Drean in Black and White

I just woke from a dream of Georgia/West Virginia. I had made

a trip, just me, back home to visit for one last time. It was

supposedly our, mine and Wendall's old house, but everything

looked more, not exactly, but more like West Virginia, outside

Granny and Papau's old house. and everybody we ever knew was

there. Everybody. All the family, start with Kenneth and

Roger, all the cousins, all the West Virginis cousins,

Herbert's kids and their kids and Jerry's and Larry and Suzie,

all the West Virginia people. Cindy Dingess, Papau and all his

old men friends, all the people up and down the holler. All

black and white, dim, dusky, almost night, light. All the

color of coal mine country with all those people we knew.
A somewhat different house and we were all sleeping on

mattresses on the porches, which wrapped around the house

halfway.
Mamaw, Glenna, Granny, Darrell's old playmates, everybody's

old playmates or pals, from the time I first went down there

with Wendall, his high school friends, all those kids.
Outside the mud yard, around the edges, toward where Ma's

house was, darker, were the replacement generations of all of

those we knew, were. Doing the same thing they had done when

they lived there. We, Kenneth or someone, commented on them,

how it was our past, but their present.
In the dream it all seemed so West Virginia but we talked

about as if we were in Georgia.
Wendall was not there, he was dead. Everyone else was there,

in black and white, and, during all this I longed for him,

knew he wasn't there and did not wonder why everyone else who

was dead was there and he wasn,t there too.
Logical. I'm letting reality creep in now.
Trying not to do that, stay in the dream.
Searching, not really for Wendall, I knew he wasn't there, but

in the midst of all the activity and milling talking, being

suddenly aware of searching and crying and longing.
More people, family, kept arriving, distant cousins, mostly

Wendall's side of the family, mostly West virginia origins.

Dark, crowded, but we all knew each other.
I'm going back to bed, while I still can, to look for more

details.
Back up. Right now on edge between the dream and now, still

want to go back there even though it is so bleak. I know I

will never see that place and those people again. I don't want

to leave it, knowing I can never go back, but Iwant to come

back to here also, because it is. I don't know why I want to

come back here at this moment, but there is a pull to here

too.
And now it is like I can't choose anymore. I can't go back to

there. It is clouds and fog and black and white fadin to grey

and mist and mud and like West virginia in the dark and fog at

night. The house and yard and creek trees and the hills at the

edge of the yard but the other houses dim, maybe deserted.

We spoke of how the house would fall down and, and said that

probably those boys in the trees and at the edge of the yard

just hanging out like Wendall and Kenneth had done lived in

the house when we weren't here.

And I was alone and going to leave, just like now alone, just

visitiing Georgia once more and was going to leave soon. I was

going to leave and when I left I knew it would be over. All of

it. Not consciously, subconsciously.
Which is why I didn't want to leave even when I sort of knew

it was a dream.
I know when I let go of this it is over and i will never see

this place again, and I don't want to leave but I do, and have to, and know I must, but but but...
Sitting up trying to type, eyes closed trying to stay there, and can't find the keys. I have to look, search, as if I never learned the keyboard.
Weird, since I have known (this is where the conscious present begins, using have known rather than knew, because I had typed knew and changed it) a keyboard since I was 17.
I begin to hear the birds outside and they are singing in color, and I hear Anita's voice and the the cars and a dog bark and other voices and I am conscious that I must save this (this document, I mean) so I won't lose it because I could never do it again, because now the fog is so thick and I

am going to make myself let it go soon, but my stomach hurts

at the thought, as if Wendall were going rather than that place and that feeling in the dream.
I am still trying to stay dim so I won't lose this feeling and these pictures in my head, all the people we ever met or knew in West Virginia, and how when the kids were little, when we left Granny and Papaw's house, we took highway 10 through the hollows and hills and it all still looked like West Virginia until we turned onto highway 60 and then it was over and we

were out of the hills. The family feeling and the connecting emotional strings ended there, where highway 60 began, and if I let go it will be gone forever and my heart is breaking and the birds singing louder and brighter and I hear the surf too, now, but mostly the birds.
Wendall is in a bird sometimes, figuratively, especially when I was first here alone, so maybe I can let there go and think there is a bird with Wendall calling, singing, anita, traffic, color, birds, surf, light.

Eyes open let go let go let go get up open curtains look at

the real world is it the real one which is the dream both are

dreams.
I have no choice now the fog is still there,still reachable but I have to let go like letting go of Wendall of

everything past and going on into the now, the future here.

end.

This is not finished but I must leave this room and go to an AA meeting and talk to real people and will edit it later.