Dreamlife

  Fragmentary memories of tonight’s dream. First I’m on a queue to
board a bus in what seems to be an out of the way place, since what I
see around me is bleak dust, rather than concrete. There’s a rather
unusual procedure for boarding: A few steps ahead of the front of the
queue, there’s a water-filled hole in the ground, just more than
person-sized in length and width, but apparently deep. The person at
the front of the queue steps up to this hole, kneels and goes into it
face down, disappearing from view (that’s how I know it’s deep). An
attendant then reaches in and pulls the passenger out, at which point
he can board the bus. In the dream I know the purpose of this procedure
but I don’t entirely accept it; I have some reservations.

  In the dream’s next episode,  I’m in an entirely different setting, a
well-tended, grassy complex where I live and work. I decide to travel
by air from my residence to my office, using a device that is like a
hangglider but has a propellor at the bottom end, as well as what seems
to me upon waking a too simple control, a kind of switch with only two
positions. I attach myself to this vehicle and take off. However, once
I’m airborne I realize that something I’m wearing (goggles? blinkers?
pinhole eyeglasses?) is obstructing my vision. Apprehensively, I begin
a tense descent. My descent is slow but I’m moving rather quickly
horizontally, so when I eventually land, I’m far from my destination.
This cloud has a silver lining, since after walking a short bit, I
discover an unattended newsstand with many of the Fantomas comic books
I relished in my childhood. I pick out one of my favourites, the series
where Fantomas battles a renegade lama. However, when I open it up, I’m
appalled to discover that all the images have turned to postmodern art!