A dream flew over the cuckoo's nest

Amaryllis

From Wednesday afternoon, a roadside image of snow and sand posted in texture.

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I have trouble remembering movies—the details of plotlines. I don't understand how people can walk out of a first viewing with the cleverest lines of dialogue already on their tongues. I have to replay the videos a few dozen times to write down one word at a time correctly before I can even dream of repeating them.

But when a movie really hits me (and most of them do), it percolates through my subconscious for the next 24 hours. I will wake up the next morning with the most affecting scenes replaying in my head. I can't hear the words or remember how to string everything together. My mind works visually and conceptually. I must ride tendrils of the story's images and ideas all night long, carrying them down avenues of my own perception, watching them evolve into something that relates to me. Next day the dreams are forgotten. I have only feelings and impressions replaying like a tape recorder in the ears of my mind.

Last night that movie was One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, which I finally saw for the first time with Marian, after 30 years. She noted that the actor who played Billy, the young man who stuttered, was familiar. Googling Brad Douref, we discovered he played Grima Wormtongue in The Two Towers.

This morning I awoke with certain scenes fluttering like wounded birds in the corners of my mind: the shock treatment, the choking scene, the mercy killing, a long view of a ghostly figure disappearing across a field under dingy dawn light. I wonder how it affects my subconscious to have a movie like that dominate my dreams for eight hours. And if it does, why can I not remember the story in more detail. It must go somewhere, all that spinning. Maybe if I watched the thing again today, it would sink into the longterm memory banks where I could recall it more easily.

As it happens, I remember one dream, in which I met my new psychiatrist for the first time.

Yesterday I actually called her office and lined up an appointment on February 21. The receptionist said they are booking for July, but she happened to have a cancellation.

So I was meeting Dr. J. for the first time, sitting in a large, bright office across an old-fashioned desk. I couldn't really see her. She was a puddle of liquid distorting the light above her swivel chair. By sitting sideways and looking at her through peripheral vision I could get a clearer impression, but she still only looked like a wow in a room of mirrors.

I felt anxious. I had to convince her there was something wrong with me, a legitimate reason for seeing her. This bothered me because as time goes on I have the growing conviction there's nothing wrong with me, I'm just not well-adjusted to this mad society we live in. So why am I taking these pills if all they do is make the estrangement bearable? I have half-answers to these questions. I hope the vaporous shrink will relate to this, rather than prescribing 100 volts of electroshock a day.

Echoes of that horrendous movie. Echoes of my life. What does it mean when reality laps against the shore of fiction?

Late winter special

This is my favourite time of year. Oh, I adore the time of fruit trees blooming. And August: late summer in Ontario is just so fine. But nothing beats the season when pregnant mud bursts through melting snow. It's the time of hope. Not much longer and I'll feel the fluttering surge of testosterone.

The problem is this usually arrives in March. Here it is February 5 and 5°C (42°F) outside. Marian and I walked down to the pond and stood staring, soaking up sunlight. This is not a fluke. The entire winter has been strange. The usual bitter cold never set in for more than a day or two. Probably some more winter weather is in store, but I predict not much. The entire past year has followed unusual patterns: a rainy summer, a long, mild autumn, and ambiguous winter. This is a harbinger of climate change. Our politicians ought to stop denying it. How much can we fight it?

It's bringing pleasant weather one month early, so I might as well enjoy it. This is the moment. I'm alive and unafraid of today.

Water drips musically from melting ice along the Eramosa River's edge. A family of mallards descends to the open channel, orange feet splayed toward the black water, green heads brilliant as emeralds in the sun.