Dream Island Home

It’s not often that I think about the 80s band The Fixx even though I liked them and they had more hits than you might think. I love how lines come to me when I’m trying to think of the way to get into a story, too. They say you don’t always know what you’re going to write until you get started, but The Fixx says: 

“The deception with tact, just what are you trying to say? 

You’ve got a blank face, which irritates 

Communicate, pull out your party piece 

You see dimensions in two 

State your case with black or white 

But when one little cross leads to shots, grit your teeth 

You run for cover so discreet…” — “One Thing Leads to Another” 

One thing truly leads to another, and if you’re willing to follow instead of resisting the tide, then answers to recurring dreams might finally reveal themselves. So, “baby, won’t you follow me down?” 

For the past few summers I’ve been meaning to read Cormac McCarthy’s novel set in Knoxville, TN, Suttree. I’ve been meaning to but haven’t because the density of the novel, its length, and McCarthy’s penchant for violence put me off. I lived in Knoxville from 1979 to 1987 and in that time I completed two graduate degrees, fell in love more than a couple of times but finally did get it right and got married and have been happy for 41 years. I made lifelong friends, finally read Ulysses (and you might say here that if you read that, why should Suttree intimidate you?), and saw in concert in no particular order, The Clash, The B-52s, U-2, Husker Du, The Police, The Four Tops, R.E.M., The Rossington-Collins Band (don’t ask), Elvis Costello (twice), and Neil Young. 

In other words, I grew, I had fun, and I learned to rely on myself even if I made some mistakes, or maybe especially because I made some mistakes. 

Suttree tells the story of a once prominent man, the title character, who, for reasons that become clear halfway through the novel, has chosen to abandon his homestead and dwell on a houseboat along the Tennessee River near downtown Knoxville. The novel is a “picaresque,” and through his adventures (and in many ways its seeming plotlessness reminds me of Ulysses), Suttree encounters waifs and wastrels, lawmen, literally drifting families, and one fellow who gets caught and imprisoned for fornicating with a watermelon. 

Okay, come back to me now and let’s keep following the thread. 

Since I roamed over the same territory as Suttree, never encountering a watermelon field in all that time, I decided to find the interactive Suttree map of Knoxille just so I could try to place everything. This isn’t a unique exercise to anyone really familiar with a novel’s setting, but for me, it was also a way to dredge up past stories that I might have forgotten and that might lead me to something like understanding, revelation, or at the very least, a meeting with and acknowledgment of my former self. 

Looking over the map gave me a thrill as I began placing communities and streets (Magnolia Avenue leading to dollar theaters and other treasures out east) and markets (The Smoky Mountain Market!) that I had almost forgotten. When I lived in Knoxville, about thirty years after the novel’s setting, I don’t recall seeing houseboats along the river, though I wasn’t looking for them so maybe they were there. The riverbank then was in the process of being commercially developed, and one of the newer establishments showcased the very Four Tops that I mentioned above. 

I’m here to tell you that in concert on a reclaimed riverboat, Levi Stubbs truly did cry tears while singing “Walk Away Renee.” 

Knoxville also has several bridges crossing the river: the Henley Street bridge leading south down Chapman Highway and eventually to the roads toward Gatlinburg and Pigeon Forge. There are some skanky bars and the old Cas Walker grocery store out this way, just as you might imagine any highway heading from the center to the outskirts. Cas Walker was legendary but not always for the right reasons, but then I guess that depends on who’s remembering his legacy. 

The Gay Street Bridge — and I swear that one of Knoxville’s leading gay discos, The Europa Club, was situated just off Gay Street on a descending side street, tucked almost under the viaduct, and right before the bridge — led to a place that lurked farther back in my memory. When you crossed that bridge, you had at least three branches to choose from. The farthest one to the right I never followed. The center one led up a hill to a smaller group of homes where one of my grad school cohort lived after she got married. Near her place was the home/office of the fellow (surely Mr. Peek) who produced the Peek’s Size College Football guides, little digests about the size of a playing card that I bought or was given every year of my childhood so that I could prepare for the new season. From these, I could recite every bowl game Alabama or Tennessee played in from their beginning. 

Meeting Mr. Peek was like an out-of-body experience. I was with one of my grad school roommates at the time, and it must have been he who needed to go to Peek’s house for whatever reason a Blake scholar who delivered and sometimes wrote for the Knoxville Journal might need to go. For our troubles, we each received the upcoming Peek’s Size digest. Mr. Peek also warned us that this might be its last year, though as far as I’ve learned, it continued on through 2012. The branch farthest to the left took one on a circuitous route through the Island Home community, as along the winding river there were several islands where citizens did build homes, kind of like what you’ll find on the Seine in Paris. 

When I saw Island Home on the Suttree map, the first thing I knew was that I had been there and had even visited someone’s house there. It could have been the house of the Belgian professor who once taught me enough French to pass my language exam, but I’m not sure now. It still amazes me how much or how little French one can learn in three months. Whatever the case, I passed the exam easily and found that I could read and interpret enough of Cahiers Du Cinema to get by. 

I sat with the map for more than a few minutes wondering about this Island Home and this three-branched river crossing. Sometimes when you stare too hard at any picture, any puzzle, and any memory in your mind, nothing but blankness appears. And you know this truth too: when you look away for a minute or even just a few seconds and then look back, an entire world might then unfold. 

Or in my case, a dream world. 

For the longest time I’ve had a recurring dream about a place where I have to choose a certain route among three options. I always look to the right first where there seem to be stores and coffee houses, and often I find myself taking that branch. If I follow it long enough through side streets and maybe even past an old Jewish deli that can’t be anywhere I’ve ever actually been (though it seems to be a mashup of Barney Greengrass and the old Browdy’s of my youth and man do the bagels and rye bread look good), it eventually meets the middle route where that route descends from a steep and long hill. That’s the middle route, and in the dream I sometimes take it, looking for someone’s house and never quite finding it. It’s a shady route with gorgeous homes, and I love traveling it even though I never stop. 

The inverse of the reality I referred to just above this dream is that in the dream, I never take the route farthest to the left. I don’t know why, but maybe one dream night the answer will come to me. 

The answer that already has come to me, as you no doubt have realized, is that every time I woke from this dream, I knew I had been to the site in reality, but I could never place it. It seems so simple now, but I can’t tell you how much it bugged me that I couldn’t figure it out. That’s what the map finally helped me do. The epiphany, and I know it was this, unlocked something in me, and maybe that was the understanding that dreams do lead somewhere, and that my choices have always led me to a better understanding of myself. Why do I stand trying to decide a route when any route will help me discover something — will lead me to a place I either need to see or that will resonate in the deeper part of me when I see it, or will simply be a fun and relaxing way to spend an afternoon or late night? 

And if I didn’t or haven’t taken one of these routes, I can always go back in time, or in my mind, or even in reality, because Knoxville and Island Home and whatever else is on that hill still exist.  

Some say that we dream only in black and white, and for me, that’s true. Some say there either is only a flat dimension to our dreams, and others believe that there are multi-dimensions there, or at least three if only we can tell the past from the present and the one thing morphing into the next. I see many dimensions in my dreams even if they don’t always add up to one thing or another. 

Well, you know what dreams are like. In them one thing is always leading to another, and in recurring dreams, while they appear to be the same, there are always some things that lead you to a different version of that dream with maybe a different interpretation when you waken and realize that yes, you’ve dreamed this before, and yes, you’ve been there before. And yes, usually the end of the dream occurs in a different place, and that’s because whenever you have the dream again, what you know and what you’ve experienced brings those added layers and meanings. And now that I’ve read almost the entirety of Suttree (I’m relishing by not reading too much at a sitting, languoring and lingering) I can’t wait for the dream to find me again, to see where it leads or if it now leads anywhere. 

I suppose it’s possible, though, that I won’t have this dream ever again. That won’t make me sad exactly, but I will miss it. It’s been my twilight and midnight companion for so long, and even when I couldn’t figure it out, realizing that I had it has always pleased me, always made me happy, always brought me another puzzle to figure out about the past I hope to always be recalling.