my first memory is a dream of an event i don't remember: i see a gently sloping hillside where a large tall-branched tree stands alone and nurses a comfortable darkness from the falling sun. in this shade there is a brass bed with an intricate white cover. into this screen of vision walks a couple in wedding clothes. beneath the tree, they delicately help each other, still fully dressed mind you, into the bed. this is what i thought it meant to be married. when i was four.
i date this dream/vision to the time of my favorite aunt's wedding beneath the giant magnolia that graces the family farm which once belonged to my grandparents. although the tenaciousness of my romantic aspirations, which are so obviously visibile in this dream, has been the source of great desperation, and even something i for a for a while raged against, i am, slowly, finding my way back to this first dream, this first green hillside.
