“Dream”

Hidden within the stained cardboard of art books I purchased on Facebook Marketplace, was a treasure. It was a painting deep within an anthology of known and obscure art. As with any alphabetized collection of art, I went to the D’s to find my favorite mustachioed creative, Salvador Dalí. When one thinks of Dalí, his signature work, “The Persistence of Memory”, most assuredly comes to mind. It shows a melting clock in an alien wasteland. Yet when I found his page in this greatest hits paperback, I was surprised to see a different and more jarring piece.

I recognized “Sleep” even if I had never seen it. The sweeping feeling within transferred me to a small child driving along in his mother’s Ford Taurus, pale legs in higher than comfortable shorts. When I was a boy, I dreamt in patterns. There were a few strange and wonderful dream sequences I could count on participating in most nights. A form of escape and occasional terror, these anchored my childhood.

One of them was awoken when I saw that miniature illustration this week.

Our youth is never remembered as we wish it to be. Much of it is not a memory, but a feeling. One arbitrary instance in mid life can trigger a feeling words fail to describe adequately. If we string enough of those feelings together, we have a clearer map of a lived childhood. Not as fairytale or trauma, but something else deep within our being. Something that is with us forever, waiting to be triggered. Much like a surrealist artist, our memory is felt into meaning.

There is something in this painting I find comforting, something that reminds me of home. This is the mystery of art, both transcendent and grotesque. It reminds us to be present but also to dream. Of sunbathed memories and claustrophobic frights.