Dream Displacement, or Love from the Grave

by Robert Scott Leyse

habitation—from a cramped, dark, noisy hovel to an enormous, sun-drenched, quiet mansion; from having virtually no privacy to having more than anyone could wish for. The mansion’s porch alone was many times the size of the apartment I’d vacated.

  I wasn’t eager to surrender this unexpected windfall of peace and privacy; therefore, instead of taking immediate steps to find a buyer for the mansion, I resolved to reside in it until early summer, subsisting on the modest stipend provided by my family. What heaven it would be to have the mansion to myself for six months, without the necessity of earning a living. I’d owe no one a minute of my time, be free to wander from room to room and saunter about the seaside with only my thoughts for company. I’d do nothing but read the books I’d brought along, idle in a pleasant daydream daze. I wouldn’t have a schedule and might manage to lose track of time to the extent I’d often be unable to determine what day of the week it was. It would be the ideal vacation and, like all ideal vacations, dispel the accumulated noise in my thoughts and feelings, calm my nerves, restore my health, reunite me with my customary good cheer and optimism—the resourceful, ambitious, and idealistic aspects of my personality.

  My first two months in the mansion were, indeed, heaven: late afternoons of aimless wandering about the rugged beauty of the property and shoreline, sunsets spent watching the surf turn scarlet and gold and greet the beach with roiling silver foam, nights-until-dawn-and-beyond of indulgence in unbridled imagination-life, fond anticipation of my return to Manhattan in the summer—days that I unhesitatingly number among the most delightfully and stirringly memorable in my life. My contact with the townspeople consisted solely of brief exchanges while purchasing necessities. I avoided the places where people congregate, neither eating in the restaurants nor attending local events. I politely sidestepped a few overtures on the part of neighbors, stating the love of my life had dumped me and I needed to deal with it alone (about the only excuse, I’ve found, that tends to deflect accusations of unsociability and the resentment attendant thereupon). Thus there was no one to provide a counterpoint to and puncture my imaginings—no one to drag me out of the rapt dreaming I was indulging in, expose me to the emotional confines of ordinary existence. My friends were the authors of the books I’d brought with me, who faithfully aided and abetted me in further immersing myself in my imagination.

  To the casual observer I was leading a drab and uneventful life: doing nothing but read and stroll about with no one but myself for company, seldom venturing far from the property when outside, each day as outwardly unvarying as the others. But I was electric through and through with aspiration—with intimations of unfettered emotion, glimpses of the possibility of latching onto impulses that knew nothing of fear and only sought their own fulfillment via explorations of the tantalizing unknown—glimpses of the possibility of wholly uniting with the representations of my imagination, becoming a self-sustaining world of inexhaustible wonder unto myself. Always, did a larger-than-life cityscape form the background of my fancies—a cityscape of mist-enshrouded streets above which cloud-high buildings towered; of labyrinthine basement nightspots, dimly lit and familiar only to the initiated, where the boldest of heart-stirringly beautiful women hungrily prowled and euphoria-igniting thrills were routinely indulged in; of unfrequented alleyways where secret trysts took place and forbidden love-rituals flourished. Outwardly my days were unvarying but inwardly each new day was a kaleidoscope of sensory stimulation, another all-engrossing experiment concerning means by which to reliably intensify life—nonstop parade of breath-stealing imagery, storm of fancy-charged feeling. I was aglow with awe from the moment of greeting a new day to the moment of bidding it adieu and I couldn’t wait to greet another day and indulge my imagination anew, even if my dreams while I slept were as soothing as a lullaby sung in soft sweet tones.

  How I loved to read of love: stirrings-at-first-sight tales, courtship-and-conquest tales, rapt-anticipation tales, delirious-consummation tales. Any narrative that dealt with the single-minded pursuit of a spirited beauty, as if the protagonist’s sanity depended upon it. The stages of becoming enthralled, arriving at mutual understanding, tasting of bliss. The engulfment in amorous flames and attendant transports, exquisitely detailed. The tireless circumventing of obstacles, both external and internal, in order to finally frame a gorgeous woman’s face with one’s fingers, kiss her like there’s no tomorrow, unite with her in upwellings of joy.

  Were there any bored, lonely, and isolated beauties, thirsting for love and rapture and daring and delirium, in the town where I was marooned? Not as far as I could determine: girls with an abundance of spirit fled the town following high school and seldom returned, it being too confining to allow their personalities to bloom and reach full fruition. And so I continued to read of love and picture the beauties I had no doubt I’d get to know and undergo soul-altering experiences with in the not too distant future, after I returned to Manhattan. In the meantime, as the weeks progressed and spring arrived, I was becoming increasingly overwrought—enmeshed in a fevered, irritated and jittery, state of the senses—on account of harboring desires for which there were no immediate outlets.

  By way of illustration of my overwrought condition consider my excursions into town, necessitated by the procurement of provisions. If I happened to glimpse a woman from the corner of my eye—such that she was little more than a blurred outline—she’d instantly, so to speak, leap into my head and overpower my imagination: the indistinct image in my peripheral vision would become a crystal clear picture of a ravishing beauty of electric presence with hunger and fire swirling in her eyes. I’d become tense, experience a sort of anticipatory punch—marked swirl of nerves—in the pit of my stomach, crackle with yearning and become giddy and tremble from head to toe. But then I’d turn to gaze at the woman directly and perceive she was of uninspiring appearance—disappointingly plain and ordinary, with little indication of feistiness or any wish to experience emotions aside from those typical of dull contentment—and the hope of expressing and sating my desire would vaporize. I’d be standing there, still trembling, with nothing but my arousal for company—arousal that, having no other place to go, would angrily churn in my belly, race up and down my spine, seethe in my bloodstream, strand me in sensations of loneliness and desolation.

  The change came swiftly, during an unseasonably warm spell in the first week of April, when the thermometer stopped just short of eighty for a few days and what remained of the snow melted and my blood began, as it were, surging towards the sky during my strolls outside—dizzying me with intimations of the lushness and vitality and restlessness of summer, half-blinding me to the fact the landscape was still wintry and dormant. It was on one of these warm nights after having spent the afternoon reading on the beach with nothing on, allowing the sun to kiss and stimulate the whole of me since I can’t recall when, and also after having been without sleep for nearly two days straight, that I passed from relishing the representations of my imagination to being persecuted by them. Another way of stating the matter is that my imagination, as with a life of its own, began conjuring forth unsettling ideas and images—engulfing me in outright panic—and there was little I could do to stop it. It’s one thing to recreationally ride one’s imagination to unfamiliar and appealing places, use it to introduce novelty and wonder into existence and add an exhilarating aura to aspiration, all the while keeping one’s feet firmly on the ground. It’s quite another thing when one’s imagination, suddenly unfettered from one’s will and unmindful of one’s well-being, commences to actively invade and displace actuality, dissolve the boundary between supposition and fact. Perhaps it can be said that it’s still imagination—still an illusion—but when one’s emotions become thoroughly entangled in such imaginings then the latter are perceived as being real and acquire the power of reality, commence to determine how one feels and how one acts, with nothing to offset them. There’s a world of difference between deliberately exciting one’s imagination and being involuntarily excite
d by one’s imagination: the former’s self-governance, the latter’s slavery.

  But to return to the night in question, after I’d been on the beach in the sun all afternoon and was extremely sleep-deprived: it was while reading Byron’s Manfred in bed that I became convinced the bright light upon the book’s pages, caught from the overhead lamp, was dangerous—convinced the pages were staring back at me with hostile intent, bent on causing me a good deal of distress. Listen: the brightness on the pages suddenly seemed to be humming with energy—palpable, agitated, volatile energy—and insistently leaping at my eyes, slamming the energy into the center of my head and transferring it to my nerves—streaming it throughout me, saturating my senses to the point of instability. I began to detect hissing in my ears and prickles in my skin; the tips of my fingers and toes began to tingle, vaguely sting; an oppressive electric sensation, as if my nerves were congregating near my heart and flaring in unison, gripped my chest. And it’s then that my turncoat