The Interlude

This morning while I slept I dreamt I was in Mexico.  I had done a little tour of the city, just wandering around, and I'd met a Jewish man (he looked like Matt Craven, only much older) in this little touristy place that was selling religious goods.  There was holy water stored in these little plastic rabbit bottles.  The rabbits were smiling and had bow ties on which were molded into the plastic.  He bought me one saying it was very expensive anywhere else. 

Later he visited me in the villa I was staying in.  I had laid down on my stomach on the bed and was sleeping with my face turned to the outside of the bed.  The little lamp on the bed side table was on.  I felt his hand on the small of my back and I opened my eyes from sleep as I sensed him sitting next to me on the bed.  He asked me if I was well and I smiled and said yes, and I was glad he came.  I lifted myself onto my elbows and he leaned forward with a book open in his right hand.  It was written by a Mexican philosopher he'd spoken to me of when we'd met.  He pointed to a passage and read aloud to me one part and as he read he traced his finger along my lower back under my blouse, barely touching.

He read, "It feels like death.  It seems like death.  But it is only Living."


'You see my Dear?  It is only living... you must... do you understand?  It is only living you must do, however it may look or feel or seem.  It is living.  Simply living.'

I remember smiling and how his touch felt and how I wanted to be touched.  Then we were in the sitting room, the chairs were heavy and wooden, dark wood etched and carved but not overly so.  The man was with his friend, a white man with white hair and blue eyes and also old.  They each had a glass with a small amount of liquor, the lamps cast a soft warm light.  My Jewish friend was holding my Holy Water encased in the dingy plastic rabbit.  He told me it as corrupted and handed me another bottle that looked like mahogany with brass stud and inlay work about the length of my forearm shaped like an extended pyramid.  He said it was pure and that his friend there had procured it for him at great cost from a monastery he'd been to but that they wanted to make me a gift of one of the bottles.  I held it in my hands wondering why but accepting the gift.  We were smiling quietly at each other, the other man lifted his glass as if in reply and sipped, I held the Holy Water, and my friend stood by the lamp as an old Mexican woman that looked a little like my grandmother came to sit with us.

And I woke up thinking I heard rain but it was the quiet sounds of battle coming from the living room, my son is playing Call of Duty.