In dreams, only the parts make sense. There’s no seeing the whole story, and our interpretation of the fragments offers very little. They’re stitched together and hackneyed. Superstitious. Pseudo-religious. We try to find meaning in our dreams by piecing them back together, but they have no meaning. They’re not a story.
A dream is about how you live through it.
A dream is—
‘Sir, your medication.’
It’s Elda, my nurse. Her footsteps on the rug.
The blinds of my room are drawn back.
I open my eyes and sunlight blinds me. I refocus on Elda with her silver tray and her terrible plastic cup. Behind her, a vivid blue sky in the window, the shimmering peaks of palm trees.
‘What time is it?’
‘Eight o’clock, sir.’
‘Was I sleeping?’
‘Perhaps. But now it’s time to wake up.’
‘I’m old, Elda. Old and rich and sick. I should be allowed to sleep as much as I like.’
‘Take your medication and you can do as you please,’ Elda says, like I’m due a quick sip of medicine instead of a dozen pills.
Within minutes, these meds will run rampant in my blood, rendering me delirious and wired at the same time. It’s been weeks of this. Day after day in a liminal zone between waking life and unconscious dreaming. Fragments and whole.
I can’t complain.
It was sitting here, drifting around in my drug haze, that I came up with the plan that set this whole thing in motion.
Elda clears her throat. ‘Is there anything else, sir?’
‘No, you can fuck off now.’
‘Very good, sir.’
‘Wait. Is there anyone on the books for today?’
‘You have a call with Allan Watts at eleven.’
‘What does he want?’
‘I don’t know, sir. You told me to schedule it yesterday.’
‘I did? Maybe we should schedule my reasoning as well.’
‘Sir, you don’t tend to enjoy explaining yourself.’
She’s right.
I move my wheelchair across to the window. I watch the still water of the canal, the white split-level mansions and empty yards. There are pools beside sea water. Tennis courts by lawns. This is a paradise of my own making. The envy of all.
When I carved this land from the sea, I sold it as Venice-by-way-of-Miami, but it’s better than that. Venice is a toilet, and while the Americans may have invented our way of life, they didn’t perfect it. The Florida Riviera is a few good beaches and nothing more. The Gold Coast puts it all to shame. We have twenty miles of unbroken soft sand. We have rolling surf and warm winters. We have money and power and support. A place endowed with nature’s blessings and owned by men who can harness such things.
I am one of them.
I lived and dreamed.
I built and conquered.
And as feeble as I am, I’m far from finished.