Dream of:
13 May 1982 "Mystics"As my girlfriend Bonnie and I were riding along in a car, we reached a river which I recognized as the Ohio River. Thinking about how beautiful the river was, I said, "That's the beautiful Ohio. And that's Kentucky on the other side."
The opposite bank was lush and beautiful. Looking out over the river, I saw a solitary black duck swimming on the surface and I said, "Yea, I dream a lot about that river."
We drove on, entered a large town and passed through amazingly ornate streets, many of which soared toward the sky. I told Bonnie the town was Louisville, the largest town in Kentucky. Earlier we had traveled through Memphis, but we had not seen much there. Now, however, statues (many of which were lions) were all around us, and we absorbed the beauty as we continued through the streets.
We then drove to Portsmouth, Ohio to the
Gay Street House (my father's stately two-story, Victorian home on the southeast corner of Gay and Eighth Streets). My father had rented the House to someone, even though he still retained control of the attic and all the possessions stored there. Bonnie and I walked in the back door of the House and met a woman and some children who showed me a brown paper bag which contained small, gold-colored, baseball coins, each about the size of a quarter and each with a picture of a baseball player on its front. I knew the coins had come from packs of baseball cards because they were exactly like ones I used to collect as a boy. It seemed curious to me that the children were receiving this kind of coin in new packages of baseball cards. When I saw that the dates on the coins were around 1972, I thought, "Well, wait a minute. Maybe these are mine and they were up in the attic. And now they're in this kid's hands."I examined the coins more closely; they even looked like the ones I had left in the attic of the House, because their backs were scratched, just as the backs of my coins had been scratched from my having played games with the coins with other boys. We used to draw a small circle on the sidewalk to see who could throw a coin in it; whoever would land in the circle would win the other coins. The boy holding the bag said he had been playing the tossing game recently and had lost quite a few of his coins.
I decided to ascend to the attic and look around for myself. Bonnie and I walked up the attic stairs and one of the small girls accompanied us. Another small girl and the mother of the children stayed at the bottom of the attic stairs.
Once we had reached the top of the stairs I looked back down to the bottom and noticed a box sitting there on the floor. I was surprised to see my old high school friend Steve Buckner walk in the attic door, climb into the box, and hide in the bottom. As soon as he was in the box, the woman and the little girl walked over to it and stood beside it. The little girl looked into the box, but the woman did not pay any attention to the box. The woman was looking up at me. I looked again and saw that Steve was not actually in a box, but in a brown, leather suitcase. The woman and little girl walked away and Steve zipped himself up inside the suitcase.
I turned toward the attic and looked around. The attic was not dirty and dark like it used to be, but bright and clean. There was even sunlight. Obviously, someone had cleaned up the place.
On one side of the attic sat many boxes of toy models which were arranged in a large stack about two meters high. Hanging from the rafters were many different kinds of stuffed animals, including panthers and dogs. Some were large, about two meters tall. I was surprised to see them there because the last time I had been in the attic they had disappeared. Obviously, someone had brought them back since then. I figured the people who now lived in the House had previously taken the stuffed animals downstairs and then later brought them back. Apparently, the people had not anticipated my returning again to check the attic. All at once I said, "Well, everything is going to go. We're taking everything out of here."
The little girl who had accompanied Bonnie and me up into the attic looked at me as if she were angry, as if she had made a mistake by bringing the things back up to the attic where I could find them.
I decided the best way to remove the things from the attic was to lower them by rope from an attic window. I thought perhaps I could find a pulley around which to wrap the rope; then I could tie little ropes to the main rope to hold each object as it was lowered. That way I could lower the things one after the other. I fashioned the rope and began lowering things from the attic window. Other people began helping.
Suddenly, I looked around and realized that Bonnie and I were no longer in the attic. Instead, we were standing in the little village of Patriot, Ohio and people were now using the rope to lower things into the basement of a house about a block away from the
House in Patriot (the home of my maternal grandparents when I was a child). I watched for a moment, then turned and looked around. Across the street I recognized a house as the one where the Woods family used to live. I thought my friend Lou Khourey (an attorney whom I met in Columbus around 1976 while he was in charge of a group called the Zen Pyramid Society) used to live there.A woman (probably 80 years old) was standing beside me. Referring to Lou, I asked her if she knew what had happened to the black-haired fellow who had lived across the street. She said he had moved about a year ago and that the house had been empty ever since. I looked at the house more closely and saw that it was boarded up and did indeed look empty. The woman could not remember where Lou had gone, but she thought perhaps he had moved to Paris. I said, "Well maybe he moved to West Virginia."
I thought Lou had planned to move to West Virginia and practice law there while living with the members of the Zen Pyramid Society located near Wheeling, but the woman could not remember. I asked her about Lou's friend, Dave. She remembered him and she thought he still lived nearby. I asked her if she could possibly remember where, but she could not seem to remember.
She said she needed to go to her mailbox about eight kilometers away. She boarded a car with Bonnie and me and we left. As we rode along, I continued asking the woman about Lou and she began telling me a story about Lou's father. She said Lou had told everyone that his father had committed suicide, but the story was false. Lou's father had actually been killed somehow, perhaps in a war.
When we arrived at the place where the woman's mailbox was, we had to descend into a little basement. Once in the basement I saw people who were having things lowered to them through a window in the basement. I realized that even though we had traveled seven or eight kilometers, we had reached the same basement into which I had earlier seen the things being lowered. I looked to one side of the basement and saw a big mess of plastic stuff apparently being used to make something.
The old woman walked to a mailbox there and pulled out something rather like a bulky white sack, out of which she pulled a package which had my name, "Steve Collier," on it. I saw that the package was from Lou's friend, Dave.
I looked at Bonnie, who was standing beside me, and I said, "I told you they were mystics. They knew that I was coming."
When I looked at the post mark on the package, however, and saw that it said "1977," I realized that if the package had been mailed five years earlier, maybe the senders had not been so mystical.
Apparently, the woman had not picked up her mail for five years and that package was the only thing she had received. She handed it to me. I took off the white wrapping and found another package inside with blue wrapping. I undid the blue wrapping, and inside the package I found two pair of cut-off blue jeans. I thought I had left the blue jeans with Dave one time and now he had sent them back to me. Bonnie just stared in uncomprehending confusion.
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