had last met in an underground of lives. As the feeling entered his mind she arrived and spoke to him. He could not make out entirely what she was saying but her voice rang in his ears with a new and remarkable tenderness which warned him he must keep a secret. That was all he could make out from her words. What secret? he asked but she had already vanished. It was a deeply puzzling dream, and yet it left him with an extraordinary revitalized sensation, a validation of identity.
As though a mysterious cycle of contrasting spaces peculiar to time had come full circle at last. He was now seen for whom and what he was in space. Seen by some intimate blind spectre or caveat of history whose judgement was no longer blind. Seen through—or in spite of—himself.
Goodrich made a note in his diary about his dream:
“I had a strong sense of space in my dream. How should I put it? Let me put it perhaps in this way. Space is a symbol or apparition of self-conscious properties and of human and cosmic desert. At certain times in one’s life the human or cosmic desert personalizes itself! The question is—what does this personalization mean? I would hazard a guess that it is a way of bringing to one’s attention the hubris of self- consciousness, the hubris embodied in a ‘technology’ of space. In a sense, therefore, the personalization of the human or cosmic desert in one’s dreams is a kind of ironic acquittal from the charge of hubris. I say acquittal in that a motif appears and asserts itself in the dream to define and redefine the nature of community beyond conformity to a status of hubris. Acquittal, therefore, from hubris is nothing more than the revitalized life of the imagination to re-assess blocked perspectives and to begin to digest as well as liberate contrasting figures….”
That morning he joined Marsden in the sitting-room filled with a most curious and uncanny tide of energy. Something had validated him. It seemed an irrational conviction and yet it persisted: a sensation of grotesque yet deeply significant transfigured relationships, forgotten relationships which possessed ironic powers to return and acquit him not only of hubris but of forgetfulness: despised or forgotten vocations within the muse of history.
It was stimulating and sobering. Indeed the very stimulation was a caution. In describing or gloating upon his dream, had he not partially betrayed it and succumbed to an order of self-congratulation or inflation?
As he confronted Marsden the question assailed him: Marsden’s phenomenal expression of world-weary conductor, an indefinable shroud or pallor (so it seemed to Goodrich in the wake of his own stimulation or tide of energies). For in the shroud Marsden appeared to wear this morning Goodrich sensed a paradoxical feud as well as debt to nameless and intimate resources planted in his dream. Over the past months he had given clothing, food, money to Marsden but it was Marsden who symbolized the Bank from which he had drawn rather than the beneficiary to whom he had given. He was indebted to Marsden as the most signal contradiction in his life—a shared community of goods and dreams. An enigmatic historical bank and beneficiary within whom the very act of giving became a receiving, a dangerous hypnotic legacy at times as well as a revitalized caveat of originality and community.
“Is this true?” asked Goodrich.
“What?” said Marsden. “Is what true?”
“Oh forgive me—it’s nothing at all—I was thinking aloud.”
Marsden laughed and Goodrich felt sudden anger: anger at the shroud or pallor of history to which he was indebted in forms beyond tabulation or classification. It was one of Marsden’s agents or mistresses—he thought perversely—who had conducted the dream scene by the wall….
“Lazy bitch,” said Marsden.
“I beg your pardon.”
“It’s my turn to ask forgiveness, Goodrich. I too have been thinking aloud. Jennifer should have been down early. She can
As though a mysterious cycle of contrasting spaces peculiar to time had come full circle at last. He was now seen for whom and what he was in space. Seen by some intimate blind spectre or caveat of history whose judgement was no longer blind. Seen through—or in spite of—himself.
Goodrich made a note in his diary about his dream:
“I had a strong sense of space in my dream. How should I put it? Let me put it perhaps in this way. Space is a symbol or apparition of self-conscious properties and of human and cosmic desert. At certain times in one’s life the human or cosmic desert personalizes itself! The question is—what does this personalization mean? I would hazard a guess that it is a way of bringing to one’s attention the hubris of self- consciousness, the hubris embodied in a ‘technology’ of space. In a sense, therefore, the personalization of the human or cosmic desert in one’s dreams is a kind of ironic acquittal from the charge of hubris. I say acquittal in that a motif appears and asserts itself in the dream to define and redefine the nature of community beyond conformity to a status of hubris. Acquittal, therefore, from hubris is nothing more than the revitalized life of the imagination to re-assess blocked perspectives and to begin to digest as well as liberate contrasting figures….”
That morning he joined Marsden in the sitting-room filled with a most curious and uncanny tide of energy. Something had validated him. It seemed an irrational conviction and yet it persisted: a sensation of grotesque yet deeply significant transfigured relationships, forgotten relationships which possessed ironic powers to return and acquit him not only of hubris but of forgetfulness: despised or forgotten vocations within the muse of history.
It was stimulating and sobering. Indeed the very stimulation was a caution. In describing or gloating upon his dream, had he not partially betrayed it and succumbed to an order of self-congratulation or inflation?
As he confronted Marsden the question assailed him: Marsden’s phenomenal expression of world-weary conductor, an indefinable shroud or pallor (so it seemed to Goodrich in the wake of his own stimulation or tide of energies). For in the shroud Marsden appeared to wear this morning Goodrich sensed a paradoxical feud as well as debt to nameless and intimate resources planted in his dream. Over the past months he had given clothing, food, money to Marsden but it was Marsden who symbolized the Bank from which he had drawn rather than the beneficiary to whom he had given. He was indebted to Marsden as the most signal contradiction in his life—a shared community of goods and dreams. An enigmatic historical bank and beneficiary within whom the very act of giving became a receiving, a dangerous hypnotic legacy at times as well as a revitalized caveat of originality and community.
“Is this true?” asked Goodrich.
“What?” said Marsden. “Is what true?”
“Oh forgive me—it’s nothing at all—I was thinking aloud.”
Marsden laughed and Goodrich felt sudden anger: anger at the shroud or pallor of history to which he was indebted in forms beyond tabulation or classification. It was one of Marsden’s agents or mistresses—he thought perversely—who had conducted the dream scene by the wall….
“Lazy bitch,” said Marsden.
“I beg your pardon.”
“It’s my turn to ask forgiveness, Goodrich. I too have been thinking aloud. Jennifer should have been down early. She can
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