Huckleberry had been banking on getting a swift check in the account to reimburse his dreams of capitalizing on the opportunity exams threw upon the table of his time (here, schedules are called “timetables”…somehow, the Brit´s have found a way to actually construct things with the substance of time. Incredible). Said angelic digital slip never arrived in time to put wings on Huckleberry´s messenger boots. Apollo would just have to wait for those new harp strings, a little longer.
There would be no trip to the ancient past, no Pyrennical mountain escape, no ocean stew, no Yustian monastery/kingly retirement hideout for this week, it would seem. Plans A, B, and C all required just a bit more than 46 euros. Thankfully the sun was shining midday, people were walking their tiny teady bears electrically animated to have the look, and feel of a four legged furry hypermetabolic ruffian named Preciosa.
Trees were birding like an overpopulated botanical garden green house whose swooping and zooming tropical birds make fiqure eight patterns around the glassed canopy. The chitter chatter of throat clucking storks nested deep in his brain and recalled dreams. Sitting on a park, benched on a sunspot, and sweeping the air with whistles. Day dreaming, dream dreaming on the dock of a swiss mountain lake, dream dreaming on the white walled road heading up to the Alhambra, and finally dreamed up on the shores of a slightly wooded peninsula parked on the outskirts of hypnotic classrooms and neighborhoods of quiet instability.There are three rocks there with whom Huckleberry had shared many a meditation throughout the cycles of four seasons he had passed among them. The red vines bring him back to that white walled, red vined, autumn afternoon looking up at the sky above the Alhambra wondering, “What next?” And that memory dreamed through the doorway to the town of La Coruña which popped up in an intense “I´m on a stealth mission” style dream he had the night before.
That same night, he dreamt he was the inhabitor of his dreams, who asked the local Something-or-other Man (as they often appear in Alician-Fields) if he could provide Huck with a Renaissance Test.
“You, think you need one..have you had any symptoms?”
“Yes, I need to verify this smile wide intuition. It seems I´ve been reborn.”
“Well, sure I can run an RT for you. Not too common, but not entirely unheard of. Gimme just a minute.”
Dead dreams were never much of an issue. It´s the ones that dissapear without a trace that troubled everyone. Those can only be explained by unnatural causes.
But not all dreams are dreamed. Others are realized, and others accomplished ignorant of themselves. There are those held as desires, wishes benefiting another. There are those it takes us a lifetime to wake up from, and those to which we return. It´s all rather undefined. It is, hopefully, a form of our liberty.
That is, until one day when we all have the technological freedom to upload saved versions of our consciousness daily onto the udated version of whatever Google Drive becomes in the near future, and when they eventually run virtual tests and analyses on our hourly updated virtual selves- in that one day – Huckleberry wondered how our dreams will react.
On a more serious note, “just as one day hopefully there will be no government because every man and woman will be self governing,” we notice that some dreams are shared, and other are exiled. Where do the exiled dreams go?
Imagine walking into an art gallery, and having to make a coherent narrative out of all the works and happenings exhibited before you, without rehearsal and under time restraint. What work is done on behalf of the dreamer. In fact, the dreamer must get entirely out of the way, if they are to dream. That is the difficult part, for many.
Huckleberry often stops into La Sala de Arte Brocense and the Fundación Helga de Alveares to bring himself into the factory of dreams. Like many art galleries, these places are haunted by absence, and visited by cleaners. It´s places like these one could participate in the dream of another, if you so wished. The dream on the street, of unnatural markets and hollow theories and the dream of consumption and addiction have such a sharing following. Looking outside the window, Huck sees a dream laid in concrete like a rusty can planted in the soil among a row of purple cabbage plants.
One eventually wakes up and realizes the horrendously eventful plot from which they wake was fun, but perhaps the self deception show titled, “we dream alone” was not the class of all classes, after all.
“Today” was a day in which Huckleberry, having played his guitar and shakuhachi just barely enough, wandered out onto the raining, drizzling street. He meandered to the Brocense exhibit to see what was cooking. He felt like a monk disguised as an assasin with his sharp shouldered and oddly hooded black winter jacket covering his face and body while exagerating his movements. There was not a splash of hurry in his steps. His shoes still carried the salt from Portugese ocean waters. He would clean them later, when the memory lost its smell.
It was rainy today, but yesterday, in a winter cloud break and under bird drones chatting up the lonely cherry tree sapling in precocious blossom, Huckleberry saw the night flow and flood the low hills on the horizon. Today´s memory of yesterday walked through the Brocense art exhibit. It was one of those classic, “my 3 year old kid could do that” kind of exhibits. Huckleberry always wanted to see what those adults would produce instead, and then delightfuly offer them his honest analysis and criticism. Receiving art, he found that individuals offer great mouthings of cynical cowardice, but rarely take up the challenge to prove themselves more capable than said 3 year old kid.
On his way out of the building, he rejoined the stream, and saw fish headed in all sorts of directions but still going downstream together in that not-even-the-last-will-know journey. Thankfully, great mysteries still existed.
Great mysteries like, “what ever will I do about this cold dampness and my desire to drink something hot and relaxing.” Huck found himself at a cafe door while strutting home. He sat down and gave his wet jacket a rest.
“Hot coffee please”
“Sure thing. whatcha want, little slices of spanish tortilla or a little bit of coffee cake?”
“A little coffee cake.”
Huck opened a miniature notebook and a fine, fine tipped blue pen to tatoo some life and free up the “Ruled Composition Book”, as was printed on the cover.
In his rehearsal-like explorations of the describable environment, Huck smelled the hot coffee and began to dream of eating that loafing, fatty sugar bomb of a cream filled pastry just being all coy and luscious in the corner of the pastry case.
“How much does the cream pastry go for, good sir?” This wasn´t a time to splurge with non-existent money, but he´d make concessions to tighten his expenditure belt elsewhere. There´s just something about rainy days and fattening pastries; they´d be a happy marriage if he ever saw one.
“1.25” the barista replied with the smile of a fisherman having hooked a walleye.
After much deliberate consideration, as if to convince himself that he had thought it over good and well, “Ok, sure. Could I have the pastry, too?” Today, he would sacrifice money to the altar in hopes to receive the benefit of vanilla cream glory wrapped in ceremonious layers of butter gold pastry dough.
Ever so thankful, he returned to his less inspiring writing rehearsal all tangled up in blue scribbles and scratches. He had recently, as an attempt to get students to speak up, helped a class of Pilar´s debate. (Not Pilar mother of the three kids Huck taught English, and not Pilar who first showed him where the parks are nearby the school, and not Pilar the new teacher to fill Adrians space, and not Pilar the “Major”, the other one) The first topic of the debate was handwriting. One group would have to argue that handwriting told you everything about an individual, the other group would rebuttle the hell out of it. Huckleberry was always humorously alarmed by the foolish judgements people would make while reading his handwriting, and the class was equally humorous but more in an admirably insightful and creative way.
Nearby another customer paid up for his desayunito, and left the bar. On his way out he sayed, “See you” to the barman and then, with a tap on Huckleberry´s shoulders farewelled to Huck, as well. Being absorbed in his practice it took him a moment to realize what just happened, and looking up at the door saw the back of someone´s head disappear.
“He just paid for your breakfast” the barman explained.
Huck didn´t catch who, but somebody had just made his ostensibly-not-much-of-a-secret dream come true.
Huckleberry Grimm 