In This Dream:

Talking With the Monkey King

In this dream I sat on the sharp edge of the plain of heaven, with the Monkey King who had the whole celestial kingdom in uproar. We were shelling mangosteens and eating them. He was toying with his hammer, the very one, he said, that had pounded the Milky Way flat.

He was musing rebellion again.

This was our ritual: he would come get me from the homes and ships and fields of the poor, the people, the mortals, and ask for my council — but tell me stories instead. I knew about the pig monster, where the Buddha scrolls were stashed, all the dirty secrets of even the venerable bodhisattvas.

He knew about a certain girl I loved. How she loved upstairs windows, narcissus bulbs, dogs, and she never wore socks. How she brought me mangosteens one day. He was most curious about whether she liked to sit on the edge and dangle her feet into rivers, and would she sit up here with us one day and dangle her feet off the edge into the flow of the entire sky, the warm rush of the busy world and its million, million voices coursing by. Sometimes it stung. His feet had nicks and bite marks, even for an immortal.

I told him she would; this girl had made me into so much of what I am. Most of what I did, I did for her. She would love to come up here, I said, but beware, she would change him too.

The Monkey spirit was intrigued, and put off his war, his methodical planning of mischief for a second. Naturally, he liked wild cards.

Where is she now? He asked.

She is rowing a shallow, lean boat, where the reeds and water plants brush up against and linger on the hull in morning-clear rivers. She could make her living ferrying believers to the shrine, but she is not a believer. She wants something else.

Where else?

She is in a bed, in a small apartment overlooking telegraph wires that run the length of the whole mortal world. She can hear everything — but is waiting for only one voice. She knows it like the true of a tuning fork. Like the true of an old motorcycle in a blue month.

What is she waiting for?

Something she asked for. Someone that came. Someone who asked that she be open.

Why?

Because there are schools beyond the bridges in our world, cells we would like to be locked up into while the warden watches, yellow dresses that need the right radio signal and sun to fall off, words that go under the overpass.

You can find her right there, in that house, I pointed, the one perched in a tree. In a little backyard of shingles, pharaohs, bamboo and pine cones.

In a tree? the monkey was confused. Born from a rock and an immortal thought he did not understand.

You will have to bring her, then. I could not find her if I tried. But I think she would like it up here on this pretty edge.

I will give you grace, he said, to make sure you can step across the slippery clouds. I will give you patience, to weather the sun’s burn while you ladder up here to the escarpment.

Bring her tomorrow. Though these days don’t know a year or a thousand. I will hold off war for a minute or millennia because I’m curious.

Why do you love her so?

It’s a long story, I said. A tangled skein, a gorgeous knot, a punctuation. An entire invisible city and the hot air of a single tiny room. It’s simple like that and staggeringly immense. It’s a girl I can pick up and throw across a room to a bed where I can land soundless except her laughter.

The monkey shook his head. Peered and scowled and could not see you.

Alright — forget it, he said. I don’t understand. I’m going to go start a war with the celestial emperor instead. Keep the grace. Maybe someday I’ll see her up here with you.

And he was off to mischief and there I was, alone on the edge of the plain of heaven, and I could see right down into the room you were sleeping in, waiting for me to wake you with my hands.

In this dream I put my hands down into that river, plunged in, swam home to you.