That was another week that wasn’t
What dreams may come.
What dreams may come.
I have an almighty and unhealthy distrust for dreams. Since we all emerged kicking and screaming into this strange reality we have routinely rested and slept under a moon and stars, the replacement for the sun and blue skies of the day that preceded it, and drifted off into a dream world of many and varying flavours. Many a contrarian have posited the question or notion that perhaps we have everything backwards and that our dream state is the real world, our waking state an artificial construct of long ago seed merchants in our Garden of Doom (Eden, surely? Editor).
I’ve always felt it a little peculiar that the end of every hard-earned day, people find some reason to believe and if not, they drift off into a netherworld seemingly out of their control. Floating on distant shores yet powered down and asleep in a dream world that seems every bit as real as the world around them when awake and when they do in fact awaken once again, into a real world from a dream world, they power up until they power down once more. From one world to another. Sister and a Brother.
And I’m doing the best that I can.
Last night’s dream was a doozy as, in the absence of a presumably injured Jordan Henderson, I had the honour of leading and captaining Liverpool Football Club. As is the precarious nature of dreams, this wasn’t at their hallowed home of Anfield or even an away fixture at one of their fiercest rivals but a non-descript field of dreams and bare singular football pitch with just two simple goals at either end. I distinctly remember leading the team out whilst repeatedly looking at the captain’s armband wrapped around my upper arm, and it absolutely pouring with rain.
So that was the week that wasn’t, the culmination of another seven strange days tallied upon the abacus of life. Following a weekend off after doing the best that I could, Monday was filled with two terrible horror films I’ll never watch again as I hoped my telephone would ring. For the one and only time in recent memory I hoped it would chime as it would (probably) signify some good news but it didn’t, and so after a dream I can’t remember, I entered a Tuesday morning entirely within my local library and the nightmares of revisiting the years of 2014 through 2016 and the tens of emails printed off in defence of an injustice that fell from the sky like a Chinese spy balloon last August.
I burned the midnight oil as Tuesday tiptoed into Wednesday and the best day of the week that wasn’t as without a ringing telephone my son and I watched two outstanding and surprisingly fun films (Missing and Cocaine Bear) before Indiana Jones and The Last Crusade was our backdrop of choice as we revisited the old days with a game of Uno. We play the game whereby we race to a hundred points over several hands of this card game, and a card game we’ve played since his childhood. Our hand-drawn scorebook shows that despite my 3–2 victory on this very day, I am still a long way behind over hundreds upon hundreds of similar games over the years.
He cheats. He denies cheating. He nearly always wins but no matter.
We laughed. We engaged. We smiled as Harrison Ford went in search of the Ark of the Covenant after throwing Nazi’s from an airship as they didn’t have a ticket to ride.
And we didn’t care.
The telephone didn’t ring on Thursday but the letterbox clanged, bringing with it the news I expected but didn’t wish to receive. It seems that despite outlining the horrors no 14 year old should have to experience nor the daily reminder that I was prevented from helping my dear old Mum in her final hours of need, or that a lockdown destroyed my business and that I go to bed every evening hoping and praying that I don’t awaken the following morning held no water for the strangers I met last week. I am damned to live with the images of a grand old lady who didn’t recognise me anymore though I recognised her, and that I should have held her hand or been even a sliver of comfort for her as she entered her own final dream world.
Thursday was to be a day of writing but it was replaced by a day full of anxiety, guilt, tears and thoughts of how much of a gutless wonder I am not being able to follow the path of an otherworldly comedian and my literary writing hero who each chose their own path to their own unique final dream worlds.
Instead I remain in another dream world, that of a purgatorial limbo, unable to see anything worthwhile ahead of me, lonely and forever alone.
Afterword
I told those strangers last week that I have a “Happy Place”, of writing sat cross-legged at an old oak table whilst I hang out with my son, giving him a safe haven to be himself as I spend the time I wish I’d had with my own Father. I despise myself so much I can’t even look him in the eye today.
Took a dark turn didn’t it? Alas. Then again, how many articles are you going to read today that contain the word “purgatorial”?
If you spotted all the music references, congratulations, though I hope one will evade you.
Sweet dreams.
Thanks for reading. For far less serious fare from the bread and circus of life, please see the cave of wonderous delights that is my collected library here or alternatively, here are my three most recently published and future Pulitzer Prize winning articles:
That was the week that wasn’t
A letter to a friend.medium.com
“Missing” (2023)
Highly recommended social media whodunit.medium.com
Facebook censorship and the curious case of John McAfee
A short story from beyond the pale.medium.com