10

Session 5 (9/9 – 8.25 a.m.):

It begins with a dream
he’s had bad dreams before, but this one is in a class of its own
he’s on a river-boat, travelling on some interminable, ill-defined canal
there don’t seem to be any locks or gates
anything much to do
except steer
& watch the horizon for minute signs of variation

The strange thing is that he’s arrived here
woken up here
with a complete set of memories
he can see himself killing the girl
plunging the fork into her cheek
that’s the nasty part, the shock going up his arm
the realization that it’s just like carving meat
two-tined fork in the turkey
the complex of associations as the blood comes spurting out

Why did he kill her?
that’s less clear
they’d been travelling together, on the run
from somewhere, someone, something
did she betray him, piss him off?
both?
in any case, he left her body in the car
set it on fire with a rag stuffed in the petrol tank
then headed off across country
he must have lucked onto the boat

He feels quite desperate, that’s the thing
it doesn’t seem like a dream-world at all
no kaleidoscopic whirl of images & scenes
it feels concrete & exact
the selective nature of his memory is, in a sense, absurd
but it doesn’t alter the fact that he’s here