A Verdict Without Justice - Part Three**

A Story by Paris Hlad

So, Paulette asks me if there was anything about my parents’ appearance that suggested that they might be dead. I say, 'Not really, or maybe their faces glowed a little.' Then Paulette looks away from me for a moment but lets out this big sincere laugh and says, "I think you're kidding yourself when you say that you don't grasp what you realize! An adjuration like that is delivered with great urgency, and the fear created by the extremity of its expression provokes our wonder. But I’m sure you knew what you realized! There are things inside you that straddle the line between being you and being something else. It can be a little daunting to contemplate, but those things are the sureties of a realm that is beyond the physical world. They identify you as a confetti bee, even though you may not look like one on the outside. You realized that dream life is as valid and as meaningful as waking life, and it is as much a part of who you are as anything else. That could not have been lost upon you, Frenchie, because you said it made you feel like two people. That tells me you realized as much as the Gardener allows anyone to realize about the ‘others’ inside of us. At least that’s what your amazement suggests to me.”
Then Paulette brings up the most important dream of all. It's one I had just before I was arrested with my friend Bobby Casanova and ended up in the Empty Place. In this one, I’m just one bug among many in this long hallway. Everybody is talking loudly, having a good time, joking, and even dancing around sometimes. My dad is at the center of all this, telling his jokes and being extremely popular. I don’t think he even knows I’m there, but I’m watching him and feeling a little resentful. So, I get it in my head that I'm going to throw a question at him to maybe put him on the spot a little. What I'm going to do is ask him how he likes being dead. But the next thing I know, I'm like right in his face, and I'm not asking him how he likes being dead but telling him that I love him. But none of this is a nightmare to me until that happens. No, it only becomes a nightmare when my dad looks at me like I’m some kind of weakling and disappears without saying anything. I mean, the reason I don't think this is a nightmare until then is that I'm proud that I realize that my dad’s dead, and I'm comfortable with the general reality of death because it doesn’t bother me that everyone around me is probably dead, too. I’m even sort of proud that I changed my mind about the question I was going to ask!
So, Paulette takes off her glasses and gets this very serious look on her face, and asks me why I find my dad's disappearance to be so disturbing. And I tell her it’s because I feel like I laid everything on the line and got stuffed. So, she says, "Maybe he didn't stuff you; maybe he could love only in the way he was taught to love, and that came off like stuffing you." Then Paulette glances over at the cherry tree and takes in this pretty long breath and says, "I think you were good not to ask your father how he liked being dead - That allowed a small thing like you to triumph over a gigantic thing like your ego. So, even if you did get hurt, you got hurt for doing something good. You gave and got nothing back, but that’s the way grace usually works, maybe the only way it can work. Each creature's universe is different, and the efficacy of grace is never greater than a creature’s ability to express love. Nothing can change that, unless of course, the Gardener chooses to change it, which so far, she has not."
Now, when all this dream talk is done, I'm not really doing that great psychologically, even though there's a part of me that feels something like I did after confession when I was in the Garden. So, Paulette takes my hand and assures me that everything’s okay because even though our talk was important, it was not a condition, but more like a gift inherent in the Gardener’s invitation. And things get better because the next thing I know, Paulette balloons up to her gigantic version again, sweeps me into her pocket and we’re headed to that scattering thing she mentioned earlier - Only this time we tumble out of the book in front of two impressive old columns, with this very ornate marble pedestal set between them.
Then, Paulette takes up the book one last time and carefully places it on the pedestal. Her task is done, I guess, because she looks at me, as if she’s going to laugh in that magnificently honest way again, but only glances in the direction of this stately old hall that seems to have risen out of nowhere behind me. And for a few seconds, it’s eerily quiet, but then, the doors of that hall crack open, and I hear a loud uproar of thousands, or maybe even millions of voices pouring out into the daylight, and guess what? This beautiful little boy is coming out and waving me inside. But I can't move because my knees have buckled and I’m trembling and even beginning to cry a little. But it doesn't matter because there is this throng of tiny roses encircling me, singing, and shouting, and taking hold of me and carrying me toward the doorway.

NOTES:

Paris claims to have been only four years old when he experienced this unusually graphic nightmare. Its “crazy-looking bum” was the host of a morning television program called “T.N. Tatters.” Although the poet was merely ambivalent toward the cartoons and 30-second advertisements that dominated its air-time, he was fearful and deeply suspicious of the hobo-clown who oversaw the program’s daily mayhem. Furthermore, Paris believed that this sketchy comic lurked the hallways of his school and claims to have once been chased by him down an alley. The poet feared that Tatters was the mysterious “stranger” his mother had warned him about. As an adult, Paris came to view the dream as a divine lesson in the enormity of physical existence - The demiurge of gnostic antiquity.

Paris admired the work of Sigmund Freud. Like him, the poet believed that much of an individual’s mental functioning occurs outside of his conscious awareness. But Paris believed that the unconscious is not merely a psychological mechanism that interprets or responds to an individual’s conscious experiences, but also an autonomous entity that speaks to its host from a context of independence and existential superiority. The poet also broke with Freud on the nature of dreams. Freud believed that dreams represent a “disguised fulfillment of a repressed wish” within the individual dreamer, while Paris believed that dreams are spiritual hieroglyphs.

Paris said that he could not recall an instance when his mother was not given deference when she spoke about Christ, nor could he remember a listener who did not communicate some degree of affection for her and her words. To him, that suggested that an individual’s expression of love is not about his relationship with another, but about his relationship with God.