Dreamlife

  I go to my friend J.’s
apartment and learn that my cantankerous cat Fluffy (deceased in waking
life) ripped out his throat. I ponder the imprudence of his getting too
close when he petted her. I plan to send his dad my condolences and
wonder how to dispose of his belongings. I am also curious to read his
work; he was writing on something that intrigues me but my waking
memory has suppressed what that might be. Fortunately, J.’s ghost shows
up in very good spirits to offer post-mortem guidance.

  A very brief dream. I am not
the protagonist but I have access to his thoughts and perhaps see
through his eyes. He arrives at a city where he is to observe a major
public event. However, it is late and he is turned away when he tries
to enter the facility where it will take place. So, he leaves with the
intent of returning in the morning and goes to seek lodgings. He enters
an anteroom that looks more like an office for some public service than
a hotel. The middle aged man behind the counter asks him to fill out a
checkin form. He hesitates when it comes to filling out his age and
writes that he is 21 or 22. I don’t know what age he actually is but I
sense he is mistating it. He hands the form to the attendant, who scans
it and looks up with a leering expression. “Is that so?,” asks the
latter. His eyes narrow and he looks at not-me intently. Not-me doesn’t
answer; he begins to feel the suggestion of a malaise and then suddenly
a rush of ice-cold air emanating from the direction of the attendant
seems to pass through his body. I awaken.

In this dream, I’m at a campus
reminiscent of The Farm, only the mountains surrounding it are a good
deal vaster than the foothills. I go up into the mountains to read; I
find there that I can empathize very powerfully with the authors I’m
reading. There’s a plateau from which I observe the goings-on below and
where I rendezvous with my love, who in this dream is MV.
  Later on, I’m visiting an unfamiliar city. I have an extended
discussion with two locals, a man and a woman, about some texts. My
travel companion won’t get out of bed.

  What a varied night! First,
I was threatened by black magic and found I didn’t have my Teutonic
cross to ward it off. (I had, in waking life, forgotten to put it back
on after bathing.) Then I went to look for food. The shop I entered was
abandoned, with no people and only scattered items on its shelves. At
the end I left with a piece of bread and sat down to eat with someone I
saw exactly once at a party in waking life some five years ago.
Finally, as though I were a child again, I was off on a school field
trip to a stately building in New York City. What the purpose of the
trip or the building was, I can’t say. There were quite a few rooms and
in many of them people seemed to be waiting for something to begin but
nothing did.

  In the dream, I am in class
with Steven A., the effeminate analytic professor who taught my Emerson
seminar the year before last. Or, rather, he and I are in a small room
adjacent to the one where the class is being held. I read him a poem
(Rilke, I think) I have in a folder. I guess he approves of it, because
he tells me to go out and read it to the class. He goes ahead of me. I
intend to go in and read the poem, but when I look for the poem in the
folder, I can no longer find it. It seems to be full of landscapes
instead. Minutes seem to pass while I rifle through the folder. Then I
hear my voice reciting the poem from next door: S.A. has decided to
play a recording.
  Then I’m walking through a
swimming pool that stretches indefinitely ahead. My feet are following
an underwater path. However, I reach the end of the path and my head is
nearly submerged. I look around and am relieved to see an egress from
the pool not too far away. (In waking life, I can swim adequately but
in the dream it doesn’t occur to me that I can do anything but walk.) I
emerge from the pool and make my way to some apartments nearby. I don’t
reside there, although it seems to me I know someone who does. I enter
an apartment that is clearly inhabited although no one is there at the
moment and begin to remove my soaked clothing. I am surprised that the
body–specifically, the dark, muscular legs–I see in the mirror are
not recognizable as my own.

  In this dream, I’m visiting Susanna at an unspecified location.
Rather, I am visiting this indeterminate location and make my way to
Susanna’s. She is living in a very large but squalid house and is deep
in thought in her room, so most of the time I am not with her. I think
there are also other guests, whom I am not entirely comfortable with.
There is also a large spider in my room who I have some kind of
relation to–maybe he’s a friend of a friend. A couple of times he
tries to scurry up the bed or chair I’m resting on toward me and each
time I knock him down by blowing on him. (I think this spider is also
human at times–we’re traveling somewhere and he stops to try to get a
can of soda from a vending machine.)
  At some point, we take a bus from Susanna’s house to somewhere
else. She is not with me when I get off. My destination looks a bit
like a graveyard, although there are no graves in sight. It is cold,
grey and lonesome. Mist clouds the gothic turrets clustered thickly on
the horizon and I think I see my cat Lola racing along them overhead
but I can’t be sure it’s her. I enter a building, bare on the inside
and outside. A room within overlooks the narrow road that brought me
here. I peek out through between the blinds and see buses with diverse
markings there. I realize I would be unable to identify the one that
brought me here from Susanna’s house. This troubles me because I’ve
conveyed my dunnage from my original destination in this town to her
residence and now I have no idea how to find it again.

  It’s been ages since I updated
this thing. I’ve had a handful of memorable dreams in that interval
that I’ve neglected to record. In general, I don’t remember my dreams
well these days but, hmmmm, maybe it’s not just that clear recollection
makes a relatively complete record possible. Maybe it can work the
other way around as well. So I am jotting down very very fragmentary
recollections in the hope that this practice will anchor some more
fragments in the dream stream.
  I’ve dreamt about the Ice Queen twice almost consecutively (last
night and Monday night). What is notable about these dreams is how low
key they were. Dreams about her normally pack an intense emotional
charge (which doesn’t guarantee my waking mind will be able to retrieve
or reconstruct them). The first dream is like a reversal of the
nightmare I had before I wrote to her two summers ago: I’m part of an
audience at a lecture she’s giving and I don’t understand a thing. It
would be facile to say that this is an oneiric expression of my
inability to make sense of her responses in waking life. In waking
life, that incomprehension drives me to despair; in the dream, I’m
simply bored. Of the second IQ dream I recall only one detail: she had
a brother who was a werewolf. Again, the most natural interpretation is
facile: this could just be my dream showing me the misgivings I’ve had,
wondering what I will face in her household when I go there. A slightly
less facile analysis would be that the werewolf is a figure for the
dualities I perceive in her: so supernally beautiful, so insouciant and
vindictive.
  Between these two dreams, I dreamt I was in some kind of complex with
Matty and his new wife (whom I’ve never seen in waking life). I wander
off by myself and at one point become apprehensive because I realise
I’ve forgotten my spectacles. I rush back to look for them, panic over
not finding them, then take a breath and realize that my vision is tack
sharp. A good metaphor for a number of things.

  I’ve been out of touch with
my dreams lately due to the pressures of waking life. However, this one
is enigmatic enough that I simply have to record it.
  In the dream, I enter a library (loosely modeled after Fondren)
but the foyer is just a small enclosed space. Something or someone
tells me I can take the stairs up or down. Although this is what I
always do in waking life, in the dream I’m surprised there isn’t a
lift. I choose to walk up and soon arrive at an ample sitting/reading
room. The lighting is extremely dim, so I move toward a spot with
somewhat brighter illumination. There I find five people who are all
me. Sadly, I only remember two of them: a man and woman who look much
alike. Both are young, blonde, bare and thin. They are huddled together
and wear expressions of woe. I ask, I know not of whom, the cause of
their distress. It turns out that as a consequence of their use of
steroids, their brain stems hypetrophied and now reach all the way down
to their feet.

  My first recollection of this dream is feeling alienated among a
motley crew of students. I forget most of the specifics. The one who
impresses me most is a cinematography student who has carved his hand
into some kind of symbol–cut off the fingers and made diagonal cuts
along the sides.
  I take my leave of this place to go elsewhere. I’m standing in a
very barren location: mostly dust, tiny patches of grass here and
there, and a strip of cement on either side of the train tracks I’m
waiting by. I notice that there’s something beneath the ground I’m
standing on and descend to check it out. It turns out to be a small
helicopter, ensconced in a recess just large enough to accommodate it.
There’s an opening in the wall behind it, which would allow it to fly
into and out of this recess. This primitive hangar looks decrepit, with
noticeable spots of rust.
  As I’m looking at the helicopter, the train I’m waiting for
rushes past above me. Annoyed at myself, I linger to look some more at
the helicopter. The next train comes; I run up toward it, hoping to
catch it, but it departs too soon. More irritated, I descend again to
while away the time. When the next train passes, it’s a close call
again. As the doors begin to shut, I leap toward them. I don’t gain
ingress to the train, just a fairly secure hold. The train takes off
with me hanging on its side,  like daring bus riders do back home.
We must be going at 100 kmph, and it occurs to me that I’ll be
splattered if it enters a tunnel. In spite of that, I don’t let go.

  In the dream, I’m with Fifi Levi-Levi, the defunct wife of the
feckless principal of my defunct middle school, and a group of her
students. They’re itinerant practitioners of some kind of progressive
pedagogical method. I’m not sure if I’m part of the entourage or simply
meet up with them.
  I forget what health concern prompts me to visit the doctor. He
tells me I will need a regimen of shots in the delicate webbing between
my fingers. I’m afraid that this will be painful but it turns out not
to be. However, I leave concerned that I may not be able to administer
these shots to myself.
  I return to my abode, which in this dream, as in real life, is a
rented room. But this one is not so meager–an ample, brightly lit
place with white walls. My lease says two other people have paid for
access to this room–I think one of them is Jason, the best philosopher I’ve met
in my age group (apart from the Ice Queen). There’s no sign of them,
though and everything in the room seems to be designed for one person.
  Despite its brightness, there’s not much window space in this
room. In fact, the window is just a narrow horizontal pane high up on
the wall. I decide to slide it open, but some unwelcome fauna–I
believe it’s some kind of bird–takes advantage of this to try to get
in. I think I’m worried about its uncleanliness. This happens a couple
of times and I realize I won’t be able to leave the window open.