PHANTASMAGORIA

My sisters Kerry and Andrea and I are the only customers at a mall. Indeed, we are the only people, which never occurs to us. Wait, though. Some people must be here, because Andrea interacts with them, which Kerry and I discuss. They are invisible to me and no wonder. The magical mall is all.

We don’t say it is magical. We accept that it is essentially another world, another sphere, where anything can be done. We marvel but do not doubt. It is gorgeous. Everything is gorgeous: the space itself, open, white, streamlined; the displays of breathtaking clothing, changing before our eyes; the colors, from chartreuse to pink to rainbow; the endless, limitless imagination.

There are no storefronts. The mannequins and clothes exist on free-form curved platforms a few inches off the floor. Sometimes they stand on the white polished floor, aloof and elegant in like company. Sometimes the extravagant dresses simply float, embodied without mannequins. It is a fairy tale forest of still splendor. It is lifeless and vital. Other. 

The dresses, gowns, costumes are so myriad and manifold that I can’t remember them all. One platform bedazzling us held gowns (for want of a true name) like flamboyantly colored dinosaurs. Long shapes and tails became trains. Over a huge reptilian bustle cascaded ruffles and fabric flowers of creamy light green. No jungle camouflage here. 

And what are the sisters wearing? I could be naked, for want of a dream visual. I am only eyeballs here. Kerry is my younger sister (gone but alive in my dreams), Andrea my older. Neither is dressed in usual style, and both are in my dream-selected periods of their lives. That is, Kerry died at 48 and is 30-something in the dream mall. She has short hair, eliminating her blond curls. Andrea is perhaps 50s, not yet gloriously white-crowned. In short, they are younger. I am still the middle sister, whatever my unknown age. 

Kerry looks good, a perfect weight for her five feet, eight-and-a-half inches. Kerry has a flair, and so her slim skirt and tailored blouse, sedate but not severe, are almost frumpy for her. No, frumpy is decidedly not right. Parisian woman understated. Taller Andrea is dressed up and elegant, her habitual choice. Yet while her ensemble is unusual, as often, its unusual aspect is not her norm of geometric patterns, bold but classy, often black and white. Now striking shapes draw the eye: a one-shoulder capelet graces a long-sleeved dress, whose soft wool of golden French ochre sweeps to a swirl at the calf. 

Andrea is successful and wealthy, and somehow she is conducting business in this strange landscape. Exactly how, Kerry and I can’t see or grasp. She just does this: makes money. But my fascinated perception is not about ends. It is that even in this alien and magic land she makes connections, sees opportunities, is persuasive. A good measure of my marveling is that I am not made for these interactions, or perhaps not open. [No wonder my mall is empty of people. Awake, I delight again in the subtle metaphors of dreams.]  Then I have a more specific revelation: the heart of Andrea’s work here, her ability and gift, is sales!

But this is a minor part of the dream, and not its most interesting, which is purely the visual and experiential—witnessing and being in this weird and wonderful world. Floating chiffon, asymmetrical close-fitting gowns, riotously unique designs I cannot now describe. Project Runway gone very wild.

And ultimately exhausting. Overwhelming. Now yet another epiphany: no exit. There must be one. This isn’t life, not a complete world. We got in; we will go out. I start looking: no doors in sight. Of course the space or building is huge, a part of its marvelousness and outlandishness. But I know there is a way out. 

Or is there? I begin to move, to explore. We three are still together, seeking without words. We are in this together! Is my lightness of mood dimming? I am not panicking, or am I pushing that down? I do believe we will find a way out. This is not reality. Please no. [2022]

It amazes me—and did when I awoke during the dream (and then re-entered)—that I invented the extravagant, out-of-this-Earth garments. Or my brain mind did. How? That  question intrigues me as much as Why? The dream also has an irony amid its fantasy: Andrea is an academic. Her livelihood comes from teaching, research, textbooks, lectures, and workshops about writing. I am the sister who, at least tangentially and in part, worked in sales—through advertising. I had no interest in or abilities for actual selling; I created ideas, visuals, and words. A dreamer.