Fragmentos - Bertie plays the blues

'Dreadfully insincere,' said Angus. 'Psychopaths - every one of them. Show me a cat, Domenica, and I'll show you a psychopath. Textbook examples.' (...)

The memory of dreams is curiously fleeting; the vivid experiences of a few seconds earlier, so entrancing or frightening, are lost after a moment or two, or only vaguely remembered. It is as if daylight acts as a spotlight directed onto a play that had seemed so convincing but is now seen to be nothing; an absurd jumble unworthy of critical attention. But in the mind obliterates the cluttering, silly stuff of dreams, it can also deprive us of the insights that those same dreams provide, the moments of love; the friendly, revealing visions; the ability to fly (...) But if dreams are to be retained, they need to be committed to memory as soon as possible after waking, so that they are laid down in a different, more retentive part of the brain. Don't pay any attention to this, the rational mind tells us as it begins its task of obliteration. No, I want to remember, one must say (...)

How terrible it must be, she thought, to believe that one was in some sense accountable for one's dreams. The loyal husband dreams he is in the arms of another - Some Siren - and concludes that he is an adulterer- The dieter finds himself enjoying a feast - and reproaches himself for his failure (...) All that would be a terrible burden; would make one dread going to sleep at night for fear of what one might do (...)

Of course purpose and pattern in a life did not have to be conscious. There were many lives, Angus thought, that revealed a pattern when one looked at them at the end, even if the people living those lives may not have seen that pattern while they were actually leading their lives. People did the things they were destined to do without having any real sense of that destiny. But when their lives were laid out, it became apparent where they were heading; it became clear why they had made the choices they did.

'I'm not blaming you for that; you are a man and can't help being a man... No, I shouldn't say that because I'm not sure if that's what I really believe. We are not trapped by gender to the extent that some people say we are; we can trascend all that an be people, simpliciter (...) So the fact that you are a man is no real excuse for insensitivity to the feelings of others; we must all work to develop awareness of others; it is part of our necessary moral effort that we should make ourselves capable of sympathy' (...)

 

Bertie plays the blues - Alexander McCall Smith