MORFEU AND THE ENDLESS DIMENSIONS

This time I became tired of my dreams even faster. Not that I didn’t like all those things I imagined, and everything was really very exciting, but the fact that it was all taking place only in my mind, left me quite a lot to desire for. I needed to move, couldn’t do the things that I used to do anymore, and so I got stuck with the same problem as before. I needed to do something more real. And then the most brilliant idea I ever had came to my mind. I would write down my daydreams. I would write a whole book if I had to, and make my dreams come true on paper.

I spoke to my father and he bought me a typewriter. He was really happy just to see me get off my bed and sound excited about something for a change. I had become quite witchy looking again, not combing my hair and all dressed in black skirts and jumpers, always wearing my army boots, and my father couldn’t believe his older son had left the house and the younger ones were constantly looking like vampires. My brother Levi had long hair by then, and also wore black clothes and army boots. We enjoyed looking dark and miserable, although he was happy with his fairy looking girlfriend, and most of the time they were stoned or something.

This is how I became a writer at fourteen, and how I realized that my dreams and the older girl that I was in them were actually quite real, and that they were me. I mean, give yourself the possibility of doing anything you wish, having anything you want, back or forward in time, and you will find out who you really are. All the rest is just a bunch of circumstances that you didn’t choose for, and you just had to adapt to them, so that’s not really who you are. I also realized that my dreams already existed in my mind for so many years, that I had in fact been living that parallel life all the time. Therefore, all I had to do was write down a sort of diary of things that had already happened, most of them anyway, but at the same time were just being created by the tips of my fingers. I felt like some kind of goddess, reconstructing my own life and those of those around me, as I was describing to the minimum detail events that had never really happened. All these discoveries were so exciting and made me so happy that I wished I didn’t have to go to school and could spend all my time writing. It was so much more interesting to spin my head around with the meanings of reality, dreams and parallel words, than to go to biology and chemistry classes. Somehow, however, I kept on being a relatively good student, because somehow, I guess, everything was mysteriously connected. Although I wished I could already be studying philosophy and literature, I had to admit that mathematics had some kind of magic to them, and everything seemed to fit. How could I ever relate to my colleagues? If I told them ‘Oh, you know, mathematics are magical’ they would never speak to me again. So why bother?

In my book I told the story of Roque, as well as the story of Morfeu, Sand and Oto. I took revenge of all the bad luck I had had in my real life. Roque was my boyfriend until I met Morfeu, and fell hopelessly in love with him. This had to happen, because Roque would die anyway, so I needed to find a reason for him to start smoking heroin. When my parents got divorced, I was eighteen, and went to Florida to live in a farm with Sand and his hippie family. I met all the famous Hollywood teenagers of the Eighties while I was there, and I studied American literature in the meantime. Roque died when I was still in America. Then I also left Sand.

For a while I wasn’t very sure about Roque dying. After all, I wanted so badly for him to be alive, that it seemed stupid to let him die twice. But otherwise, how would I ever meet Oto? And then I realized that I was writing only one story, and that I could actually write as many as I wished. In this story Roque would die and I would meet Oto, but in other stories I could be with Roque forever, or with Oto forever, and my parents didn’t have to separate, or I could live with my mother. I didn’t have to choose, for all my wishes could come true and all the stories could be told, as they were already happening anyway. So I decided that I would fall in love with that boy in school with the green eyes, that I found so pretty however so silly. Only he was different in my book, for we had met in other circumstances, and we were older. His name was Morfeu and he had freckles all over his face.

I also told the story of Alice, for she kept smiling at me behind the mirrors, and appearing in my dreams. She was friends with Sara, and with the older sister of Fausta, my brother’s fairy girlfriend. Her older sister was called Laura, and she looked like a little hippie, with curly long hair, and long purple skirts. I only really saw her once, but she made a cool impression on me. In my book Sara was, of course, my best friend, as well as my brother Marco, and the fact that Levi was now my little brother was amusing to me. I spent the whole summer writing at my grandmother Olga’s house, in the south of Portugal. My grades had been good, so my father was happy and I could do whatever I wanted to. My mother wanted me to visit her in Holland, but I didn’t want to. I would write outside, under the trees, and would imagine that I was in Florida, at the hippie farm where the Summer’s lived, while Sand himself was in Los Angeles, shooting his new film. I felt happy. I would write on the beach, sometimes, with my sunglasses on. I must have looked, as always, like a little miss weird.

When school started again, late October, I was still quite tanned and healthy looking. In my book I had already left Sand, Roque had died, and I had just met Oto. Everybody wanted to read my writings, but I wouldn’t allow it. I would tell them they could all read everything once it was finished and published, and they weren’t amused by this. Pérola tried her best to be my friend, and her best was really very good, because she was an intelligent woman, not too friendly or anything, just really smart, and I have to admit, damned beautiful. However, I was still taking plenty of refuge at my grandmother Matilde’s house, and now that Marco was living there, that place felt much more like home than my actual home. Levi spent most of the time at Fausta’s place anyway, and I didn’t like babies. My new sister Eva was sweet, but I didn’t know what to do with her. She would stare at me with her big bug eyes, and although when she smiled at me it was heartwarming, when she didn’t it was just boring. She was already talking and all, but she wouldn’t say anything coherent. Sara was by then living at Noel’s place, with him and Oto and Andresa, and two other guys I didn’t know very well. They were having all kinds of adventures and taking quite a lot of drugs, so they were smart enough to exclude me from this period of their lives. Although I thought they didn’t like me anymore, they did, and Sara would still visit me sometimes, and hug me and kiss me like before, but she was just busy with her own discoveries. Anyway I didn’t mind the distance much, because I was busy as hell with school and being a writer. My new profession required a lot of concentration and solitude, and I really loved being alone in my room since early morning, drinking tea and typing away, still wearing my cozy autumn pajamas. Or going down to my grandmother Matilde’s house, and write in the living room while she was netting away. My great grandmother Ema had died already, some years before, so my grandmother Matilde really enjoyed my company. And the portable typewriter that my father had given me was the best present I had ever received.

Sara told me about her experiments with cocaine and ecstasy pills, and I included these stories in my book. After all, she was my best friend, so I had to be living the same adventures as her. She told me that those drugs and friends were opening doors and windows in her life, and showing her things that she never imagined existed before. All the stories from the books and the films were true. Drugs did open the doors of perception. I understood what she meant, I guess, because I felt myself as some kind of Alice in Wonderland, who had fallen down the rabbit whole, and found this new and magical world where everything was possible. My door had been my typewriter, and I don’t think I had ever felt so happy before. I had found some kind of cosmic entrance, and I could perfectly relate to the feelings that Sara was describing to me. Everything was just a big puzzle waiting to fit. And then Sara also told me she was pregnant. I don’t know why she told me all of this, apparently she hadn’t even spoken to Andresa about it, much less to Oto, but I guess she needed someone to talk to who wasn’t really a part of it. So she told me. Later on she decided to have an abortion, because she knew she wasn’t ready to have a baby, and she said it didn’t hurt a bit, because she was rich enough to have it done well in some private clinic.

Autumn was at its peak, and the streets of my neighborhood were covered with bright yellow leaves, while the trees were practically naked. It looked as if it had snowed, only huge and beautiful yellow leaves. We could barely see the side walks, and I loved kicking the leaves wile walking, to make them fall again all over me. I looked, of course, very weird while I was doing this.

That night I went for dinner at my grandmother Matilde’s house, with my brother Marco and his boyfriend Néri. My grandmother obviously thought they were mere best friends, and Néri even slept there sometimes. I bet she never for once imagined they had a different kind of relationship. Or maybe I would be surprised if I knew what she imagined.

My brother and Néri were the ones cooking that evening, and I was watching TV while my grandmother was netting as usual. The eight o’clock news started on channel one, and I was distractedly looking at the screen. Then I saw Sand’s picture, and I heard the 911 recording of his brother’s voice asking for help, telling them to please hurry because Sand wasn’t breathing. I stood up and couldn’t believe my eyes and my ears. My grandmother looked at me and asked me what was going on, but I didn’t even answer. The reporter added that Sand’s death seemed to have been caused by a mix of drugs. Cocaine and heroin. He had collapsed at the door of some club in Los Angeles, after he had left a Halloween party with his brother Sun and his sister Sea. I started crying, and my grandmother almost had a fit herself. She got up and asked me:

‘O que foi, minha querida?’, holding me and looking very worried. My brother and Néri heard this and came into to the living room to see what had happened. I told them a friend of mine had just died, and they didn’t understand what the hell I was talking about.

After that I couldn’t write for a long time. I felt sad and confused. Why did these things keep happening to me? Impossible passions, people dying, separations. I didn’t know Sand, that’s true, but he was in my book, he was in my dreams, and it really felt as if I had lost a friend.

I couldn’t write for weeks. The rainy season had started and I would go for walks under my umbrella, watching the drops of rain fall on my army boots, and thinking. Alice kept on being there, every time I looked over a puddle or at the windows of cars. She was still smiling her sadness away, but she no longer scared me. Or I just wasn’t afraid of being crazy anymore. I concluded that we define ourselves what it means to be crazy. So I decided that I was as sane as an apple. And I thought that if I hadn’t lost my touch for writing once I was done with my first book, I should start another one just about Alice.