Volcano Apocalypse: Documents & Diamonds
A volcano erupted. Unseen, the building is quietly simmering with deep heat. The only safe place is my childhood’s bedroom. Here it’s located higher up on the fourth floor.
My sister N and I are the only ones left in the building. The others are safe, outside, somehow, by the pool. Lounging, waiting for us two to jump off the fourth floor window.
As usual in disaster dreams; I head to the closet to pick up the ready packed emergency backpack. I couldn’t find it. This never happened before. This upsets me so much- that someone has been messing with my planned plans to exit ready on short notice.
I grab the empty bag and for this first time do not pack anything for myself. I pack
tiny underwear, a top, trousers for my daughter. Suddenly I hesitate because I’m pondering if I should add something that she would like for me to save. ‘The weather is hot’ so I add her favorite my little pony summer dress.
Now I’m ready to leave.
My sister has nothing to take, and I turn to her and say; perhaps I should at least take my phone charger. I open the bedroom’s door and sure enough like she’s saying to me, it is too late to go in. The floors ahead are too hot now to walk on with bare feet. I close the door.
She prepares to jump out of the barred window. I wonder how she and I are going to even fit between those bars. But somehow they aren’t an issue.
She sits herself on the ledge, centralizes her position as to fall onto a yellow inflatable pillow floating in the pool below. I see my mother sitting on the chair by the pool’s table, and she’s busy doing something, leisurely. I hear others too but can’t make out anybody. I know it is my family anyway. It’s calm outside. A nice day.
She, really quickly and abruptly jumps. She doesn’t waste a moment. Very sure of everything, she jumps, lands on the yellow thing and into the water. I worry that a jump this high will make us go deep down under water. But she gracefully comes up, only diving a little way.
So now I am in the bedroom by myself. And I feel that I cannot do what she has just done. And I look around me thinking, is there really nothing I should take (to death)? It is then when I decide, that if I don’t ‘save’ my writings, I will live to regret it forever.
So I go pick up all my journals, and one by one I’m stuffing them into my new blue backpack from San Fransisco. I know they are only a few pages full-each. Still. Then I open a drawer and gratefully take out all the loose papers (in reality they are organized) and stuff them into a white and red Safeway plastic bag. I tie a knot. There is absolutely nothing else that I want to save from being forever lost in an invisible fire, or take with me to my death. Only my texts, notes, journals and book. My writings. I own nothing else. I only own them.
I suddenly think of my daughter, and wonder if she’d be grateful that I saved a stuffed toy. But the toy I find is a grey fluffy rabbit that I once owned as a child. I hold my rabbit and stroke the thing but I am aware, that in case of emergency, I’ve long since planned and decided to only take the already ready and packed backpack. Nothing else.
I throw the toy back into the box. The white tiled floor underneath my bare feet is hotter now and I know that it is time to go. Goodbye house, goodbye childhood in a room. I throw my writings out of the window, and now I sit on the ledge as my sister had before me. I am absolutely, positively sure, that I am not going to make it. I cannot jump. I lean backwards with my back to the window behind me. And looking down to the pool, to the yellow pillow, I know that it is not going to happen.
I get dizzy and lean backwards again, when I see across the street, a young dad, playing with his young baby boy. The baby is too small to walk or stand. But he is walking and standing and even doing acrobatics, with his little feet treading on his daddy’s hands. The young man moves his hands around, and the baby puts his feet accordingly, or maybe it’s the other way around. One time, the dad falters and the baby almost slips, but then the hand reaches the falling small foot and makes a place for it to land. They proceed with their dance.
I think, hanging out on the ledge, that this street show is supposed to be helpful for me. I miss the point completely.
I am alone. The dream ends.
Next morning, on tv, they are talking about an active volcano in Kamchatka where they have discovered very special diamonds. Volcanos make diamonds.
Maybe I should have left my writings in my past.
Or maybe, in that dream, I’m the diamond.
