Something’s been gnawing me from the inside and unfortunately due to time constraints I’ve had a difficult time letting it out in pixel form. Now I fear it has lost a lot of its vim through details fading out and the overall heavy feeling being diminished as well. As it often happens with dreams, I didn’t have something to jot it down on when I woke up so yeah, here it goes:
I was downtown, walking alongside the canal and met with somebody whom I kind of knew but didn’t really. One of those people you recognize by their face but can’t put a name to it. While we had the conversation that you normally have in these types of situations, the ‘Hey how are you, how’s x, we should hang out, remember when?’, basically the exchange neither one of the two pays any attention to but both people can walk away from at ease after being able to tick the ‘be sociable’ box on their daily agenda, I couldn’t help but furtively glance at what that person had been drudging along behind.
Shaped like a cocoon but transparent and waist-high, it looked like it had some kind of jell that kept a person, crouched in the fetal position, facing forward. I thought I recognized that woman’s features but couldn’t quite place her. The guy I was talking to was going on about his life and how things have been looking up for him since not too long ago and then it dawned on me: the woman in the cocoon was his ex fiancé, who had broken up with him over what I remember I thought was extremely stupid. She was his baggage and he was carrying her with wherever he was going, unwillingly. I know that to be true because, like a veil that needed a certain note to be hit in order to fall off in an Arabic dance, I all of a sudden started to be able to see exactly how he’d been ‘hooked’ to his burden.
I used that word for a reason, although it may seem misplaced. Falling down from his shoulders, now that he was no longer pulling it, and to the cocoon were two chains that were connected to meat hooks, the butcher shop ‘hang a whole cow carcass’ variety. They’d been thrust in and lodged by his clavicles, with the spikes raking his scapulas. The look was so gory that I could almost hear the ‘thud’ when they went in, like an over-extended djembe that somebody was drumming way too hard.
By this point I could no longer listen to anything the man was saying, all I could see was the blood on his clothes and wonder how come I hadn’t noticed it thus far. The hooks must’ve wedged around with every step he’d taken and tore out all the muscles until all was left were two holes I could see through and the bones they were lodged against. His blood-soaked shirt was stuck to his body and I could see his breathing get heavier and heavier with every word he let out until he just stopped talking as it had become too difficult. Before having a sudden urge to wake up I remember looking ahead of me, beyond the guy that was dying in front, and saw that everybody coming in my direction was also hooked up in the same way, all of them hauling cocoons with people behind them.
The dream’s lost its power by now and I can only remember the strong impression of ripped muscle that I got from watching the spectacle of slaves to their past ‘jaunt’ by . It was something so physically painful and mentally weighing that I could not but feel that there was something off with the way we live our lives. It is our past who defines the people we have come to be but we should be able to have the power to throw down the chains tying us to our failures instead of letting them get rusty from the blood they inherently spill.
