Time
Capsule is a weekly series featuring the writing of Robert Gibbons
Girl with a Red Hat
[Johannes Vermeer (Dutch, 1632–1675), 1665-66
oil on panel, 23.2 × 18.1 cm, National Gallery of Art, Washington,
DC]
Mapping the Labyrinth
In a park with groups of people in front of me lounging in the sun. Behind me, a long, steep, stone staircase at first empty, but then a woman appears, descending. She bypasses me heading toward another man, who’d been playing soccer in the field. I walk left, where a path outside turns into a long underground corridor with candles on the walls lighting the way. At one point the candles remain unlit. I light one after another with matches from a matchbook. My last match fails to light the last candle. A young boy enters through an adjacent door, reaches up to light the candle. I wake up. In the next dream state a woman similar to the one previously descending, but not the same, walks by twice in opposite directions making me wonder? Why? Suddenly, she appears with others assembled on the street in what appears a march, or parade, or protest, & there at the other end of the front line is her twin: solving the riddle. I get the feeling they’ll head toward a nearby building, where if I can hold the door open I’ll get a better look at the strawberry blonde twins. Already a doorman there, I enter the building, past a number of rooms, workers, hoping they won’t confront me before I can find a way out. I reach an exit only to find the path that initially led to the underground corridor.
Ending the Conversation
She phoned from Florida, ending the conversation with, “Sweet Dreams.” Snow covered the balustrade.
Sun cut through fog, barely. I saw it for a minute. More important: infant mullein stalk & tiny yellow flower looking up, claiming sun’s paternity.
Tried balancing her on one shoulder & an arm in the dream, but she toppled off the bed. When I woke, she didn’t have those long white pants on I got close to with my eyes & nose in the dream, but less.
So much activity after the hurricane blew past: three five seven chickadees happily zig-zagging in the maple.
On my walk on All Hallow’s Eve, thought I saw seven crows flying East, the ancient Orient believed a Good Sign. No dismay in my gaze, however, when the lead bird turned out a hawk hassled relentlessly, all suddenly going North.
It’s not like I prayed for rain to keep the kids away from our door on Halloween, but it did early on. Then sun shone through the backroom windows. Little devils.
One such hallowed night at my cousin’s cabin, after dropping hallucinogens into bottles of wine, Rick tossed an “All-Nighter” log of cherry into the fireplace. Colors began to transcend even Vermeer’s palette that day in 1974, when we first saw Girl with a Red Hat, East Wing at that Time still just a hole in the ground. Or the Hellish conflagration in the background of Hieronymus Bosch’s Temptation of Saint Anthony, which the museum borrowed from Lisbon for the exhibit Circa 1492: Art in the Age of Exploration in 1992, when I worked there.
After coffee in the morning on the Day of the Innocents, she got up to do her practice in the attic. Just before her return downstairs, I watched credits & title for a dream film called simply, Desire.
FURTHER STUDY:
All Saints'
Day
Circa 1492: Art in the Age of Exploration
Temptation of Saint Anthony in visual arts
Dear Robert
Missed you! Thank goodness I can still read your magnificent writing....What a relief! Mabel Jansen
Posted by: Mabel Jansen | 11/09/2012 at 04:22 AM