Gabrielle’s Magical Notebook

I’ve heard it said, “We are not hypocrites in our dreams.” It is a charming thought, but I disagree. It is in our dreams that we tell ourselves so many of our pretty lies. We convince ourselves that the building is not too tall for a single bound; that the stars are well within our reach. Then we wake, believing our lies, only to find the buildings all taller than our highest leap, but not nearly high enough to reach the stars.

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I dreamed I stood on a mountain so far above the clouds that the only object to mar the sky was another mountain peak rising just before the horizon. There was a sort of emptiness in all that space filled up with clouds that shifted and moved. There was a sort of fullness in all that emptiness, the space filled up with possibilities and choices. They and the clouds formed a road from where I stood to the mountain peak standing on the horizon. I stared at the clouds below me and almost imagined them to be solid.

Step off the mountain, I said to myself, in a voice I barely recognized. These clouds of thoughts and options and water are sure to hold you. You could run the whole way.

I spoke out loud as if to the clouds and the wind. “No, I couldn’t! The clouds won’t hold me. I’ll fall,” I said to that voice that was almost mine. “I’ll die.”

But there is another mountain on the horizon, that voice replied. How else will you get to it if not walking? Perhaps you can fly?

“I don’t know,” I said. “I’ve never tried before.”

I inched to the very edge of the mountain peak I was standing on and looked over the edge. The ground must have been somewhere an ocean depth away, but all I could see were clouds the color of sunset. I looked from the clouds to the mountain peak far away. I spread my arms out to the sky and stepped off the mountain.

Adam woke and stared at the ceiling above his bed. There wasn’t much to see. He saw dingy white paint peeling away from its place and dark water stains. There was a leak upstairs, but the people living there never bothered to get the landlord to fix it. Eventually the dark stains would cover the whole ceiling and there would be no more dingy white to look at.

Under the water stains was a twin-sized bed holding Adam and his blankets. Next to the bed was a battered night stand that used to be white, but now would better be described as “indeterminate neutral”. In the room was also a wooden dresser with so much everyday clutter scattered across the top it was impossible to see the wood, a chair full of laundry in various stages of uncleanliness and, the only decoration in the room, a framed diploma. It hung on the wall above the dresser, conspicuous in its heavy wooden frame. In large, decorative lettering it announced that Adam Schiffer had won for himself a bachelor in journalism.

Adam rubbed a hand across his face and sat up. What part of him wasn’t covered by the blanket was lean and lanky. It was as if someone had formed a perfectly proportioned man, grabbed him by his hands and his feet, and pulled. A mop of dark, curly hair topped a thin face that seemed to be made entirely of sharp points. The fingers of the hand he was rubbing his face with were long and ink stained.

Adam swung his legs over the side of the bed and tried to gather together fragments of thoughts. He’d been dreaming when he’d woken up. There was an important thought just out of reach. Just before he’d woken up he knew he’d realized something, something important.

An image of a mountain peak and a road of clouds and decisions leaped into his mind. With it came an unfamiliar feeling. Adam looked into the day before him and saw… possibilities. He saw options. Today he could do anything; it was a new day, right? The only thing on his horizon was another mountain peak off in the distance. Maybe today he’d find he could fly.

Adam ate something without paying any attention to it, focused on getting dressed long enough to make sure everything mostly matched and headed up the stairs to street level. His portfolio was in a brown leather satchel he wore slung around his neck almost everywhere he went. It usually held a tattered notebook full of scrawls that eventually turned into the articles in his portfolio and a ballpoint pen that leaked sometimes. Today the pen was in an outside pocket so it wouldn’t leak on the folder holding his best work. The weight of the satchel felt good on his shoulder. But, then again, most things felt good. He was buzzing with energy and certainty. Today was his day. Today he would finally be recognized as the great journalist he was. Today his future would begin.

It was certainly a nice day for a future. Adam stepped out of his door onto a city sidewalk flooded with sunlight. After the gloom of his basement apartment the light and color was overwhelming. If today went well enough maybe he’d be able to afford someplace a little nicer. Someplace above ground perhaps. Adam turned his feet downtown and headed for his mountain peak. He walked on a sidewalk that gradually filled with people heading to work, but he paid them no mind. In truth he was walking on a road made all of clouds and options. Or maybe he was flying. Flying would be better; walking would be far too prosaic.

Adam was so caught up in imagining himself flying, all gangly limbs and flapping coat, he walked right past his destination and had to turn around a block away. He stood across the street and looked his destination up and down. The building rose from the ground like a man-made mountain, towering over all the puny mortals who walked in its shadow. The building was not actually taller than its fellows, but to Adam’s eyes it stood head and shoulders above them. He knew, of course, that the roof of the building lay far below the clouds, but the part of his mind that was given to fancies imagined standing on that roof and looking down on a mass of clouds the color of sunset. He ran a hand through his hair, straightened his jacket, resettled the satchel on his shoulder and stepped off the curb.

“Good morning,” he said to the receptionist behind her grand desk. “I’m here to interview for the new opening.”

An hour later Adam was slumped on a park bench three blocks from his glorious mountain. His portfolio lay on the bench next to him and he glared at it from time to time as if all his troubles were its fault. The large folder just stared back at him blandly, calmly waiting for the next thing to happen.

The people at the newspaper had been very polite. Almost kind, actually. Almost pitying when he really thought about it. They’d explained very carefully that no, they hadn’t had a journalist position open and they didn’t know how he’d gotten that idea. Some terrible mistake must have happened with the ad which was ironic, huh, them being a newspaper and all. Was he interested in the janitor opening?

Adam glared at his portfolio again. He’d been about to leave the building in high dudgeon, but then the thought of another late rent notice and empty cupboards had stopped him in his tracks. He’d climbed down from his glorious mountain in the clouds, neither walking on the road of clouds or flying, but trudging down each heavy step, and interviewed for the janitor job. They said they’d let him know in about a week. Then he’d left.

Adam’s day of glorious future shattered around him. It broke apart into tiny pieces and all the fragments stared up at him from the ground. Instead of being recognized as the brilliant writer he sometimes told himself he was he was once again being recognized as the failure he knew himself to be. All the fancy thoughts and dreams of a mountain above the clouds had been nothing more than some random image from his sleeping consciousness. Adam took his gaze off of his broken dreams and turned them to the folder that held copies of everything he’d ever written that was of any worth. The manila folder was far too simple and bland to hold all of someone’s dreams.

Adam picked it up and walked over to a garbage can with it. The city had put these garbage cans all over the place with signs all but begging the populace to put their trash in them. Green plastic cylinders with gaping holes waiting to eat all the refuse the passing people might think to drop in them. Not that anyone ever did. They just threw their trash wherever the passing whim led. Adam stood in front of the garbage can that he knew had once been somebody’s really good idea and stared into its open mouth. He shoved the folder holding his writings into the garbage can and walked away.

It was a purely symbolic gesture; all of those pieces were saved on his computer at home, but right now he felt he really needed such a gesture. So he shoved all his best works into a green plastic can full of the trash and debris of lives. Soon his writings would end up in a landfill where they would become nothing more than pieces of paper rotting away. He turned his back on them and trudged home.

Part Two
Part Three