Jun 26 2010 10:09 pm
Gleason's rope
The bells clang aloud. I keep having dreams about being in my boat on the river at night. I’m lying on my back and have no control; I slowly spin in an eddy beneath moonlight filtered through trees whose leaves look oddly like mini-blinds. I feel around and realize the anchor is gone, so are the oars, in fact everything is gone and my boat is smaller than I remember it. I feel for the water and touch short-napped carpet and realize I’m in bed.
When I got back from a steelhead trip last fall I had similar dreams. I was lying on my stomach at the front of Kevin’s boat and he’s telling me to push us off a rock so I’m pushing and pushing. I pushed my bed a foot from the wall three nights in a row.
Several years ago when I returned from England I moved into a new house. I had a dream for a week in which I was trying to climb up a very narrow, rapids-choked ravine on the headwaters of the River Dart. I pulled my blinds off the wall several times.
I have a dream that one day all the female writers from The New Yorker’s 20 under 40 fiction issue want to go fishing in Michigan and fall madly in love with me.
I have a dream that my Gleason’s Rope grows by several thousand miles so I can tow myself to Alaska on the cheap. And by Gleason’s Rope I don’t mean penis.
I think these interactive dreams have something to do with new houses and mini-blinds. As for catching large fish, I’ve conducted many empirical studies and conclude with some not insignificant bravado that it’s all about motherfucking time on the motherfucking water. But I have to take a day off. I’m out of the good flies.
