The Opening of the Outer Eye

I was off like a shot.  I heard the wind howling past my ears.  I was running so fast that the world was a blur in front of me.  I could still see my objective ahead, a dim, small ball of light.

If I could just get that ball of light, then there would be no need to heal the pumpernickle that had been bothering me since then.

But I wasn't fast enough.  Grover got in front of me.

"You're finished here, Nunzio," he said.

My name isn't Nunzio, it's Rip.  But I knew he was talking about me.  He was talking about me to the other thirty people in the room.  They were all laughing and nodding their heads.  The room was comfortable and large.  Everywhere, people sat politely sipping tea and balancing on the edges of couches.

"Stop laughing at me," I said.

"Stop laughing at me!" I said!

Rip sat up on the couch.

It took him a minute to remember where he was.  The comfortable setting of the office reminded him of who he was and restored his nerves.  He felt the couch, with its old springs, sagging gently under him

     Shaking his body wearily, he rose from the couch and made his way over to the mahogany desk where a huge pile of paperwork lay.  That paperwork had been there a long time, and it was likely to be there a lot longer.  The Mendelson Campaign was a pretty thorny one.

Lolita came into the office through the only door.  She held a steaming-hot cup of coffee.

"I thought you might need this," she said.

Lolita was about six feet tall.  She had a nice, almost-model quality face which was made up relatively tastefully.  She tried rather hard to offset her size.  She was by no means fat, or even heavy, but her frame was proportionally large to suit her height.

"Thanks, Lo'," said Rip.

"You're welcome, boss," said Lolita.

Rip drank the coffee.  It singed the already ragged roof of his mouth and stung his throat unmercifully as it went down.  Rip sang out in pain, and then sighed as the discomfort faded.

Lolita was standing there smiling at him.  Then she turned and walked out of the room in huge strides, closing the door behind her.

Rip rose to gaze out the office window at the city.  The clouds overhead were very dark, and the city had almost a nightlike-quality to it.  The lights from the windows of the buildings shone out with a comfortable familliarity as the dark thunderclouds poured in from the south.

When Rip had finished his paperwork, he made his way out the door with an umbrella over one arm and his raincoat over the other.  He wished Lolita a good night and he made his way downstairs and out the door.

The bus was large and dirty.  A black man dressed in bright-colored garments, his hair knotted and replete with beads, grooved with a smooth motion to the music coming from his old ghetto-blaster.

Rip looked away when the man grooved in his direction.

"S'all a pointless dream," came the words from the boom-box.

And I woke up.

     The words, "It's all a pointless dream" still rang through my head.  I could feel the beat and hear the sound of the singer's voice replay itself again and again as I moved about my apartment, but the details of the song had already faded so that I could not remember it directly.

In the mess tent I told Stell about my dream.  She said the song reminded her of a song by The Towing Moses.  I said I'd never heard the song, but I must have, at least somewhere.

I wrote home today.  I had just called Mom last week, so her voice was fresh in my mind.  I thought about her and her new job at the garment shop.  I asked her about her new boyfriend.  And I told her about my dream.

I thought she'd be interested because the man in the dream looks like her boyfriend, now that I think about it.  And here he was telling me it's all a pointless dream.

When I think about how long we've been out here I start to agree with him.  At least nothing's happened.  I told Mom that too.  She'd be glad to know that.

I wrote some more about the dream:

'It's just that I can't get the rhythm of that song out

  of my head.  I know I've heard it before.  Is it one of

those old Duke Ellington tunes Uncle Marty used to play on

the piano?

When dreams are as real as that, I get to wondering 

what makes this life so much more appealing than that one.

Don't you ever wish you were still dreaming?

Send some more candybars.

Love, Rip.'

I put it in the mail.  Sergeant stopped me on the way out and asked me if I knew what a clean bunk meant.

"Yes sergeant," I said.

"Well, Isley, why in the hell does yours have all that damn sand in it?"

"I don't know sergeant."

"Don't know?"

"No sergeant."

"Don't know?"

"No sergeant!"

"Don't know?"

"No sergeant!"

"Don't know?"

"Hah!" Rip started up.

The man looking in on him from outside the ticket window repeated himself.  He was clearly an American; he was far too polite.  He obviously had been trying to buy a metro ticket and had not guessed that Rip had been dozing.

"I'm sorry," the man said, smiling broadly.  "Maybe mine French not is too good.  Will this take the Eiffel Tower to me?"

Rip held up his fingers to indicate the fare.  He glared at the American.  People behind the American were looking around impatiently.  The train howled through the station.

The American helplessly tried to cash a traveller's check right there.  Grunting with fury, Rip allowed the man the faux pas and slammed the ticket into the dispenser-tray.

What had been a slow section of the morning had turned into a ridiculously busy rush.  The line stayed very long.  When Rip's shift finally ended, he was exhausted.

It was raining as he came out of the metro station.  He walked upward into the torrent.  He found his way to The Golden Calf where he was to meet Lolita for lunch.

Lolita entered the cafe just as he sat down.  Her hair was dripping wet and dark from the moisture.  All the eyes of the men in the cafe were on the body of the tall blond woman as she came in.

"Shit for the rain," she said, kissing Rip.

They had a drink or two.  Then they dodged more raindrops and went to Jacque's where friends of theirs gathered often for good conversation and fine meals.  Jacque served a wonderful dinner that afternoon, and the talk was interesting.

"Did you see another philosopher in the station?" Yve asked

"No," Rip replied, "only a lost American."

The talk turned to Paternoir's latest work.

"It is full of dream images," Jacque said.  "And very well colored too.  I am particularly fascinated by the way he uses the dreams."

"Is it in the way that Leblanc is writing?" asked Lolita.

"No," Yve responded for Jacques.  "It is much subtler, yes?  There is a sense of displacement but no actual dreams take place."

"There is the one in the train station," Jacques corrected, drinking his wine.

"Which?" Rip started up.

"Ah, the one in which LeRoi dreams he is running towards a light and is stopped before reaching his goal, only to find that goal is his train which has arrived."

Rip experienced a typical, but no less disturbing feeling of deja vu.

"Rip," called Anya from the next room, "come in here.  I want to show you something."

Rip left the conversation behind him.  He went through the door.  It closed behind him.

"Touch my breasts," Anya said.  Her sweater was hoisted above her nipples and she gazed at Rip expectantly.

"But Lolita," Rip said, touching the cool skin.

"Lolita is watching," replied Anya.  They all were.  The door had turned to glass.

I woke up with a big boner.  I don't remember what the dream was about, but I remember seeing a lady's tits.  I wonder if that's what they really look like.

I got dressed and went downstairs.  Lolita had just finished making us breakfast.  I felt a little funny around her this morning.  I think she was in my dream too.

We ate but we didn't talk much.  Dad and Mom were both looking down.  "Lolita, you can clean up later," my father said to her.

"Si, senor," Lolita said.  And she left.

Nobody was saying anything.  I ate my bacon, but I got that guilty feeling as I tasted the grease on my tongue.

"Rip, your father and I want to talk to you," said his mother.  She looked at Dad.

Dad looked at me then.  He had this look on his face like he was trying to show me how much he cared, but he was trying to be strict too.

"But I've got to catch the bus," I said.

"This won't take long," Dad said.  "Your mother and I want to talk to you about that dream you had last night."

My heart started beating really fast.

"Do you realize the difference between a dream and reality, honey?"  Mom asked.

"Yes, Mom," I said.

"Rip," Dad said, "the woman in your dream was very anxious to show you her breasts."

I didn't know what to say.

"Son, we're concerned that you don't seem to know when something's real," Dad went on.

"So we wanted you to see my breasts," Mom said.  And she raised her sweater up over her breasts and I saw them.

Rip woke up in the chair.  The quiet of the library surrounded him.  The book was on his lap.

Rip looked at the clock.  It was five-twenty, just about time to go to dinner.  But he knew he had one more chapter to finish.

He turned to the page and began to read:

'The quality of imagery is, as has been previously

discussed, of the foremost importance to a writer.  With

it, he can paint the kind of picture that sets his scene

most effectively.  When Faulkner refers to the machinery

in the factory as "gaunt, staring, motionless wheels," he

does not mean to say that the machinery is really staring

at us.  He is using this image to enhance the feelings of

lonliness in the reader.

'Your dreams similarly are a product of enhancement.

They are playing off the feelings that you have been ex-

periencing and redirecting them into dream imagery.  So

by referring to Lolita's face as "almost model-quality"'

Rip stopped reading.  There was something definitely wrong here.  He looked again at the page.

'...by referring to Lolita's face as "almost model-quality"'

The page was still referring to his dream.  Rip flipped the pages of the book.  The book was whole.  All of the other pages were exactly how he remembered them.

So why was this book referring to him in particular?

Rip considered the possiblility that he was dreaming now.  But he felt awake.  Everything seemed real.  He was sure he was really here, really in the chair.  When he got back to Omaha, he could check it out with his flying instructor...

I started awake at the sound of my tray table being brought to its upright position.  The plane was landing.

"We're approaching our destination," said the pilot over the intercom.

"Or are we?" said the man next to me.  He smiled enigmatically.

Rip tried to open his eyes, but he was so tired.  His entire body felt like it was weighted down.  Each movement was of the utmost difficulty.  Every move that he would be required to do in order to undertake the simplest activity was so difficult that he doubted he would be able to do anything at all.

In addition, his mind was so clouded, so fogged with exhaustion, that he had no memory of his situation.  There was no way to know for sure if he was dreaming or if he was awake.

His consciousness groaned for a lightening of its burden, either an escape into sleep or a release into the dawn.

I was suddenly lying in bed.  The covers were splayed all about me in cool, sweaty disarray.  I didn't want to get up.  I lay there in a kind of contorted, frightened discomfort.  The sensation of heaviness had been so everpresent in the dream that I feared its return.

But I was wide awake now.  A series of dreams spread out behind me like a set of steps; each one going down and down.  They faded into the distance like a staircase in the mist.

I rose out of bed.  The cold floor met my feet and pained them slightly as I adjusted to the surface.

Winkie trotted over to me, his tags clinking friendlily.

"Heya, Winkie!  Hey, boy!"  I said, scratching his head.  He sat there gratefully, his coal-black eyes staring at me with adoration.

I managed to get myself dressed and made breakfast.  I remembered a dream about bacon, so I made some.  I tasted the grease on my tongue and thought about my cholesterol level.  I looked around, feeling my stomach, and wondered if I should ever get myself into shape.

It being Christmas break, I had the day, and even the week to myself.  It was snowing gently outside, covering last night's old snow with a fresh layer.  I thought I might go to the museum.  I thought I might ask Leslie.

Her phone rang once.  Twice.  Finally, "Hello?"

"Hello, Leslie, this is Rip."

"Morning, Rip!"  said Leslie.  Her full voice tinned over the phone line pleasantly.  "I was just thinking about you."

"Likewise," I said.

            "What are you doing with your day?"

"I thought," I said, "I might go to the Metropolitan Museum.  I haven't been there in a long time.  I thought you might care to go."

"Oh, no, Rip," Leslie said sadly.  "I've been putting off these papers all week and I'm going to get half of them done today."

"Ah!  I see!"  I said, sagely.

"Wait a minute!"  she said.  "Why aren't you doing your papers?"

"Well, most of my students asked for extensions," I explained.  "The few I have can wait until the weather is less picturesque."

"It is a beautiful day," she mused, her voice sounding preoccupied, presumably with something in front of her.  "Well, I'll try and get out with you one day this break."

"Promise?" I chided.

"Promise!" she said, her voice smiling.  "Bye, Rip."

"Goodbye, Leslie," I said.

I hiked through the snow.  It was a foot deep.  It used to storm like this in Wiltonshire when I was a boy.  Those memories warmed me a bit.  All about, the snow fell softly, floating down from the sky as if travelling deliberately to a fixed spot.

Trucks plowed through the dense snowfall, working their way along the white streets in a delayed single file line.  They passed me slowly as I walked the city blocks to my destination.  All about, the icy fill of the air made my nose ache.  I touched it delicately, feeling nothing but the pressure on my sinuses.

As I made my way closer and closer to the museum I began to ponder the quality of the city under snowfall.  It was rather like a dream, I thought, pondering the sensation of reality I had gotten from my dream the previous night.  Only somehow, there was that difference that led me to know it was real;  one knows one is awake in a way that one remembers having been asleep before.

This is the price one pays for researching Carl Jung.  There is always the question of one's teaching versus one's research.  It had been several years since I did any real reading on Jung.  Several years!  Where has the time gone?

And that reading had so preoccupied me.  What with that tall young lady student of mine asking me all those questions and making me feel rather like a character from a Nabokov novel, it was quite a relief to return to the words of Jung.  Such a gentle man.  I should have liked to have met him.

I arrived at the museum to find it rather crowded.  The weather had not kept anyone away.  Scores of children with their parents crossed the immense floors from here to there, their footsteps and calls echoing about the enormous chamber of the main lobby.  It sounded very busy and very pleasant.

What with this being my first excursion to the museum in many months, I hastened to check the exhibit list.  To my pleasant surprise, I found that the museum had brought in a special exhibit from the Pantine Collection;  many of the paintings of Dali.  This was extraordinarily good fortune for me.  There was, in one of the books I was reading about Carl Jung, a photograph of a remarkable painting by Dali.  I had lamented the fact that I would not get a chance to see this painting in person any time soon.  But to my good fortune, it seemed there was a chance it might be here today!

I hastily checked my hat and coat and purchased a ticket to the exhibit.  I climbed the stairs with some eagerness that may have surprised the many children in the museum, and which even surprised me a little bit.

Well, there it was!  Dali At Age Six When He Thought He Was A Girl...  I stared at it with some admiration.  It was a little bit smaller than I had expected.  The elements of the painting had fascinated me more on an individual level than all together.  A series of seemingly disparate elements that did form a unified whole, though that whole was rather nonsensical.

The most fascinating element of the painting was a depiction of the ocean, or of some type of shorline, which was visible to us as being in several perspectives.  On the one hand, it was a proper body of water, joining nicely with the shore.  On the other, if one delved beneath the surface, one could see the water as merely a layer, a kind of liquid sheet over dry ground.  There was something under that layer as well as something piercing it.

I don't know why I'm so struck by this painting.  Dali is hardly my favorite painter.  I much prefer Cezanne or Klee.  But the element of mistrust of one's surroundings, even on so literal a level, was striking to me.

"...was known for his depiction of dream imagery," the tour guide was telling a group of visitors.  "We saw The Persistence of Memory in the other gallery as perhaps the most famous example of surrealist painting."

I walked away.  I generally deplore tour guides.

I was feeling a bit heavy-headed now.  Perhaps I had caught a fever.  I never should have walked all the way in that snow.  Perhaps I'll head back to my apartment and fix myself a nice cup of tea.

I followed up on this impulse and left the museum a bit earlier than I had originally planned to do.  I felt very congested as I began to trudge my way through the already old snow.  The snowfall had stopped, but a huge dark cloud cover was approaching.

The image of the water as several types of existence stuck fast in my mind.  I began to wonder whether the snow itself was of a similar ephemeral construction.

"Oh, good bloody hell," I said to myself.  "I'm delerious, now."

As I walked along the dark snow-covered park, I looked to the left and saw the lake covered with a thin layer of snow.  The wind had begun to blow and the dusty snowfall was swept along the surface of the icy cap.

"Spare a quarter?" said an unfortunate old bum.

But as he reached down to hand the bum a quarter, he realized he was lying in a hospital bed.  He had awoken to find himself acting out his dream.

Dream?  he thought.  It seemed so real.

It was real, he thought.  This isn't real.  I am a professor at a university.

Had I fallen asleep again?  Was I delerious?  I was sitting on a living room floor, my legs crossed.  I had just come out of a deep trance.

But my mind was not clear as it was when I usually emerged from my meditations.  Had I fallen asleep instead?  That didn't usually happen.

Perhaps this was a dream.

To his horror, Rip realized he was on stage and he couldn't remember his next line to save his own life.

The other actors looked at him in some discomfort.

I'm trying, he wanted to say to them.  He implored them with silent pleading looks.  The uncomfortable silence of the audience was now stretching past a feasible point.

"I say again," said one of the actors very deliberately, "we mean well in going to this mask; But 'tis no wit to go."

Rip was speechless.  His voice choked out of him helplessly.

I am not asleep, I shuddered, shaking into wakefullness.  I looked around me.  I was on the sofa.  My head had fallen into my chest, but it was upright now.

I am awake, I said to myself.  I know I am.  I must be.  How much more sleep can there be?  I've just woken up from a dream.  I must be awake.

I am a musician.  I have a job tonight.  I was taking a nap because I got up early this morning.  But I am awake now.

Aren't I?

I mean, I thought to myself, I am in this reality.  And it isn't pleasant all the time.  True, I've gotten into an argument with my best friend and we may not be speaking anymore.  True, my mother is very ill.  And I've been sleeping so much more than I usually have.  But I like this existence.  It's mine.

Isn't it?

No, it isn't, I thought.  This life is but a passing shadow.  It's a dream.  Like we were taught in philosophy class.  There is a higher existence.  I haven't really lived.  This can't be the end of the line.

And he willed himself awake.

And I willed myself awake.  Again.  One past the level I usually do.  I forced myself to deny that this reality I was facing was the true one.

     I insisted there must be something bigger, a greater state of wakefullness.  I wanted to be there, clearheaded.  But I felt my own mortal frailty holding me back.  I felt the weight of my body and my mind keeping me from waking up, really waking up.

The world around me was a fog of nightmares, a reality that I dared not experience.  I was surrounded by enemies.  I was living in a maze of familliar coridors.  My existence was so terrible, so tedious, so tiresome, that I found myself both unable and unwilling to focus on the world I saw.

But I wouldn't go back!  I wouldn't go back to sleep.  It was time to wake up.  Really wake up.

I want to wake up, I tried to say.  A figure came up to me with a syringe.

Get away from me, I screamed.  I want to wake up!

"Wake up, Islius!"  The big booming voice pierced his thin veil of sleep.

He was in his pit, lying in the muck on the floor.  All around him was the evidence of his attempts to claw his way to the surface.  The never-ending stream of hand-prints in supernaturally thick mud faced him as evidence that he was never getting out.

The butt of Hades rod nudged him in the shoulder.  "Up, I say," Hades urged with what, for him, was good humor.

Islius got up.  Automatically, he began to try and climb out of the pit.  But each time he tried to get a handhold on the walls of the pit, he slipped further downward into the mud.

"Don't let me catch you sleeping through your punishment again," said Hades over his shoulder.  Then the god was gone.

I want to wake up, said Islius.  I want to wake up!

But the pit and the world remained.  Islius went through the motions of his punishment and that punishment remained.  There was nothing to do about it.  He was awake.

The End