Dream Temple
By Charles Haddox
“Oh, most unhappy man,” he cried, “try to be happy! You have red hair like your sister.”
— G. K. Chesterton, The Man Who Was Thursday
Zoë went with her local “Fight Hunger” group on a bus trip to Washington to lobby for an increase in funding for SNAP and child nutrition programs. On her return, the bus stopped in Junebug, Texas for a three-hour layover. She decided to use the time to wander the streets of the strange little place, which was quiet as a prayer under hazy, amber moonlight.
The air was warm and humid like the atmosphere of her neighborhood at home, which was crisscrossed by canals left over from the days when it had been farmland. The dark firmament over Junebug held the same moon and stars as the sky she was used to, but they seemed closer, brighter; icy flashes and wheels of light. The heavenly brilliance of Junebug gave Zoë the same consolation as the “stars” she had painted on her bedroom ceiling that sang her to sleep at night. Sitting on a bench in front of a red brick storefront, under large show windows framed by white French cornices that were crowded with displays of bright silk dresses, Zoë sighed and stretched her legs.
Despite the comforting closeness of the beloved moon and her children, the stars, Zoë felt sad and lonely. The depressing state of government in Washington and the hard-heartedness she found there troubled her deeply, and even the companionship of her best friend Carla, who had made the trip with her, didn’t help very much. She needed a little time by herself to sort out her feelings, so she stopped at a quiet café with warm yellow lighting and homey wooden tables. It was filled with the smells of admirable coffee and freshly-baked pies and reminded her a little of her mother’s kitchen. Finding a cozy spot at the end of the polished counter, she proceeded to order tamarind ice cream with a fine sprinkle of chili powder on top, as well as a cup of hot water that she used to make dream tea by adding a little dried mugwort which she took from her charm pouch. The waitress, a shy, red-haired teenager, asked her if there was anything else she needed. Assured by Zoë’s smile that all was well, she left her alone with her thoughts and set about washing bright tumblers.
Zoë sipped her tea and spooned her ice cream as she thought of a little church she had passed on her way from the station. Its doors were open, and the hushed interior was shadowy and nearly empty. She wanted to take a short temple nap there, with the hope that a dream might bring her comfort and insight.
The tartness of the ice cream complemented the mustiness of the mugwort tea, and Zoë felt her troubled heart relax in the moment. My soul is filled with the abiding holiness of the night, but my thoughts still can’t find rest. She paid her bill and left a generous tip for the hard-working teen and followed the deserted street back to the little church that stood like grey ice in the lustral moonlight. Entering the wide, welcoming doors, she took a seat on a tapered bench, wrapped her long, dark hair in a peacock linen scarf, and proceeded to close her eyes. As she listened to her own soft heartbeat, she thoughtfully commenced a round of slow square breathing. A childish laugh interrupted Zoë’s quiet moment, and she looked up at the gilded roof of the lamp-lit church. Arvella Halcyon Pearl, the mischievous girl-moon, peeked out from behind a rosy cloud.
“Arvella, you celestial troublemaker, why are you always sailing about on the loveliest of nights?”
“I come and go as the mother pleases, and this is my time, when my lantern burns brightest, and your fecund earth and silver sea reach out to me for blessing.”
“And you play your silly games on us tellurians.”
“I’m sorry, but I am so fond of teasing. I’m crazy for humor—just like you are for your spicy, sour treats.”
“I don’t have time for your games, little moon, and I didn’t even enjoy my ice cream very much. You may think that I’m a selfish dilettante who just makes treats for herself and her friends, but I am trying to make a difference, too. I’ve struggled in my time, and I don’t want anyone to struggle. I don’t want anyone to go to bed hungry. I’m not one of those people who just rides her bike and grows her organic tomatoes—and doesn’t do anything about the powerless or about changing things, but who still thinks she is a wonderful activist because she wears natural fiber clothing and eats hemp ice cream. I want to make things better for everyone!”
“Zoë, I can see that you’re sincere, but don’t be so humorless. You’re in a temple sleep, after all.”
“And what is this temple, anyway; especially that you’re in it, Arvella Halcyon Pearl?”
“Und der Tempel ist der besuchteste auf der ganzen Erde.”
“Very clever little quote, ‘and the temple is the most visited in the world,’ but how did you know I’d be familiar with Goethe’s fairy tale?”
“I’d be willing to bet I’ll become a balloon if you didn’t go to a Waldorf school!”
“Okay, so I did. Safe bet, but how did you know I’d remember just that.”
“Sheer luck, I guess. And the real answer to your question is that this place is like any other church. You can rest until you’re sent forth.”
“I do need rest, Arvella. I’m tired of the hardness and indifference of people, and I miss my bed, where I can retreat to read or think—and which is large and calming like a boat, and filled to brimming with effervescent, overstuffed pillows that I made myself out of exotic Indian block-print fabric. And I miss my flower garden, and blueberry bushes and strawberry plants, and heirloom-variety apple trees, and raised beds full of tomatoes and peppers and snap peas and aubergines, and basil and Italian parsley and Wedgewood thyme and lemongrass. I miss my shop most of all, where I sell my handwork and visit with my customers about everything that’s happening in my life and theirs. And my roommates, who eat my cooking and give me backrubs and bring all sorts of people and tales through the door. I’m homesick and heartsick, and I need your friendship and advice, not teasing and jokes. You took a little boy from me that I had befriended on a midsummer night not too long ago, so I think you owe me something.”
“I didn’t take him. He followed me home to the house of the angels. And he was no boy! But you already know that.”
“Still and all, I feel you owe me something.”
Zoë’s temple sleep, or whatever this was, wasn’t turning out at all like she’d expected.
“All right. Then it’s time to go.”
Zoë followed Arvella out of the church and back onto the deserted street. Although Arvella was a girl-moon, she seemed capable of floating through walls, but Zoë had to use the door, which made her wonder if she was really asleep. Once they were out in the open, the girl-moon retreated to the sky, which was, in fact, her proper place, but it meant that Zoë could no longer speak with her.
“Where are we going?” Zoë finally asked no one in particular.
“To the place where the sun rises in the west and sets in the east, and mosquitoes bite stones instead of people, and dogs sing and birds bark and the poet loves his own reflection instead of the tall, clever woman with long, dark hair and knowing eyes.”
Zoë was back in the church with Arvella.
“I don’t want to go to a place like that.”
“Then we’ll go to the place that is its mirror opposite.”
They wandered down a narrow street in an old residential neighborhood crowded by two-story wood frame houses with dark bay windows. On a particularly neglected corner there stood an old apartment building of red brick. Its windows were shuttered. Only the attic dormer was open, and a young man dressed in white with a full black beard sat on a ledge looking out over the town. Zoë guessed that he was the poet of whom Arvella had spoken earlier, but he looked like he might be a pirate instead of a poet, which was just the kind of mischief Arvella would enjoy.
But when he saw Zoë on the sidewalk below, he spoke to her in a gentle voice:
So, you will win my love (she
said)
with colorless limestone
and dried chaparral
because the drought
is a poor raconteur—
an “invite” to a venue
closed for years.
And I will win
your love
(I said)
even though cacti
are shriveled and slight,
even if the lean
crucifixion thorn
is all that I place
in your hands of grace.
Look from the freeways
breaching the stars.
Love is tonic, love
is essence,
love is nectar, love is sky.
Someone took Zoë’s arm and led her from the spot below the poet’s perch. It was the red-haired teenager who had served her in the little café. She walked with her arm in arm for a short distance, until they were just out of the poet’s sight.
“He says those words to everyone,” the girl told Zoë.
“And all of us must think that he means them.”
“Exactly. And he does. But you don’t need those pretty verses right now.”
Zoë suspected that the girl was a more serious and grown-up version of Arvella, who was still floating overhead.
“What do I need?”
“Right now, I’d say you need a little more tea.”
The house was in an old, well-drained district on the north side of Junebug. It stood at the highest spot of a little hill and overlooked scores of houses that all had similar peaked roofs of zinc and tin and occasionally Mediterranean tile. The louvers of the jalousie windows were closed tight, and the yard was violet and pink with flowering jacarandas and oleanders that filled the house and surrounding neighborhood with the cloying scent of bathing angels.
The red-haired girl, whose name was Anwyn, opened the unlocked door and escorted Zoë inside. A single lamp burned on the mantel of a white stone hearth. The walls of the cozy living room were covered with bright fabric. Anwyn seated Zoë on a small white couch. A blue Persian cat perched lazily on a narrow hassock that stood nearby. The girl retreated to the shadowy kitchen to prepare tea. When it was done, she served Zoë from a bright green porcelain teapot with the grace of a practiced waitress. There were also buttery biscuits and homemade strawberry and apricot jam just like the kind that Zoë was fond of making at home.
“I can see you know my sister Arvella,” Anwyn said, “who dances on the pinnacles, and paints the trees and lakes and rivers blue from her cloud bed during the twelve most singular seasons.”
“What?”
Anwyn, by the way that she spoke, was undoubtedly the girl-moon’s sister.
“Why are you out in my sister’s night, all alone and clearly a stranger?”
“I was upset about something,” Zoë said as she spread a dollop of apricot jam on a baking powder biscuit, “and decided to have a short temple sleep to see if I could get some insight on the matter. But so far, all I’ve got are your sister’s tricks. Oh, and the glimpse of a friendly poet.”
“Would you like some almond or oat milk with your tea?”
“Oat milk. And a little honey, thanks.”
“Of course.”
“These are very good,” Zoë said as she popped a flaky scrap of biscuit into her mouth. “Did you make them yourself?”
“I did, but I borrowed the recipe from my dear friend Ceres. You like to bake, too, don’t you Zoë?”
“Yes, I do.”
“And when you cook and bake for your roommates, why do you do it?”
“So they won’t go to bed hungry.”
“And why did you go to Washington?”
“Oh, I see. Now we’ve reached the didactic portion of our evening . . .”
“I thought that this was no joke.”
“Yes,” Zoë answered. “But it’s one thing to make soup for your roommates and quite another to convince a bunch of senators that everyone has a right to eat.”
“When you’re making soup, your thoughts are on making the best soup possible. You don’t mope afterward if the soup wasn’t as good as you hoped.”
“But will this soup ever be ready?”
“The only way to know is to keep cooking.”
“And hoping, I guess.”
“Now I think you should go back to sleep for a little while,” Arvella whispered, “a sleep without dreams of my sister, or the poet, or anybody else. And when you wake, your hair will be like mine.”
Zoë found herself back on the bus as it left the station in Junebug, Texas. The rest of the way home, she talked and laughed with her best friend Carla, who was very taken with Zoë’s newly-red hair. They ate cucumber and tomato sandwiches made with onion bread and napped to the song of the road. Zoë dreamed about the poet in his garret. And she listened to him recite more poems, hoping that he spoke to her alone.
Zoë was soon back in her own little yard, which her roommates had kept well-watered during her short absence. She carried a basket of strawberries she had picked from the garden, and stopped to eat just four of them, with honey and a sprinkle of bee pollen, even though she was very hungry. Covering the rest carefully with a bright plaid napkin, she left them for her roommates, her own belly a little empty, because she didn’t want to be like a spoiled child who takes whatever she wants simply because she can. She studied a blue nigella bloom that was already fading, the stamens dried up and the pistil swelling beneath ragged petals. In a short while, the wind would spread its seeds. She munched on the last bit of strawberry and thought about a box of red wigglers she had brought over from her mom’s house to bury in the warm, wet world of her own compost heap.
It’s good to be home, she thought to herself, with my friends and my flowers, and my shop and my kitchen, and where the poet and the red-haired girl and even mischievous Arvella can visit me whenever I dream in the temple of my own bed.
Charles Haddox lives in El Paso, Texas, on the U.S.-Mexico border, and has family roots in both countries. He writes stories, poems and essays. You can read more about Zoë and her friends in Sein und Werden, the Wunderkammer issue; Chicago Quarterly Review, volume 15; Forge Journal, 7.1; New Dead Families, Number 9; Bewildering Stories 765; and Issue 11 of Stonecoast Review.