I dream of a kind of writing that approaches, well, dreaming. A narrative of free-floating, widely associative surrealism that’s richly informed by fomenting emotions.
So the other morning I was somewhere in the vicinity of what I report in my novella, With a Passing Freight Train of 119 Cars and Twin Cabooses, and having coffee with an ex-boss, maybe even at the same cafe frequented by John Wycliffe and Hieronymus Bosch in my book. We were too far from the ocean to be considering his sailboat, so we must have been discussing a story in the works. Or maybe politics or updating him on office gossip, now that he’s moved on.
Next thing I knew, we were joined by Jerry Seinfeld – as he was on the show, who knows what he looks like now – and an invisible stranger. Jerry started telling me that’s not how he would have constructed the scene under consideration in my new story.
“When it comes to going to the dentist,” he said, “I would make it as awful as I could. Everything has to go wrong.”
But that’s not how it happened, I want to reply. It’s not true – not true to the facts.
“So?” I can hear from his end. “Wouldn’t it be true to the dream? And much funnier?”
He’d have a point. I’m still thinking about it.
For the record, let me say – there are no scenes with dentists in my novels. And maybe just two or three poems with the hygienist.
~*~
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Jnana's Red Barn 