Artistry of Illusion (John Dotson’s dream of December 11, 2012)
Looking through the window I spot Mother standing on the back porch of the K.s’ house (a very unusual place for her to be). Mother spots me. And I can tell that by using her superpowers, she has rather miraculously reckoned that I have indeed been doing something illicit. But no, how could she?
Yes, she’s onto me. I can feel through the heat in my bones that she is in hot pursuit. I panic. I look for some immediate place to stash the bottle. I look down a galvanized tub full of woodchips and newspapers at my feet. As I am digging in a frenzy, I am deeply worried that I won’t be able to bury the bottle quickly enough or deeply enough, and that I will easily be snared. I dig onward. This will surely work…This will never work.
I dash out the door to engage her in the yard and block her path.
She confronts me outright. It is a younger Mother. She is quite sassy and completely full of herself: “Well then, what were we drinking? We were drinking something weren’t we? It was something brewed…”
I’m shaking my head (a grown-up man for God’s sake!) in absolute disbelief. She continues:
“I know it was something brewed. Or it was wine.” And with withering and menacing sarcasm, confident that she’s got me, “Well then, we’ll just all have to have something to drink for breakfast.”
She is such a smart-ass. I just want so much to wipe the smirk off her face. I want to smack her. I can’t even imagine…can’t ever imagine the hell she’d like me to pay.
My mind gyres wildly as I stand there frozen in my tracks. And I tell her, “Mother, I’m just not going to take any more of this shit.”
And of course, it’s completely beyond imagining that she could possibly understand, or that she’s even capable of hearing me, or of wanting to. It is a back yard showdown of the first magnitude. She is in full furor—an elemental force is animating her. I must make a stand.
But her figure is so imposing. She has made herself metaphysical.