Everything is Illuminated by Jonathan Safran Foer; page 37-41

[sinepenthe]

4:512 -- The dream of sex without pain. I
dreamt four nights ago of clock hands de-
scending from the universe like rain, of
the moon as a green eye, of mirrors and
insects, of a love that never withdrew. It
was not the feeling of completeness that I
so needed, but the feeling of not being
empty. This dream ended when I felt
my husband enter me. 4:513 -- The dream of
angels dreaming of men. It was during an
afternoon nap that I dreamt of a ladder.
Angels were sleepwalking up and down
the runs their eyes closed, their breath
heavy and dull, their wings hanging limp
at the sides. I bumped into an old angel as
I passed him, waking and startling him.
He looked like my grandfather did before
he passed away last year, when he would
pray each night to die in his sleep. Oh,
the angel said to me, I was just dreaming
of you. 4:514 -- The dream of, as silly as it
sounds, flight. 4:515 -- The dream of the
waltz of feast, famine and feast. 4:516 -- The
dream of disembodied birds (46). I'm not
sure if you would consider this a dream or
a memory, because it actually happened,
but when I fall asleep I see the room
in which I mounred the death of my son.
For those of you who were there, you will
remember how we sat without speaking,
eating only as much as we had to. you will
remember when a bird crashed through
the window and fell to the floor. You will
remember, those of you who were there,
how it jerked its wings before dying, and
left a spot of blood on the floor after it
was removed. But who among you was
first to notice the negative bird it left in
the window? Who first saw the shadow
that the bird left behind, the shadow that
drew blood from any finger that dared to
trace it, the shadow that was better proof
of the bird's existence than the bird ever
was? Who was with me when I mourned
the death of my son, when I excused my-
self to bury that bird with my own hands?
4:517 -- The dream of falling in love, mar-
riage, death, love. This dream seems as if it
lasts for hours, although it always takes
place in the five minutes between my re-
turning from the field and being woken
for dinner. I dream of when I met my
wife, fifty years ago, and it's exactly as it
happened. I dream of our marriage, and I
can even see my father's tears of pride. It's
all there just as it was. But then I dream
of my own death, which I have heard is
impossible to do, but you must believe
me. I dream of my wife telling me on my
deathbed that she loves me, and even
though she thinks I can't hear her, I can,
and she says she wouldn't have changed
anything. It feels like a moment I've
lived a thousand times before, as if everything
is familiar, right up to the moment of my
death, that it will happen again an infinite
number of times, that we will meet,
marry, have our children, succeed in the
ways we have, fail in the ways we have, all
exactly the same, always unable to change
a thing. I am again at the bottom of an
unstoppable wheel, and when I feel my
eyes close for death, as they have and will
a thousand times, I awake. 4:518 -- The
dream of perpetual motion. 4:519 -- The
dream of low windows. 4:520 -- The dream of
safety and peace. I dreamt that I was born
from a stranger's body. She gave birth to
me in a secret dwelling, far away from ev-
erything that I would grow to know. Im-
mediately after I was born, she handed
me to my mother, for the sake of appear-
ances, and my mother said, Thank you.
You have given me a son, the gift of life.
And for this reason, because I was of a
stranger's body, I did not fear the body of
my mother, and I could embrace it with-
out shame, with only love. Because I was
not from my mother's body, my desire to
go home never led back to her, and I was
free to say Mother, and mean only
Mother. 4:521 -- The dream of disembodied
birds (47). It's dusk in this dream that I
have every night, and I'm making love to
my wife, my real wife, I mean, to whom
I've been married for thirty years, and
you all know how I love her, I love her so
much. I massage her thighs in my hands,
and I move my hands up her waist and
belly, and touch her breasts. My wife is
such a beautiful woman, you all know
that, and in the dream she's the same, just
as beautiful. I look down at my hands on
her breasts--callused, worn things, a
man's hands, veiny, shaky, fluttering--
and I remember, I don't know why, but
it's this way every night, I remember two
white birds that my mother brought back
for me from Warsaw when I was only a
child. We let them fly around the house
and perch wherever they wanted to. I re-
member seeing my mother's back as she
cooked eggs for me, and I remember the
birds perching on her shoulders, with
their beaks up next to her ears, as if they
were about to tell her a secret. She
reached her right hand up into the cup-
board, searching without looking for
some spice on a high shelf, grasping at
something elusive, fluttering, not letting
my food burn. 4:522 -- The dream of meet-
ing your younger self. 4:523 -- The dream of
animals, two by two. 4:524 -- The dream of I
won't be ashamed. 4:525 -- The dream that
we are our fathers. I walked to the Brod,
without knowing why, and looked into
my reflection in the water. I couldn't look
away. What was the image that pulled me
in after it? What was it that I loved? And
then I recognized it. so simple. In the
water I saw my father's face, and that face
saw the face of its father, and so on, and so
on, reflecting backward to the beginning
of time, to the face of God, in whose
image we were created. We burned with
love for ourselves, all of us, starters of
the fire we suffered--our love was the af-
fliction for which only our love was the cure...