83rd dream

What does the crow have to say?

Nothing. He is just watching.

When I was a senior in high school, I got an opportunity to take the inaugural “College English” class offered by my high school. This was a big deal as never before had my small rural school been able to offer a class that counted towards college credit. I mean, it cost extra money. I can’t recall the sum today—it would seem trifling, I’m sure, but such things were huge considerations in a community where pretty much no one had more than enough to just get by (and many didn’t have even that.)

To provide some context: the summer before my senior year I lived with my sister in the city due to some painful personal circumstances. I started out that summer assuming I’d never be able to go back and finish high school and I’d need to pursue a GED. I got a crappy job cleaning a deli at nights and I spent my days writing. I took my writing very seriously—it was pretty much all I had. Pages and pages, drafts and drafts. By the end of the summer I’d mended enough fences to go back and finish high school. When I found out about College English, I signed up immediately. It felt like a turning point; I was coming back to town a more worldly, experienced person (not nearly so much as I thought, of course) and my high school was actually providing opportunities. I was excited to attend a class for the only time in my high school career.

I remember walking in to class that first day and seeing a couple of the artistic, misfit and fun girls I’d attended a few parties with before leaving the prior year. One of them looked up, saw me, and said: “Alright, Paul’s back in town! This year is going to be fun!” It was the first time I’d ever received that kind of validation—someone actually glad to see me? People wanted to hang out with me? Strange how going away to the big city for a while changed things. In any case, I was thrilled. Already this class had paid dividends!

I don’t remember much else about that first day of class, but I clearly remember the assignment at the end of the day: write a single page about whatever you wanted. That was the only criteria—that it be a page long. Such freedom! If this is what college is about, I thought, then sign me up! I went home that night and started writing. But I didn’t like anything I wrote. Too forced, as though the very freedom was stifling. I went on a walk around the farm, smoked some cigarettes, stared at the stars. Then I went back to my bedroom and 83^rd Dream came tumbling out of me.

83^rd Dream (named after a Cult song, though I knew no one would catch the reference) is simply about a man dying by next to a fencepost while a crow watches. We don’t know why the man is dying or anything about his circumstances. He implores the crow to grant him relief or at least give his death meaning. The crow looks at him impassively until he dies, then flies off. That is the entirety of the story. Not even a story, really, just a scene. It was overwrought, as all writing by eighteen year-olds must be, but it felt like the most powerful thing I’d ever written. I couldn’t shake it.

83^rd Dream came back a couple of days later with an A+ (or whatever the numeral equivalent was) and a comment from the teacher that I still remember: “I’ve never read such startling imagery from a student. This is amazing.” Let me tell you, I was on cloud nine. But it wasn’t just the validation. It was the fact that this was something deeply personal in a way I couldn’t explain, straight out of my subconscious that also felt somehow part of my waking life. It wasn’t just a dream.

The crow is always watching, you know.

I think of that story—that scene—often. It is part of my internal makeup in a way I still can’t explain, and I guess as I get older it’s less important to do so. About ten years ago I had a dream that I’m going to relate here (forgive me for writing something as banal as a description of a dream I had. This piece is about truth, if nothing else.) In the dream, I hiked a mountain. In my backpack was 83^rd Dream. I met a man about three-quarters of the way up the mountain. He built a fire and I warmed myself by it, for I was very cold. Before I could say anything, the man was gone. I looked down and saw a murder of crows circling the treetops. The sky was so blue, so clear! The fire was still burning. I pulled out 83^rd Dream and burned it. The ashes floated gently into the air. The feelings I had I can’t describe: sadness, wonder, beauty, death, rebirth, the ancient and the new.

A few times over the years I’ve thought about revisiting that story, writing it from a different perspective in my life. But I’ve never done it. If it happens, it has to happen naturally. It cannot be forced. The words, if they are meant to come, will come. And probably when I’m least expecting it. (The goddamned ego is always in the way.) When I’m feeling worthless as a writer, I remember 83^rd Dream. It reminds me that creativity is, above all, a sacred thing. All of the rest of the crap around it is just that—crap. Fun crap, sometimes, but crap nonetheless.

As for that College English class? Well, nothing compared to the rush of that first story but it was exciting to be able to write creatively for a class—to this day, the only time I ever got to experience that. Plus the teacher, who would later wind up in jail for murdering her husband (I’m not joking), introduced me to Raymond Carver, who has had a profound effect on my life. In fact, the teacher hated Carver’s story so much she gave me the book she had by him. (“I can’t stand it all but I think you may enjoy it.”) The story was “Cathedral” from the book of the same name and I’ll never forget the visceral reaction I had at reading a story that made sense. I’ve never, ever had a reaction that strong to reading something for the first time. As the year wore on, I skipped many classes (or showed up to them in various altered states) but I can honestly say I never, ever missed College English. The crow was watching, after all.

I will never unlock 83^rd Dream. It’s not meant to be unlocked. I choose to honor it. 83^rd Dream and the class that it came from—that class of the (not yet) murderer teacher, the artistic misfit girls excited to have me coming to parties, the desperate valedictorian doing everything he could to escape the circumstances around him, the kid missing a finger who showed up drunk as often as not, the asshole who told me only faggots liked to read the kind of books I liked—represented the very possibility of a creative life. A life with meaning. A life with meaning is a tumultuous, confusing and sometimes frightening thing. But it also offers a chance to witness beauty and experience transcendence. To create a different reality and then go there.

The crow’s very indifference is his lesson, I think. He isn’t going to do it for you. If you want to die by a fencepost, that’s your business. But if you want to fly, you can. And if you need to leave your body behind to do it, well, we all need to escape the meat wagon now and then, no?