My Dream of Linda Montano in the Purple Chakra (1998)

Once upon a time I dreamed my husband and daughter and I were in a toy store shopping for stuffed animals that resembled Beatrix Potter's drawings of Peter Rabbit. When we left the toyshop we noticed a brass plaque that read, "Antiques and Imports" and a corridor that led around the corner.

We found ourselves in a dim entrance hall that seemed to lengthen and broaden as we walked into it, like a Cinerama movie effect. We saw antique furniture, Turkish rugs, floor lamps and crystal chandeliers in the distance in a beautiful room down the corridor, but we could only see them dimly, since the room wasn't well-illuminated and dusk was falling. When we entered the room full of antiques we felt it was alive, trembling with a slight breeze, and a few autumn leaves twirled in the air currents surrounding a huge chandelier -- very Jean Cocteau. My husband said, "This is someone's home, not a shop," and, for an instant, I felt embarrassed. Then we heard a woman's voice in the distance call, "I'm coming!"

A woman very like Linda Montano wheeled herself into the room in an ornate Victorian wicker wheelchair. She reminded me somehow of Miss Havisham from Dickens' Great Expectations. She seemed very eccentric and smiled mischievously. Three serene young students in black turtleneck sweaters attended Linda in her wheelchair. Linda said, "So, you've come to see the beautiful things," and beckoned for us to follow her.

Then we were in a tiny kitchen. One of Linda's smiling young attendants stirred an ambrosial concoction of stewed peaches simmering in a black cast iron cauldron on the stove. Linda turned to me and said, "You must do exactly as I say, and you must always remember to clean up everything that needs cleaning up."

With those words, she impishly dumped the peaches onto the Turkish-carpeted floor. I knelt with a dishtowel to clean up the mess, but it vanished magically into thin air. Linda laughed a delightful, tinkling laugh.

Linda said there was a movie theatre deep in the recesses of her home and she invited my daughter and husband to wait for me there. A movie was playing that they had very much wanted to see, so my husband and daughter went in. I could then see inside the theatre from outside, as if it were made of glass or I was God, and I observed my daughter happily watching the movie with other members of the audience, munching away on a sack-lunch sandwich I had prepared for her earlier. My husband sat with another male spectator on a bench like you'd find at a bus stop turned at an oblique angle from the movie screen, reading a newspaper, as if he were slightly bored.

Outside in a little plaza, Linda taught me a beautiful song, and, as I sang it, I began to rise magically into the air. I rose into the branches of a frozen tree where icy crystals from chandeliers shimmered. I was overjoyed that I could fly, but then discovered with horror that my beloved bulldog was frozen among the tree's highest branches, his eyes lifeless and glazed over with frost.

Linda called out to me from below, "Sometimes you'll be afraid!" and kept singing the beautiful song. I took my dog from the tree's limbs and he immediately warmed and wiggled to life in my arms as we flew among the branches.

But then, a real-life noise outside my window woke me up. The melody of the song Linda taught me rang in my ears for a few seconds longer -- a little, short mantra of a song, like beautiful, magical tinkling bells.