David L. Ulin ~ Triptych

#9 Dream

I was in Manhattan, on the #9 train. At the sta­tion, a large crowd had been backed onto the plat­form due to a dis­tur­bance ahead. I noticed what appeared to be a lane of clear space and fol­lowed. To my aston­ish­ment, it remained pass­able all the way to the front. At the entrance, police tape, flash­ing red lights, offi­cers milling. Was there an ambu­lance? I don’t remem­ber see­ing one. What I do remem­ber: a human body, young, male, sprawled behind a scrim of yel­low cau­tion tape. His life reduced (as every life will be) to momen­tary spec­ta­cle. No way to move for­ward. Nothing to do but gawk, as if I were a tourist or a fool. It was sev­er­al min­utes before an EMT—so there must have been an ambulance—came over. Did he speak before lay­ing hands on me, pal­pat­ing my lymph nodes, flash­light­ing my pupils, tug­ging at my tongue? Because you’ve been exposed to death, he warned, you are required to quar­an­tine for sev­en days. It was impos­si­ble, of course, what he was ask­ing. I told him: I teach Tuesdays and Wednesdays. I have to be in class. Suddenly, I became aware that it was Sunday and I was vis­it­ing my par­ents. Not this week, you don’t, the EMT replied.

Here, the scene regroups and my moth­er and father make an appear­ance. Not in their apartment—although pos­si­bly at first, maybe for a moment? this is the soft spot of the dream, the place where remem­brance fades or erodes—but in a car my father is dri­ving, south on Varick Street, head­ed toward the Holland Tunnel, not far from where I used to live. My moth­er is buck­led into the pas­sen­ger seat and I am sit­ting in the back, no seat­belt, lean­ing across the gap between my par­ents, as I rou­tine­ly did when I was a child. All of this feels nat­ur­al, a mat­ter of mus­cle mem­o­ry, even though it’s been two years since he was last behind the wheel. I yelled at him about it then as he gig­gled like a school­boy, but he is eighty-sev­en now and can bare­ly walk a slow loop around the block, cane in left hand, right reach­ing out to clutch the build­ing scaf­fold­ings, bal­ance lit­tle more than a whis­per of remem­brance, anoth­er some­thing he has lost. I am in New York to care for them, I am ever in New York to care for them. But that is not what reg­is­ters. Instead, as the three of us clus­ter in the closed space of the car, I share the sto­ry of the body and the neces­si­ty of quarantine.

Is it the same day? It must be. I have the sense that it is. The dream has shift­ed into present tense, which leads to yet anoth­er com­pli­ca­tion: I need to dis­ap­pear. My quar­an­tine is not com­plet­ed; it has not even begun. I should not be with them. I should be in their apart­ment, iso­lat­ing in my child­hood room. My pres­ence is a vec­tor. My pres­ence is a threat. The mouth of the tun­nel recalls the sub­way entry. It gapes before us like the emp­ty maw of an abyss. I qui­et myself from speak­ing, retract my words as if each con­tains the seed of its con­ta­gion, its dis­ease. Neither of my par­ents notices. Neither one reacts. I can no longer recre­ate, exact­ly, my lan­guage of deflec­tion, my strate­gies to make the dan­ger dis­si­pate. Or no, not the dan­ger; the dan­ger belongs to me. It is my stig­ma, from which I redi­rect atten­tion, hide how much it means. The dam­age has already been accom­plished. I swal­low the details to pro­tect myself. Car win­dows closed, no one can remain immune. All the same, if I don’t speak, I can’t be held account­able. This is the rule of my fam­i­ly. Does a thing, a state of being, exist only if it is acknowl­edged? Well, I am acknowl­edg­ing it now.

~

Scent

used the
milled soap
you left
in the
hotel shower
so all
day my
hands bear
your scent
even as
you are
fly­ing away
from me
asleep in
the window
seat of
a jet
en route
to washington
ear­ly morning
sky streaked
with cumulus
sophie on
the other
end awaiting
surgery and
you bound
to care
for her
while i
fin­ish teaching
in the
desert before
return­ing to
a home
emp­ty but
for the
ghosts that
clus­ter in
the corners
like the
traces of
you that
linger on
my fingers
remind­ing me
of everything
that dissipates
of everything
that fades

~

Interval

house dark
rae snor­ing softly
dawn
a whis­per of
the future
reverberating
through the present
to the past

time is always
mov­ing backward
each instant
rec­ol­lect­ed in the
rearview
nei­ther known
nor recognized
until it has gone

and yet what is understanding
i under­stand nothing
it is this i’ve had to accept
five forty five am
and i remain
in shadow
wait­ing for the
day to break

my heart

~

David L. Ulin is the author or edi­tor of more than twen­ty books, includ­ing the nov­el Thirteen Question Method and Sidewalking: Coming to Terms with Los Angeles, short­list­ed for the PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay. His work has appeared in The Atlantic, Harper’s, The New York Times, and The Best American Essays 2020. The recip­i­ent of fel­low­ships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Lannan Foundation, and Ucross Foundation, as well as a COLA Individual Master Artist Grant from the City of Los Angeles, he is a Professor of English at the University of Southern California, where he edits the jour­nal Air/Light. In September, Library of America will pub­lish his American Flash Fiction: An Anthology.