Last semester I took a comparative literature class so they wouldn't kick me out of the honors program. It was a pretty neat class. Anyway, for the final paper we were supposed to write an actual paper comparing the work of two of the authors we read. Instead, I wrote a short story (I don't know why because I've never written one before and have no reason to think I'd be any good at it, and I'm not), and in it I have three different girls who resemble three of the authors' different characterizations of dreams (Pascal, Goethe, Proust). So I was thinking about this story today, and I wrote this song. I guess I'll throw the story up here too, even though it's probably not worth reading (I did get an A in the class, but I think that's because I was the only one who read all the books and my professor liked me).
The Suspect Nature Of Reality (The Short Story)
For a while now, Sara Bell had been like a dream to Liam.[1] On rare occasions, he actually saw her. Instead of becoming more real, she became even more of a dream. He had loved her with all his heart, but now she served some kind of surreal advisory role for him… Kind of like the Oracle at Delphi… kind of. He would dream of a dinner at which she affirmed his ability to love and his enduring naiveté. This comforted him, because those two qualities defined his ideal self. Well, sometimes they defined his ideal self. It really depended on his mood. He would subsequently wake from the dream only to find that it was not a dream. It had all the trappings of a dream though, because whatever confidence he gained remained in that fleeting dream world.
They had met through friends about an eternity ago. She had pursued him relentlessly, so obviously, she would be the one to break his heart. Liam had found out that things always worked out this way in relationships. If ever he pursued a girl, he ended up bored with her. If ever he tried to spurn a girl’s advances, he would end up in her lawn at two in the morning wildly hoping just to see her face in the window. He wondered why they didn’t teach that in science class.
When Liam dreamed of Isabella, it always seemed so real. She wanted him so much. It was so clear. In Liam’s nightly dreams he fancied himself in love with her. He simply dreamed of another life (his real life) in which he was all alone.[2] He wondered why he would have such awful dreams, but he contented himself with his whirlwind love affair with Isabella. Of course when he actually awoke, he found himself miserable as ever and longing for his utopian dream world. The truth is, he rarely ever talked to Isabella, but every time she said a word to him, he became immediately convinced of her undying love.
Angelina was most certainly real. Liam was decidedly against dreaming about her. Until he woke up sometimes, worrying that he needed to fall asleep in order to be well-rested for the next day, and there she was next to him: soft, warm, and beautiful. He would fall asleep wondering how she got there, and he would always wake up the next day with his arms wrapped lovingly around his pillow.[3]
“I just don’t know how to talk to girls,” Liam said to Sara Bell and her mother at breakfast. They responded with encouraging words about how he had been carrying on a conversation with them for the last half hour. They were right, but they were wrong. It was different.
He had slept in Sara Bell’s sister’s room. Sara Bell was home for a brief visit, and she had called him because they hadn’t seen each other in a long time. He had woken up to his life with Isabella only to fall asleep at dawn next to Angelina. Well, pillow Angelina. He had gotten confused. He couldn’t remember if he was asleep or awake. Which world was the real one? He realized the real world was probably the one where he was most unhappy, so he had actually just woken up in Sara Bell’s sister’s room next to a fake Angelina after dreaming about Isabella, probably, but it got so hard to tell the difference sometimes. Liam would have loved to spend several eternities in this dream world of Sara Bell’s house, but he had things to do.
He had to go to work, and that meant seeing Angelina, real Angelina. Real Angelina was a lot like fake Angelina except that she was completely different. They looked exactly the same, and at the mysterious times between being asleep and awake Liam was sure they were the same person, but they were not. Fake Angelina was a pillow. She was soft, comfortable, agreeable, and just perfect. Real Angelina was a person. People tend to be infinitely worse companions than pillows – except maybe Sara Bell, but only maybe. Liam had trouble remembering whether his memories of her were entirely accurate. He seemed to remember that they fought a lot, but the worst parts are always the easiest parts to forget. Anyway, real Angelina was a person. She was as beautiful as fake Angelina, but infinitely more difficult to deal with. Fake Angelina subscribed to all of his romantic ideals, whereas real Angelina was more interested in the kind of purely physical relationship with which an idealistic fifteen year old Liam had vowed never to become involved, no matter how lonely or desperate he became.
Liam had kept his promise to that young boy, probably because he respected the boy’s integrity. As he was thinking about his younger self, Liam caught sight of Angelina. She really was beautiful, but in their brief conversation, she proved, as she always did, her inferiority to fake Angelina. How many times did he have to tell her that he would be much more interested in going out to dinner than to some juvenile frat party? He left work early feeling ill.
He took a nap and dreamed about Isabella. He went to the café where she worked. She liked his hat, and he told her how his mother had made it for him. She smiled, and he left. It was an odd dream though because nothing odd was happening. He appeared to be in his regular town at a regular time of day doing regular types of things. It probably wasn’t a dream after all, but it gets so hard to tell.
Liam got home and turned on the T.V. Now he was pretty sure he wasn’t dreaming, because he had driven all the way home, and usually in dreams you just sort of magically transport from place to place. He thought to himself that he should have stayed to talk to Isabella more whether it was a dream or not. Sara Bell and her mother were right; he could carry on a conversation fairly well. It always struck him how right Sara Bell seemed about everything after the fact. It was probably one of those magical gifts passed down from mother to daughter that always seem to evade the male gender. He wondered about Sara Bell’s mother and how her mother must have passed that gift on to her. He wondered about his equivalent in Sara Bell’s mother’s life. Would he have talked to Isabella? Well since Isabella was sitting across the room from him right now, he might as well go talk to her. He didn’t want to squander the opportunity twice in one day.
They talked for hours, and Liam was very thankful to Sara Bell for making him feel more confident like she always did. Isabella reminded him a lot of Sara Bell – not physically, but behaviorally. He just hoped that he wouldn’t make the same mistakes again, or other mistakes, or any really. His idealism was beginning to catch up to him, and he suddenly felt old, and mistakes would only hinder him even more. Back when he was nineteen, he was sure he’d be married by now. Isabella tapped him on the shoulder. He had become lost in thought, and she wondered if he’d heard the last thing she had said. Something was wrong; Isabella looked a lot like Angelina. No wait, it was Angelina. He had been talking to Angelina this whole time. How had Angelina gotten into his house?
When he woke up on his couch, clinging tightly to a pillow, Liam realized the T.V. was still on. He had fallen asleep… or woken up… or something… No, he had fallen asleep and now he was awake. He was about ninety-nine percent sure. He could never really be one hundred percent sure, because to believe you are one hundred percent sure about anything is to be a fool. Liam’s experiences with the thin line between dreams and realities always came in waves. He would spend several days in one of these clouds of dreams every few months. It made him wish he was an insomniac. Unfortunately, he always slept soundly. If he couldn’t sleep, then he could be sure that everything was real. Also, all the greatest writers, musicians, and artists seemed to be insomniacs. Liam was no artist of any kind, but he appreciated art and wished he could have something in common with great minds. Then his life might not be so mind-numbingly pedestrian. Not that his life was actually mind-numbingly pedestrian. Sara Bell had always told him how unique he was, and she was always right about everything after the fact, so he knew it was true. He just couldn’t see things from that perspective.
Liam ended up going to that frat party with real Angelina. He would have rather gone with fake Angelina, but she devoted her life to more important things. Ah, fake Angelina, homemaker extraordinaire and champion of 1950s suburbia! Real Angelina was less domestic, but more lively. The way things had been going with him drifting in and out of sleep the past few days, Liam appreciated her vivacity. So he let himself have a good time, but keg stands and beer pong were not the same as long walks and days in bed. When it came time for him to walk Angelina home, he declined her invitation for him to stay over. He preferred to go home to fake Angelina or dream Isabella or someone else – someone with the ability to love.
Liam and Isabella were picking out the wallpaper for their new apartment. He was glad he had finally had the courage to approach her so long ago. He had to thank Sara Bell for that; he’d send her some flowers or something. They wanted some kind of vertical striped pattern, but they couldn’t decide whether it should have flowers as well. This was the kind of argument Liam had always wanted to have – one where the outcome didn’t really matter, one you only have when you love someone enough that there’s nothing more important to argue about. Who knew true love could be so easily defined by wallpaper? There was some kind of hammering going on outside, probably construction. They finally decided to steer away from the floral pattern and go with a modest striped pattern. Liam hoped everything would be this easy… Well except for the hammering, he was going to have to say something about it because he couldn’t concentrate, and the walls were starting to melt, and the lights were going dim, and he couldn’t move because Angelina was in the way. Real Angelina? No, fake Angelina. He had been dreaming again, but the hammering was real.
Liam wondered to himself why, out of all the different elements of his dream, it had to be the hammering that was real. Couldn’t he trade the hammering for Isabella, or even wallpaper? Wouldn’t everyone be happier that way? He was hung over, and he felt terrible. He knew this was going to be one of those days where he wallowed in self-pity, despite the fact that he had just about everything you could ever want – a job, a loving family, intelligence, friends, and all the rest. That only made him more depressed because he felt bad for feeling depressed when he knew he had everything, but he was sure it was going to be one of those days, as sure as he was about pursuit, boredom, and heartbreak in relationships.
He remembered back to his idealistic youth when he used to be contrarian just for the sake of being contrarian. He had enjoyed being ironic, but he couldn’t really remember why. The harder he tried to think about it, the more the source of his former joy faded away. On a day like this, however, when he was already feeling nostalgic, he decided to indulge in some of his former contrarian behavior – against himself. This would not be one of those days where he wallowed in self-pity, and maybe pursuit didn’t always lead to boredom in relationships. He went to the café, for real.
On the way to the café one of his favorite songs came on – “Meadowlake Street” by Ryan Adams, and he was sure the lyric “if loving you is a dream that’s not worth having, then why do I dream of you?” was some sort of good omen. He had always been superstitious despite the fact that all the things that were supposedly superstitions never seemed to have any real effect on his life. He also had little reason to believe the lyric boded well for his encounter with Isabella, but somehow he was convinced he would be able to succeed where Mr. Adams had failed. He would take what had always been a dream and turn it into reality. He would make sure his dreams of Isabella had been worth having.
So he asked her out on a date, and she said yes, and she was nothing like his dreams, but that was okay. She was better really. She was real, in the same way that real Angelina was real, but Isabella was a lot more romantic than Angelina. He had to put his happiness with Isabella in perspective though, which meant he needed to see Sara Bell. She always had this way of validating or invalidating major decisions in Liam’s life. He knew that if he could get Sara Bell’s approval, he had a good chance of actually being successful.
He flew all the way across the country, to California, where Sara Bell had taken up painting landscapes, at least for now. It was good to see her. There was something else as well. The usual haze that had come with seeing her since they had broken up wasn’t there. Everything was clear, and he was sure it was real, not a dream.
“Liam, you could be happy with anyone. You’re one of the most loving, genuine people I’ve ever met. In fact, sometimes you can be too loving, and that’s what got you into trouble with me. I know you, and I know you’ve never really taken a risk to approach a girl before. If this girl really means that much to you, that you would finally let your guard down, then I’m sure you have a good chance at happiness. That’s not to say things won’t go wrong, but it’s a good sign. You’re always so worried about how other people feel that you usually forget about yourself, but you don’t realize that when you’re in love, the other person has to care about you, which means there has to be a you there, which means you have to be at least a little selfish sometimes. So I think it’s great that you finally decided to take a risk. You won’t regret it, no matter what happens. You’re a good kid, and you have a great ability to make the people around you happy.”
Sara Bell had made him feel even better. She was right, as always. He hoped everything worked out with Isabella, but he knew that even if it didn’t he had broken an important barrier in his life. He still had his ability to love, but he thought that maybe he had overcome his enduring naiveté. It probably was time for him to grow up and start taking risks. He flew back home feeling very content, but walking home, he saw Angelina. He hadn’t thought much of her since that frat party. She was walking arm-in-arm with another man. It turned out she had fallen in love. It was so bizarre; he knew it had to be true. Nothing like that could happen in a dream, only in the real world do such crazy things ever happen. That made him happy. He gained a lot of respect for Angelina, and he felt a lot better about the times they’d spent together. Maybe she had actually cared about him after all. Even if she hadn’t cared about him, at least she cared about this other guy. Liam always appreciated it when people cared about other people.
He went out with Isabella that night. They went to a bar, and Isabella got a little too drunk to drive home. Liam invited her over, and she accepted. On the walk home, however, Liam had a sudden striking thought: he hoped Isabella wouldn’t mind sharing the bed with fake Angelina.
[1] Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, The Sorrows of Young Werther, trans. Elizabeth Mayer and Louise Bogan (New York: Vintage Classics, 1990), 11-12.
[2] Blaise Pascal, Selected “Pensees” and Provincial Letters: A Dual-Language Book, trans. Stanley Appelbaum (Mineola, New York: Dover Publications, Inc., 2004), 207.
[3] Marcel Proust, Swann’s Way, trans. Lydia Davis (New York: Penguin Books, 2004), 3-9. Especially, pages 4-5.
The Suspect Nature Of Reality (The Song)
© Sean Nolan 2010
All is vanity,
Shut up, tiny robot doctor,
Hugz 'n' kissiz,
Sean
