in the winter before they were destroyed i had a recurring dream about the twin towers in which i looked up at the them from the end of a street in brooklyn and watched as a piece of the sky opened and silver sparkles cascaded down like fairy dust. at this point in the dream something very strange and very meta would always happen--i'd actually think to myself while still dreaming: "this feels like a dream or a movie. i wish i had a camera."
then it would end and id be onto the next dream or dark nothingness or whatever. i didn't get too hung up on them. maybe if they were the only recurring dreams i had...but in comparison to some of the other things broadcasting in my head, these twin tower dreams were small potatoes.
they reminded me of a hologram--a beautiful, glowing picture that you tilt slightly in order to make something happen.
i walked that street--the street of the dream--every day on my way to the train. that winter i was still on the morning shift. i'd head out when the sun was coming up. the light hung over the avenue like orange laserbeams. i passed the corner where the mexicans dudes gathered in their dusty jeans to wait for work, and the row of warehouses where behind one of those brightly painted sliding doors, a drummer banged out some serious rock n' roll solos. i passed the drunks in front of the bodega and the kids smoking the first j of the day beside the towering pile of reappropriated aluminum. i passed the immense chainlink fence of the mechanics yard, with its rusted chassis and fierce-ass doberman/rottweiler mix guard dogs. they followed me with their suspicious eyes, but had given up on the ferocious barking/shaking the fence routine, as it failed to get a rise out of me.
if at any point on the street i paused and looked up, there'd they'd be, rising up over the treetops of the park just ahead...night watchmen keeping eye on all of us and the dirty going-ons in this dirty, broken ashtray smudge of northern brooklyn.
no wonder i dreamed of them...freud said that when all is said and done most of what we dream about comes from the everyday.
just as i dully repeated what i did, day after day, the dream of the sparkles repeated itself, nite after nite...
in some ways it made perfect sense, yet the meaning for its repetition...the insistence it had in making sure it was dreamt every nite...this didn't seem to have any explanation.
then, one freezing, grey morning in which everything glowed like it was lit from within, i trudged down that street, with the broken bottles everywhere and the wind carrying around the stench of truck exhaust and black plastic bags flyin through the air like wasted wishes...i had my head down and my scarf over my face, when all of a sudden i was gripped with a need to look up. i stuck my face into the arctic blast and blinked up at the towers...and there i saw, a single bright patch of sky open above them. i stopped--stunned. for it was just like the dream...
i watched as the first powdery snowflakes of the storm fluttered down from the break in the sky...
they floated, like falling angels or bits of confetti over the tops of the towers.
and just as in the dream i wished i had a camera, although i knew there was no way anyone could take a picture that would capture the sense of scale or space...
the flakes kept falling, more and more, faster and faster, but it wasn't until i was halfway across the playing fields of mccarren park that they started falling around me.
i felt honored, blessed even as i joined the crowd of hipsters and wannabes on bedford avenue.
i never had the dream again.
unrattleable
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