His true passion, however, was for surrealist art. If he could have spent the entire school year discussing Salvador Dali and Max Ernst, he would have happily done so. Lynch vividly remembered Platt’s take on the surreal and his accompanying theory on the origin of dreams.
“Your conscious and subconscious are behind two separate and differently functioning doors. Your conscious is behind a latch door like you have on your dorm rooms. One of your senses…sight, smell, taste, whatever…centers in on something and your conscious lets it in. It then gets stored in an organized place, like a filing cabinet, and gets recalled when it your conscious chooses.
“Your subconscious lies behind a revolving door. It takes in absolutely everything. When you look into a crowd, your subconscious sees and remembers every face. When you glance at the front page of a newspaper, your subconscious remembers every word.
“While your conscious memories get stored in a filing cabinet, your subconscious memories get piled in a heap. They are recalled while you sleep and fly through the revolving door without control and in no particular order. That’s why you see people in dreams that you don’t believe you’ve ever seen before. That’s why things continuously morph. That’s why, while a dream in its entirety can seem bizarre, the individual pieces…the minutia…often make sense.
“It’s also why the most vivid dreams occur in the twilight of your sleep cycle…in that dozing period when you’re sort of half asleep and half awake. This is where your conscious and subconscious collide. The dreams are more memorable and easier to recount because the intrusion of the conscious causes them to make more sense.”
It was one man’s theory, impossible to prove or disprove. Regardless, Platt’s take on the “twilight dream” described Lynch’s to a T.
He was sitting in a room that he’d never seen before, but, somehow, it was the dining room at his parents’ house. His father was sitting at the head of the table as he normally did, but his teeth were metal and sharp like he had a small bear trap in his mouth. His mother was in her regular seat as well, but she kept stabbing her mutated meal with a wooden spoon sending bits of it across the table each time. His sister was there with her husband and their five kids. They had no odd characteristics other than the fact that in real life they only had two.
Lynch told his family that he’d closed a case, and they all cheered. His mother then pointed her wooden spoon at his sister’s family. She half-sung and half-spoke.
“Remember what I said about your sister? See? I told you!”
Then one of Lynch’s nephew’s that didn’t exist started to sing like Barry White. A feeling of ascension came over Lynch bringing him out of his dream. He opened his eyes to find himself face to face with his clock radio. It had gone off. WPPO FM was rockin’ the Barry White.
…Can’t get enough of your love…and I don’t know why, don’t know why…
Freshly awake, Lynch could remember what the dream version of his mother said to him. Just as Platt asserted, the context didn’t make sense, but the words did.
When James’s sister and her husband first got married, they got to work on trying to have kids right away. They had a very difficult time with it. They unsuccessfully employed the biblical method for close to two years before seeking the aid of a fertility specialist. Fortunately, there was nothing wrong with either of them medically, so unfortunately, there wasn’t much the doctor could do. She prescribed them some fertility pills which may as well have been dog suppositories. From there, they took a stab at some new age treatments which yielded nothing. They eventually decided to go in utero.
Her mother was against it.
She spoke to James in confidence, and he remembered every word.
“You watch! They’re going to spend all this money, and risk permanent injury, and, in the end, all they need to do is calm down! They are pressurizing themselves! Mark my words, they’ll have this first child the idiotic way, and, once the pressure is off…boom! She’ll be pregnant again, the real way! When you put pressure on yourself, things don’t work correctly. You over think; you cramp your brain and the brain controls everything!”
Her prediction came true.
Lynch rubbed his forehead and sat up.
Weird…
He looked at Julie who was still asleep despite the dulcet tones of Barry White. He stared at her thoughtfully for a full minute, and then got up to take another look at the photos on his dining room table.
THE CARTOON TEETH, THE GRUMPY SNAKE, THE EIGHT-POINT BUCK, AND THE UPROOTED TREE
Friday
1. Ernie’s Apartment
Ernesto Gomez lived alone. For a thousand reasons, he lived alone. His apartment was on the river in a complex that was barely two years old. He was among the first ten to sign a lease, so he got a special rate on a two-bedroom unit. He set up the master bedroom as a gym. When you live alone, you can do things like that. He had just finished his third set of squats when his phone rang.
“Hola.”
“Hey, partner. I cleared some lost time with Carrie. Feel like taking a ride?”
“I’ve got to shower and stuff, but sure, where?”
“I want to head over to the ‘Church of Rock.’ I had a thought.”
“You had a thought?”
The dynamics between James and Julie were well known to Ernie.
“Alright, I had some inspiration.”
“So, Julie had a thought.”
“How soon can you be ready?”
“Give me twenty minutes.”
“Cool, meet me along the river bank outside your place, and bring your bathroom scale and a hoodie.”
“My what and
