I dreamt of corpses,
black plastic garbage bags, and
felt nothing of death,
which was strange and troublesome
like the absence of birdsong.

This poem, written in the tanka form, emerged in the dim light of early morning after a particularly grim yet vague dream – vague in my memory of it, anyway – while sitting in my habitual morning spot, which affords a wide view of the backyard with its bird feeders and throngs of song birds. Why did I feel nothing of this dream of death? The comfort and peace of these morning moments seem shocking in contrast to the banal horror in the dream. Outside the dreamworld, these quiet morning moments seem shocking in contrast to the waves of pain and destruction crashing around me.

A few nights later, another dream. The setting was a dark city and, in it, a towering, brutalist skyscraper with an elevated plaza connecting its two buildings several stories above ground level. Highways and railway viaducts criss-crossed the cityscape. I was on the far edge of this interstitial plaza space when the upper half of one of the towers toppled over onto its side in spectacular destruction. As the dreamer, the observer, I was both in the scene but apart from it, able to watch the catastrophe unfold without feeling concerned for my safety. In the aftermath, within the dream’s halflife, I had the sense that this event had happened before, and was happening again, identical to a previous incident. I wondered, was this a recurring dream? Or did I dream of having the feeling of deja vu? 

I dreamt the dream of the collapsing tower on new year’s eve, as we passed from whatever 2020 was into whatever 2021 will be. The morning after, I made a collage of cut eyes, although I don't believe I was consciously referencing the dream. A tilting tower of eyes, perhaps gazing back, or peering forward, but certainly looking at me in the present. This play of many eyes makes me think of that passage from the philosopher Walter Benjamin’s essay “On the Concept of History” in which he remarks on a painting by Paul Klee:

A Klee painting named ‘Angelus Novus’ shows an angel looking as though he is about to move away from something he is fixedly contemplating. His eyes are staring, his mouth is open, his wings are spread. This is how one pictures the angel of history. His face is turned toward the past. Where we perceive a chain of events, he sees one single catastrophe which keeps piling wreckage and hurls it in front of his feet. The angel would like to stay, awaken the dead, and make whole what has been smashed. But a storm is blowing in from Paradise; it has got caught in his wings with such a violence that the angel can no longer close them. The storm irresistibly propels him into the future to which his back is turned, while the pile of debris before him grows skyward. This storm is what we call progress. 

Benjamin, wrote this in 1940, just months before he fled France to escape certain death in one of Nazi Germany’s concentration camps; he was a German Jew. Family, friends, colleagues around him were being captured, incarcerated, and exterminated. During his attempted escape, he committed suicide rather than face death at the hands of the Nazis when Spain began refusing transit visas. “Pile of debris” was Benjamin’s metaphor for what he had witnessed and studied as a scholar of history. As I think back on 2020, “pile of debris” also seems apropos as ever for the immediate past nine months. Skyward the pile grows. The storm propels us forward. My tower of many eyes surveys this landscape, perhaps. I return its gaze. How will we “make whole what has been smashed”?

I made this collage while sitting alongside my 5 year old, who was working next to me on her own projects, building worlds with pictures and stories, doing that most important work of play and imagination. As she chugged along in her work, I quietly wrote these words around the tower:

I am sitting at the art table with Lucie, she and I both making things on this new year’s day. There’s faint snow on the ground, and moments of bright sun shining through the blinds. We are chit chatting about this and that, enjoying each other on this lazy day. Lucie asks, “Who do you think is the nicest person in the world?” I don’t know! Then: “Would you rather eat a small piece of glue or swallow a whole chipmunk?” Easy, I’ll take the glue! It feels good to have this slowness together on this first morning of 2021. Here’s to the future.

With warmth from chilly Vermont, the ancestral home of the Western Abenaki,

Jeremy

PS: I’m still processing the events of Wednesday. Much of the above, which was written prior to that day, seems sharpened by what has happened. I believe that what we are seeing in Trumpism broadly and the organized attack on the Capitol specifically is the barbaric rage of white supremacy desperate to retain power and control of this country. One way my family has been trying to counter white supremacy is to use our wealth (however, miniscule that may be relatively speaking) to support BIPOC led organizations as well as making micro-reparations to BIPOC individuals in Vermont. We are also committing to give away much of our recent stimulus check. Here are some individuals and organizations we have donated to:

• Housing for Toussaint St. Negritude, who is a Black, queer artist in our community.

• Showing Up for Racial Justice (SURJ), a national organization with a local chapter in central Vermont focused on moving white people to act as part of a multi-racial majority for justice with passion and accountability. My partner is a volunteer organizer with SURJ.

• Nulhegan Tribe Abenaki Nation Vermont-Memphremagog, which is the government and community organization of the Western Abenaki. 

• Honor the Earth creates awareness and support for Native environmental issues and to develop needed financial and political resources for the survival of sustainable Native communities.

Friends, if it is within your means, I ask you to donate some of your stimulus check money to BIPOC-led organizations. Peace.