TO SLEEP PERCHANCE TO DREAM

 

“There have in fact been hundreds of scientific publications spanning well over a century documenting how the memory of trauma can be repressed only to resurface years or even decades later. Memory loss has been reported in people who have experienced natural disasters, accidents, war trauma, kidnapping, torture, concentration camps, and physical and sexual abuse. Total memory loss is most common in childhood sexual abuse.”

—Bessel van der Kolk, The Body Keeps the Score.  

  

To Sleep. Perchance to Dream. Seeing the Answer. Knowing. Are You Watching? Healing. Discover the Truth in the Dark. Finally Free. 

 

I made this artwork one month before my memory returned at a dream art workshop. It foreshadowed what was to come.  

 

Looking At Me

I'm sitting at my desk looking at a framed 11x13 inch photograph of me hanging on the wall. When I sit working at my desk, my eyes often drift up to the picture, and I tear up, remembering.

In the photo I am twenty-nine years old and gazing directly into the camera. My shoulder-length dyed blond hair is messy and teased back in the fashion of the day. I am wearing false eyelashes. You can see the facial scar caused by our family dog, Bruno, who bit me when I was twelve years old. In 1968, I will  have the scar resown by a surgeon in San Diego, and it will disappear into my face.

I am backstage at a rehearsal of the opera, "The Marriage of Figaro." I have ridden my bicycle to the Bowery in lower Manhattan where I will be performing the role of the countess in a couple of weeks. The great soprano Eleanor Steber is my voice teacher. I have been told I have a voice like hers, and at the performance I will wear the tiara she has lent me. 

Alice of long ago, what is going on in your head? Do you think you will become a world traveler and learn to speak in three different languages? Do you think you will become a famous opera singer living in Europe and married to a celebrated conductor?

 I think you do...

 A singing career was not to be. I had another challenge to tackle: the return of my memory.  

 

 

 

It is 1968 and I am backstage at a rehearsal for The Figaro, where I am to sing the role of the countess in a couple of weeks.

 

Onward and upward.