Prose

He spoke, and as he spoke his knee rapped rhythmically against the underside of the table. 'You see,' he began, 'I have to do it. Believe me I wish there were a simpler way. But I have to bring my dreams to the surface somehow, into the sun where I can catch them. Memory is fitted for everyday things, for shopping lists and old white lies and numbers to do with money. It reels and buckles under the weight of actual events. Suppose, tomorrow, in the middle of Times Square a woman was brutally stabbed to death, how many different versions of the murder would we be able to extract from the crowd? And we expect this faculty to cope with probably the most sublime thing that happens to most of us with any regularity? It just won't do. Dreams cannot be packaged and stored so easily. Which means we need to keep the dreams before us, just as a painter works in front of his model. The most fleeting impressions must be made permanent. Our souls crave these subtleties, fattened as they are on crisp suits and white colonnades, on television and readable novels. They crave access to an experience most would call unnatural. So you see,' he concluded, his knee's rhythm slowing, 'that is why I keep this little pipe. It is, like an Arab's lamp, full of spirits rendered intelligible. Now if you excuse me, this crack won't smoke itself.’