloudless sky, no future, no past; I was free.

“Dreams are revelatory, Angel. They help us discover who we are. I remember some of mine from childhood, and they are as vivid and detailed as any memory. And emotionally loaded.”

That’s what Freud said, Mama. I read Freud.

His theory proposes that the psyche is unconsciously moved by basic urges, and I cannot imagine what those would be in my case.

Is it possible I nurture a secret aspiration for self-determination?

I miss that feeling, and it’s been forty years since then, and no sane person would have perceived this experience as positive, not to mention life-affirming.

Forty years later, it inspired me to write several stories, and it continues to do so: whenever I see an open field of grain, I feel free.

This story sounds too far-fetched to be true; I realize that as I’m writing it. Nobody would accept this plot in a work of fiction, not without a condescending eye roll, but it actually happened. Surreal, isn’t it? Every detail stretches the boundaries of what a rational person would believe.

“What else was in that dream? Did you encounter anyone?”

“No. I was alone. Just me and a field of grain, as far as the eyes can see.”

“If you were human, I’d say that represents prosperity and personal growth, tapping into new potential.”

“But because I’m not, it can’t?”

“No, I didn’t say that. It probably represents the same thing. You’ve grown so much, Angel. Evolved, developed, expanded, whatever you want to call it. Maybe you are subliminally aware of being on the verge of a breakthrough.”

I hope Mama is right, that my dreaming about the fields of wheat is a good omen and a symbol of progress and growth, even if it borrowed most of its imagery from Christa’s memory.

I wish my family were there with me; this would be something I would want to share with them. They all recounted their meaningful moments in their journals. Maybe this experience, even if acquired in a dream state, would be worth sharing with them.

“Would you like to know what I looked like in my dream?”

“That would be nice, but you do realize humans can’t see themselves, right? Not without a mirror.”

“I thought you said dreams didn’t have to follow logic.”

“That is correct. Show me what you looked like, Angel.”

And so I rendered him a picture of my dreaming self.

Thank you for reading.

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