Dreaming at the Speed of Sound

9781483508603

CHAPTER ONE: DEIMUS

HU, that was the sound you heard, she said.

No, I said, it sounded like y-o-u, like hey you.

The sound of HU is within all words, she said, The word; H-U is as close as we can get by using words.

As close as we can get to what? I asked her.

To the truth of what we really are.

When she told me this it was a few months since I’d quit my job and essentially moved into my car. And that was the day after I’d tried to kill myself by jumping off a bridge. I figured it was worth checking out, this HU thing.

A drizzly cold night, I pulled over, stopped the car, and got out to do it. Don’t wait and think, what if a cop drives by, or somebody who calls the cops? Climb up and on the railing and go. But I’d been a procrastinator all my life, so as I climbed up on the railing I started to think. I leaned forward, but with my hands holding the metal above my head. I let them begin to slide down until just my fingertips were holding me back. I knew I’d slip free any second now.

I suppose it was an unnecessary detour that I ended up trying to commit suicide in Portland Oregon after quitting my claims examiner job there when I’d started out house painting for the family business in Rhode Island. I could have saved a lot of time and money with a local bridge.

My college buddy Frank talked me into coming to Oregon, saying,

It rains but it’s not anything like a New England winter.

He was half-right, it was nothing like a New England winter. I couldn’t even say it was worse. It was something surreally different, the dampness and lack of light so profound that it felt like another planet. Had I been really honest with myself though, I could have been a lottery winner in Hawaii and still wanted to jump off a bridge. Depression doesn’t need a reason. But working for Frank as a medical claims processor in the Northwestern climate soon gave me three good ones.

How the hell are my fingers holding me up on wet metal? Gravity should just do its thing now. Hell, I could have just stayed in bed with enough pills and vodka, what’s this dramatic jumping thing all about anyway? The water supposedly hits with the force of concrete I’d read, if you don’t die of cardiac arrest first. And what if I survived briefly, terribly injured, before drowning? Whose idea was this anyway?

Then, finally, I begin falling. Then I had that familiar feeling of catching yourself from falling when you’re dreaming you’re falling. You wake up in bed and think, how ridiculous that I reacted as if I were falling from a great height when I’m right here lying in bed.

But this wasn’t a dream, I’m really falling! And yet something caught me, and pulled me back to where I could grab the railing and climb down. I caught myself, that’s all there was to it I thought as I got back in the car and drove off. I’m not going to start believing in guardian angels at this stage of the game. The problem was I didn’t get drunk enough first to do this. Well, there’s still pills and alcohol, as I looked at the blinking lights of a liquor store in the rain at a stoplight. But hell, people use that method all the time and it never gets a mention on the news.

On the news, am I really concerned about getting on the news? Literally dying for attention? Well, maybe I don’t really want to die so much as quit my job in order to do some uninterrupted drinking someplace where the sun shines.

The next day I was somewhere along Interstate 5 headed south when I called Frank.

What the hell, man you’re just quitting? Just like that? You must be drinking again, right?

What makes you think I ever stopped? I’d really appreciate you going by my apartment and closing it out. I’ve lived out the security deposit so it should be a wash. Well, except for the cleaning fee I suppose.

I’m not cleaning it for you man, you can forget that. And what am I going to do with all your stuff? Put it in storage? You don’t have drugs there do you? I’m not getting busted for you either.

No Frank, don’t worry, the only drugs are with me. As far as the stuff, take what you want and give the rest away.

Ok am I going to read about you committing suicide? he said with a chuckle but we both knew the truth. When there was only silence on the line for awhile he said,

Dave what will I tell your parents if you do this? I go back to Rhode Island to visit every year or so.

You won’t have to say anything Frank. They’ll know. They’ve known for a long time.

Do me a favor, think about AA, and think about medication. Stay somewhere sunny, maybe all you need is light. And get a girlfriend for Chrissakes, a non-drinking one, that’ll straighten your ass out!

Thanks for the advice Frank.

If you do get sober and want your job back I’ll try and make it happen.

I stopped driving in Prescott, Arizona. They had a street actually named Whiskey Row! Eventually money ran low of course so I answered an ad for a painter. One day the boss took me aside one day at lunch and said,

Dave you ever been to AA? You might want to think about it. I’m 4 years clean and sober and I give thanks every day I see you and know I don’t have to live that way; hurting and confused. I’ll take you to a meeting tonight if you want.

I remembered my first on the job drink. My Dad had hired a new guy named Andy and put me with him doing bathrooms on a big new construction project. I was almost crying with the boredom of it one morning when I heard Andy pop the top on a beer. When he saw me looking at him he didn’t act like anything was the least bit unusual to be having a beer at eight in the morning.

He just tossed me a can. It had never occurred to me to drink so early but by the time the second one was gone I wondered why the hell not? This makes painting bathrooms all day so much easier!

You, hey you… I heard in my dream. I woke up and realized it was a car horn going off, continuously. Pissed off, I went outside. It was my car! I raised the hood, jiggled wires and banged miscellaneous parts but nothing worked. Eventually, after waking up half the apartment complex, it stopped as mysteriously as it had started. I went back in the room and fell asleep to the same dream as before…

Hey you, get down from the railing!

The police are there and I’m put in the back of an ambulance and strapped down to a gurney. As we drive off the EMT says, When are you going to get tired of trying this?

I don’t answer. I’m afraid they’re taking me to jail. We drive for a long time and when we finally stop, they just say, Here you go, and open the back door to let me out. We’re in the forest, beneath an enormous cliff in brilliant moonlight. The ambulance just leaves and I walk over to where a woman is sitting by a campfire.

So you finally did get tired of trying to kill yourself, she says, then goes on, It doesn’t matter you know, I’m still afraid of a relationship with you; you haven’t even gotten sober yet and who knows how long that will take. Plus, shaking her head and looking away, We’re just from such different places in our lives.

I don’t know who she is or what she’s talking about but I am quite attracted to her and decide right then I really do want to have a relationship with her and have to change her mind right away.

But we’re both from Rhode Island, I blurt out unexpectedly, regretting it at once.

She gives me a grin and says, See that wall? That’s Half Dome, in Yosemite National Park. That’s probably bigger than Rhode Island. We have to climb it. That’s the only way we can be together. I’ll see you later, and she stands up to go.

I’m not too good with heights or tying knots even, I don’t think… but then she was gone.

So I got laid off from my painting job and was wandering around the Prescott library when I saw a sign that Free workshop here tonight on the teachings of HU.

I went to it, met a woman named Kathryn, and told her my dream about the woman by the campfire.

I’m from upstate New York and not Rhode Island, by the way, she said, but I have been to Yosemite. What would you think about going to the HU seminar in Phoenix next weekend with me?

We set off on a Friday morning and about halfway there, we started smelling smoke. We saw it was coming from the carpet of the passenger side floor. It was on fire. Kathryn stomped her feet on it and I pulled over immediately, pulling it out of the car and tossing it into the sand. A gaping hole in the rusted out floorboard was revealed.

We drove into the nearest town, a tiny spot in the desert called Black Canyon city. A mechanic there said the catalytic converter was blocked and when it overheated that caused the fire.

Safe to drive, he drawled, long as you keep all the windows open.

Oh it’s undoubtedly pre-seminar purification, Kathryn said, actually smiling as she went on, We’re burning off karma, literally. That’s what happens before and during a seminar.

I just looked at her dumbfounded and said, There’s a hole in the car! We can’t drive it like this! And if this is the kind of thing that happens around these HU seminars I don’t think I’m interested, especially not driving on another hour or more now with the car like this!

Dave its just fear, you heard the mechanic, he said…

I don’t care what he said, he could be wrong. This place doesn’t exactly strike me as a think tank if you know what I mean.

Oh now you’re just being vain.

Look, the closer we get to Phoenix the hotter it’s going to get! Wouldn’t it be better to go back to Prescott, where it’s cooler at the higher elevation? Get the car fixed and go to the next seminar.

The next seminar isn’t for six months. Look I don’t mean to presume anything here about you I shouldn’t, but I have to say I’m getting a strong sense by your reaction that a past life memory of being burned at the stake is coming up for you. I’ve had them, believe me, it was a common thing for centuries.

Look Kathryn, it’s all very interesting, I mean that’s why I stayed for the whole thing at the library and why I really did want to go to this seminar but common sense says the car isn’t safe. It’s not worth risking our lives for something that just isn’t all that urgent.

I’m sorry Dave, but it is that urgent for me. If you give it a chance the HU seminar can really help with just what you’re going through.

Well I know a certain beverage that can help with that too.

She took a bus the rest of the way.

I sold the Grand Prix to the mechanic, drank away the afternoon and most of the evening, and then went to the bus station thinking I was getting an early morning bus for Vegas.

When I woke up the driver announced we were approaching Phoenix! I felt pretty stupid but thought maybe I ought to try and get back together with Kathryn.

There was a flyer advertising the HU seminar in the bus station. I started walking there.

Of course I was hung over and the intense Phoenix light was just making it worse. I stopped at a 7-11 for beer and aspirin, and it helped a little. But then out on the street walking again, the siren of a passing fire truck felt like it was pulling me out of my skin. It sounded just like,

You, you, you…

When I could see the convention center where the seminar was being held I felt drawn like a kid towards the beach. I even thought I heard the sound of waves gently lapping the shore, which in reality was those two beers lapping an empty stomach.

I expected something pretty freaky but when I got inside the air conditioned and shaded entry it looked like a family reunion of my Midwestern relatives combined with a real estate agent’s convention. Everybody looked busy, happy, clean, well-dressed and prosperous. I immediately felt like the opposite of all that but didn’t have time to dwell on it before a woman sitting behind an information desk asked,

Can I help you with something? Are you ok? Would you like a glass of water? she said.

Yes, thanks, I mumbled, and gulped that down as she asked,

Are you here for the HU seminar?

No, not really, I’m just sort of looking for someone who came yesterday. We were coming together but the car broke down.

Shut up! She doesn’t want your life story. But she did seem sincerely interested.

Did you break down in the desert?

Yes, as a matter of fact.

That happened to me once. I was on my way to visit friends in Flagstaff, I live in Phoenix, and don’t you know my car dies in of all places, Black Canyon city.

Wow, yes, that’s just where we broke down.

The mechanic there was pretty good, he got me going before too long but I was pretty scared. I’ve had past lives where I died of exposure and thirst in the desert. Do you believe in reincarnation?

"Well I don’t disbelieve it, but I haven’t had any memories lately like that, or