Aleh / Notes from my Book of After Dark Dreams

Nicolás Dumit Estévez Raful

Aleh / Notes from My Own Book of After Dark Dreams

In my effort to do away with the word healing I try different combinations for the letters in it. My hesitation stems from how overused this theme has become, at least in the arts; almost void of significance. Coopted. Capitalized. The recollection I have is of those in the arts with the afront to approach anything spiritual, having to decide between surrendering professional validation on behalf the institution/industry or simply making room for our visions in the margins, outside the center of conceptual and aesthetic prescribing. This is how I come up with Aleh, which I imagine more like a sound calling forth an intention for restoration, recovery, ease, wholeness–even if in fragmented form-,and all of those states that I and many usually associate with healing. Aleh, I find through the digital oracle named Google is a Hebrew word for leaf or foliage, and I am glad to see that my “neologism” is not that far from the source where healing can occur: through communion with Earth. Let it be Aleh and let us proceed from here.

Elaborating on Aleh from My Own Book of After Dark Dreams: I see an older man who purports to be in charge of everything, and everything means all and everyone. He lies in bed as a result of a significant health crisis. His bloated body speaks of years of self-neglect and for this reason, at this late stage in his life, he requires support to keep going. A woman has the task of administering food and medications. His red face and floppy blond hair are in great contrast to the bleached cotton sheets on which he gives the impression to rest; but there is no ease in his demeanor. I must say early on, that I have no clue of who I am in this scene or what my role in this plot is–perhaps simply that of a witness to my own projections.

Despite the caregiver’s disposition to be of service, the man in bed screams at her as she offers him a cup of water. Unable to resist the anger at seeing how the woman is being treated I scream back at the bed-ridden man using a voice larger and louder than his. To this, he gets up from his confinement and lashes out at my insolence, inquiring as to how do I dare to recriminate someone of his stature. Reading his mind, I run out of the room, but realize that he is already after me. In my desperation to escape I look for safety in the streets of a city, while trying to confuse the persecutor by weaving in and out of several urban alleys. However, I soon understand that the place is all his. The city and everyone who inhabit it are this man’s subjects and, subsequently his objects. A white cat with grey markings disrupts our circling around. The creature in question bleeds through the mouth and his testicles are somewhat detached from his body, yet they remain in place. I am not sure how to act at that moment. The ethical choice would be to get a hold of the cat and have him receive immediate attention. The feline and I pass each other twice. I think of veterinary costs, so I attempt in vain to get him out of my mind, but ponder on karmic debt. I am fully aware of his suffering and how our healing is tied together. I continue to run knowing that I have been robbed of my own space, if there is any space I can really claim as mine alone. There is no exit from the sick man’s reality and both his and my world have collided in this dream. Should I call it nightmare?

My partner David assists me in distributing yards of thin silk. I cut and hand one-two yards at a time to a group of women participating in a workshop that I am teaching. They themselves wrap around with the material, after which they hide in the bushes. The interactions take place on a back porch. The owner of the house is the same woman who tends to the man in the bed now chasing me. She is nervous about having him discover that I am on his property. She therefore wants me out as soon as possible. The fear in her face is as palpable as the fabric I am slipping through my fingers before feeding the sharp scissors.

I return to the streets to retrieve different items from an old wooden bureau. These consist of power objects, shamanic talismans, made out of clay and fabricated by my friend Reinaldo. I offer one of them to a person watching me forage through the drawers. I give him an oblong sculpture painted red at its base and boasting a dry texture. A wire secures a ceramic frog to it, which springs at any motion I make. The search yields several pairs of wings. I opt for the two that fit my unconscious dream search. They act as a set of keys. I wake up to write Reinaldo from David’s desk, my desire is for him to materialize for me my chosen pair of wings, or the ones that have chosen me. I give with complete appreciation for what has been gifted to me and ask my friend for wings with this understanding of this process. A WhatsApp voice message ensues with my strange request to Reinaldo.

Sitting by the windows near the sidewalk, my hand articulates the rest of the message. I am further awake and a bit more awaken. There are hidden gifts in panic and anxiety, and there is the speed of light and that of the almost annoying pace at which turtles go about life. The call to move at the pace of the four-legged reptile will give me the pleasure of getting to comb the skin of the planet, as well as the amorphous body of water. Mud becomes the sacred tablet on which presence can be recorded, that is, before movement eventually becomes mud and mud finds its way again, quite parsimoniously, into turtle. In the time being I wait for my pair of clay wings while practicing what I thought was my made-up word, over and over, because through dreams and nightmares I attempt to heal: Aleh