Dinosaur

My father was prone to demonic possession. It was one reason he worked so hard in his life. In those few moments when he was not otherwise occupied, he would lapse into a trance and his body quickly became the domain of demons. Few people could say they knew my father, even those who had known him his whole life. He had a way of making himself mysterious to everyone.


During those times when he was no longer himself, he would lay on the living room sofa as if he had been lashed to it with ropes, slowly waving a heavy hand above him as he drowned in ghosts and demons. (Over the years this sofa would slowly sink and form along the contours of his body, and he would fall further into its folds.) I always feared these invisible beings that forced my father deep inside himself and prevented him from recognizing his own family. While possessed, he’d often ask a question over and over and it was no use answering because he could not hear me - his questions were only a means of locating me, like sonar, as he was entirely blind during these times. And of course, I did not want to be found.


My mother almost always stayed with him during these possessions. Did she really think she could reach him beyond all the roiling diaphanous fog that covered his eyes with a milky sheen?  She was loving and loyal and a martyr, but she was not without her faults. I watched her prod these demons from somnolence with a mental pitchfork, watched my father’s eyes ignite with red lighting and his bearlike body surge to life, his arms waving wildly like a conductor of dark massing flies. The orchestra of chaos and violence lumbered to life, the windows of the house bulged like balloons from their red energy. I fled before the inevitable rupture.


However, there were times when I could not escape. I was trapped once during one of these episodes and had no choice but to hide under the kitchen table. I could see the bare feet of my parents underneath the hem of the plastic and fuzzed table cloth, and then, with a gust of wind, the tablecloth began to flutter and spin. I could sense that the glasses, the bowls and dishes, were floating and twirling from their clatter. I began to cry, but quietly, as I hoped they would forget about me in my hidden fortress where those who are older are forbidden entrance. I huddled with my arms pulled tight around my knees and hoped to disappear, to become the furniture that no one would notice or believe was once human.  


**********


He found a book that was meant only for him or that was meant only for this moment in his life. He stood there looking at the book through the deepening cylinder of his vision, feeling its meaning seep through his hands and into his body.


He held the book called Pan in his hands and thought — this is the world speaking to me. The woman on the cover looks just like my estranged lover. Her thin lips, the dark rings under her eyes, her dark hair pulled back into a bun. Below her is an image of a man who is a tree; she is entwined like a mist in his branches. 
He phoned her that night. She was living in another country. He told her about the book he was reading and the woman on the cover. She’s you, he said. He listened to silence on the phone, then, cautiously, she began to speak, she told him she had been dreaming about Pan and that also in her kitchen she had an old theater advert with Pan on it. The dream she had was very powerful… but she was not sure if she should tell him.


He waited a moment before answering her. Yes, he said. I’d love to hear about your dream, I promise I won’t be critical, tell me, if you want.


In the dream she is on a desert island. A man approaches her. She notices as he draws closer that he is both a man and an animal and at once she is overwhelmed by a desperate panic. She pulls him onto her and he is inside her instantly and he is so hard he is harder than any rock or iron. She is melting into herself and out. She is a moon that has fallen into an ocean and the ocean is made of liquid iron. She clenches and pulls his rough haunches. She wants the bristles to rub her out of existence. The bone hardness of a horn jabs against her cheek. He smells of goat and steel and dead branches and when he pulls away from her he is laughing. She is alone. There is a boat turned over and laying in the sand. She wonders if it can take her from this place, but she does not know where she would go. Suddenly she feels fear.


On hearing the dream, Martin cannot stop himself from making connections between himself and Glann and Edvarda, the main characters in Knut Hamsun’s novel Pan. Glann is a man of the forest and they both met in the forest years ago. That was where they fell in love, just like in the book. But Pan is the story of an unrequited passion. Glann does not end up with Edvarda. In fact, he kills himself in the end. For all the things he has in common with Glann, he has just as many differences. But for now, he keeps all of this to himself.


The book marked a change in his life. He could clearly divide and define the years before finding the book, or even longer, to a time of waiting. And the time after as one in which everything occurred at once. All the decisions and choices he had delayed making were made in one month. It was as if when he found this unassuming paperback in the used book store and lifted it from the shelf, he also removed some obstruction, incredibly light, invisible, but present for years that was preventing him from truly participating in the world.