Last night I had another dream within a dream. In the first layer of dreaming, I had another dream and faded with ease into the second layer of dreaming, within which I was still in a relationship with Ophelia and, as a result, I was supremely happy; it felt like I was wrapped cosily in a soft and delicate blanket of sublime interwoven fabrics of wool and cashmere, which both comforted and protected me from the harsh horrors of life and reality. I was safe from the great sorrow of existence that usually makes me pitifully tremble and shiver – when the world turns as cold as a monumentally large block of ice, towering up into the callous heavens; like the ice-realm in which Francis Bacon meditated on the gloom and terror of humanity and our animalistic, disgorged, mutilated souls – then, suddenly, I was crudely tugged down through the floorboards of my mind, out of the joyous realm, and into the first layer of dreaming, where I was sitting at a bar with Edward and we were old men, our faces ravaged by the scars of time, our bones aching, our hearts tired and full of regret and denial at the loss of life so cruelly etched into our weary bodies. I asked him, with a sad air of intuitive understanding, if he still dreamt of Ophelia, whom he also loved, and without looking up from his drink he sighed and meekly said yes. We sat in sorrowful silence for what felt like an eternity, only the faint murmur of outside life and the streets accompanied us, as we wallowed in the final sadness of a lost youth, until eventually my mind awoke back into my waking reality and I was immersed in that old feeling of emptiness and regret that I always get when I dream of Ophelia … Oh, my sweet and lost Ophelia.
It seems I subconsciously crave the holy intimacy of love, especially young and naive love, the kind of love that imparts on us wondrous delusions that all our lives will be sweet and dream-like, for when we hold our lover close through the night, and wake with the singing of the birds to watch her sleep and breathe in the sacred reverie of a peaceful dreamless sleep, safe in our warm and tender embrace, our worries seem to just melt away in the face of a love so innocent and pure that no earthly or mortal horror could ever contaminate its sublime and pure spirit; the same glistening spirit that exudes a comforting light through all the dark days of our past, present and future, that seem to loom ominously above us like a vast mountain that could crumble at any minute, swaying with the fierce winds of cosmic fortune, of fate, just daring us to trip, slip, fall, stumble, anything to brutally tear us away from that holy light that guides us through the sodden gutters of life and up into the stars, to bask in innocent and ancient unity with one’s lover, so that our shimmering, glittering love can bloom and blossom and together we can share our own personal eternity, if only for a moment.
Journal Extract by Stamos Mardou