Is there a Dream Interpreter Out There?

I dream a lot, maybe it’s the medication, or the whiskey, or both.

I stole a balloon. That’s how the dream began. I was at some fair with food stalls, games, fun rides, and even a Ferris wheel. And, of course, there was a man selling balloons.

I was first to notice he had only one balloon left. The balloon looks special, really big, filled with helium. One of those, if you let it go, it will just rise, and rise, and rise, trailing its cord.

I race over to ask how much but get to him behind a girl, one with pigtails hanging so long down her back that my first inclination is to yank her head back and get her the hell out of my way. Anyway, the inclination is too much.

She runs off screaming for her dad.

The balloon man thinks me sadistic and refuses to sell me the balloon.

Some people are like that, full of moral restraint. I glower at him for ten seconds and give him a swift kick in the shin, at which time he lowers his torso to rub his leg, and I grab the cord to the balloon and make a belting run out of there, the balloon bouncing on the air behind me.

The balloon man shouted after me, “you’ll be sorry, you young ruffian.”

When I reach home, I’m sure the pigtail girl has forgotten about the balloon. No one at home seems bothered about the propriety of my stealing the balloon. Indeed, it is as if they are oblivious to its existence.

I tie the cord to one of the window bars and let the balloon fly out.

We live in a twelfth-floor apartment in Hackney. It is high enough for any wind not to be slowed down by surrounding trees and buildings; the next tallest is just five stories.

That night, the wind blew with undissipated fury.

Day after day, the balloon is full of activity; it rises on the wind, only to come down by some other path — I mean, entirely haphazard movement and no match for the strong winds. If the wind threw it against the building wall, it had no defense; it took the blow, never once refusing what the wind dictated.

Then if it rose vertically — in dignified balloon fashion — it was simply bashed into the lintel repeatedly. But at no point is a scar left on it, showing what a difficult life, it is being a balloon — like that of a happy child whose memory of reprimand never stays long.

This evening the wind is powerful. The rain doesn’t help matters. The balloon suffers stronger shoves and fiercer tugs than usual.

Then the balloon gets lifted to its maximum possible height and tugs at the cord hard. Still, there is no breaking away until the wind pushed the balloon it to its lowest point and then sucked it back, and it picked up enough strength and speed to snap the cord.

I lunge and reach, holding on, and am dragged out the window as we steadily climb the atmospheric ladder.

Soon there are no winds, so the balloon’s motion is free and wanton. It wades through the sky’s mysteries with me hanging on, indulging in its every desire with no leash or monster wind.

It enters the clouds to feel the moisture, and we ride on their backs for a while before rising even higher. In a bit, I can see the same clouds lain
below in mid-air, offering to cushion me should I fall.

I feel like I’m a sky tramp, accountable to no one and entirely forgotten by everyone.

Not very long afterward, the knot at its mouth is loosening, and helium is leaking out. So, the balloon is coming back to earth. It has tasted the blows of restraint, tasted release, and now tasted freedom.

Is the price for freedom yet to be paid?

The fall is swift, with no time for leisurely reflection. We fall through the clouds, swaying under the influence of the same winds, which now seem exceptionally mild. The balloon knot is loosening continuously, quickening, and we fall so fast as to be unaffected by the wind. The balloon will not be taken prisoner again.

It has defied the forces of being tethered; this is its ultimate defiance, which, obviously, I shall not be recording…