The future imagined is contingent upon daydreaming, that is, the type of daydreaming that can foretell the future. If I write in the future imagined, you may not know it. Whenever I write my daydreams, I am writing in the future imagined. In this type of daydreaming, the boundary between reality and the imaginary is blurred, and because this type of daydreaming brings the same daydream over and over again, we live out the same moment an endless amount of times, until that moment takes on the same qualities as our memories. Who is to say that what occurs in my dreams or my daydreams did not really happen to me? If I live them and experience them with the same intensity that I experience events in real life, then who is to say that these dreams or these daydreams are not real? If you follow me into my dreams, then ____________.
When we write about dreams, we write them in the past imagined. So too do we write in the past imagined when we write about old love affairs, because nothing is as unreal, as dreamy as love. And nothing is as confusing, as cryptic, as encoded as what occurs, as what is said, when we leave a love affair and suddenly have to live again outside of that dream, that dream where something could occur, might occur, should occur, would occur, could have occurred, might have occurred, should have occurred, or would have occurred.
When does the future imagined become the future? In my future imagined, I am lonely and cold and hunched over a sink washing the few dishes that I have. I have one can of soup. The small apartment is white, and it is winter, and although I am wearing a coat, I am still cold, and my daughter is sleeping in a crib that has been handed down too many times. Not only am I cold and not only is my daughter fatherless, her father doesn’t even know about her. In my future imagined, I depart without letting him know because I know he wouldn’t want her, wouldn’t want this anyhow, so I leave, as ever, with no forwarding address. Not only am I cold and not only is my daughter fatherless and not only does the father not know about my daughter, in my future imagined, I discover that I am dying and I need to find my daughter’s father or there will be no one to take care of her. In my future imagined, he has already gone on with his life. When I find him, he is married to a woman with a big nose and bleached hair, and he agrees to take care of my daughter, and I can die as happily as one can die under such circumstances. In my future imagined, there is no apology, no grievances, no I wish that I had married you instead. In my future imagined, the only thing that redeems me and the present that sent me plunging into such a future imagined is that he silently thinks to himself, something could occur, might occur, should occur, would occur, could have occurred, might have occurred, should have occurred, or would have occurred.
When does the future imagined become the future? I have missed my last two periods, and I have developed headaches that doctors can’t explain. It doesn’t make sense, they say, that the headaches should be on the right side while it is the left side of my face that is going numb. I think maybe the numbness could be residual shingle nerve damage and pain. I mention to the doctors my recent outbreak of shingles, but it doesn’t seem to matter to them. The CAT scan has been scheduled for Wednesday. I think of the future imagined, and I can only think that I have, somehow, through my daydreaming, caused a tumor in my brain.
Reasons the chicken pox virus might reactivate: stress, a weakened immune system caused by certain diseases and cancer, taking certain medications, old age. I add to the list: bad dreams, uncertainty, fear, the loss of a baby, heartbreak.
At what point are you mine and then not mine? When can we trust that the author is using the present or past or future and not the past imagined or future imagined? Once, I had a baby, and I was holding her, and as soon as he showed up, the baby turned into a sheet of paper. Maybe the baby represents what I would really like to have in life, and maybe the sheet of paper represents the writing life; maybe the dream wants to tell me that I can’t have one without the other or that I may have one but not the other. Maybe the dream wants to tell me that as long as we are together, I will have to choose; or maybe the dream chooses for me, and thus I will continue to hold a sheet of paper. In the dream, the sheet of paper was unlined and blank. At what point does the living turn into its own memorial? At what point does life transform into words, full of verb tenses, written on sheets of paper? Does the dream decide for us, or do we decide on the dream?
What made the chicken pox virus reactivate in me? I read somewhere that a man who was dying of cancer kept his hope all through chemotherapy and was able to bring his cancer into remission, but then he got a case of shingles that was so bad he wanted to die. The pain from shingles was so much that he killed himself rather than live through it. He was frail, and the shingles had attacked him in the eye. Nerve pain from shingles can
