I went to bed last night thinking about fences and walls. We recently removed a large section of the old fence topped with barbed wire that surrounded our two acres when we bought the place. All our neighbors and visitors have told us how much they love the fence being gone, how beautiful the forest vista, and how spacious this whole part of the neighborhood feels now.
When I was growing up there were no fences or walls dividing the lots in our suburban neighborhood, which gave a marvelous spacious feeling to our environment. Everyone, adults and children and dogs, felt connected and could connect easily with each other. Fifty years gone by, high walls now surround all those lots, and the neighborhood feels like a vast prison.
I was going to write more about walls and fences, but the dream I had last night is much more interesting to me, and I thought you might find the dream interesting, too.
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I’m walking on a dirt road on the coast of Spain in summer. I’m younger than I am now, wearing a T-shirt and jeans and I’m barefoot and have no possessions.
I come to a house on a hill with a view of the ocean. There are no other houses anywhere to be seen. In search of food, I enter the house and find three women there. I don’t know them and they don’t know me. Nevertheless, they accept me into their midst and one of them says of another of the women, “She’s a guitarist from New York.”
This woman, the guitarist from New York, has long brown hair and is very beautiful to me. She’s wearing a skimpy purple dress and invites me to embrace her. We embrace and kiss and disrobe, and she leads me away from the others and we make love.
The other women inform me they are a lesbian couple, and one of them says she’s never been with a man and would like to try. So she and I have sex, which upsets the guitarist from New York. She gives me a look to say From now on you will only have sex with me. Okay?
I give her a look to say Will do.
Now I’m doing some kind of work on the place and need a shovel. A moment later I’m in a big city in the 1930s in winter. There are electric trolleys and automobiles from that era, and the people are dressed in the fashions of those times.
I wander around until I find a hardware store. I choose a shiny new shovel and an axe, and on my way to the counter with them I remember I have no money. So I lean the shovel and axe against the counter and walk out of the store intending to go to my parents’ house in California to get some money.
I walk up a street where all the buildings collapsed long ago and trees and vines are now growing in the rubble. I come to a bus stop amidst the ruins and ask a man if buses still stop here. The man speaks English with a thick Spanish accent and says, “Yes. Buses still come here.”
A crowded bus arrives. I get on and say to the driver, “I don’t know how much it is. I want to go to the airport.” I get out my wallet and it is bulging with fifty and hundred-dollar bills. The driver gives me a ticket and two dollars.
I take a seat beside a woman wearing a heavy coat, her hair and face covered by a bandana. She removes her bandana and let’s her hair down. The guitarist from New York!
“Why do you need to fly to California?” she asks, pursing her lips for a kiss, “when your wallet is full of money?”
fin
Something piano solo from our new CD Through the Fire
