Dreamlife

  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.

  In this dream, I’m at a celebration of some kind, among a
gathering sitting around a long oval table. The only other person
recognisable to me from waking life is Eduardo (I think my memory of
this dream omits a conversation with him). I have a camera with me (a
curious camera–it looks like a still-shot camera but works more like a
camcorder, since the scenes it records, each shot, lasts some time). I
mean to capture this scene with my camera. When I lift it to my face,
however, what I see through the viewfinder is not the hall and the
table but a scene of barren, nondescript street corners. I experience
some disquiet I don’t understand. I leave the hall with the table and
walk down a long and very narrow stairwell to the base of the building
we’re in. In contrast with the relatively luxurious chamber I’ve just
quitted, the entrance is a bare, doorless space, extremely wide but not
very deep, that opens directly onto a squalid, bustling street. I find
the din outside unsettling. I may or may not go back upstairs–I have
no definite memory of this. I take out my camera and look at the shots
I’ve taken. They’re blurry, shaky and marked by an unusual luminescence,
as of fire or sundown.

  I’ve let far too many interesting dreams go unrecorded in the
past month because I wasn’t satisfied with the detail and/or coherence
of my recollections. Bad move. This one, too, feels like a fragment of
a larger dream.
  What makes this dream so unusual is that I’m not its
protagonist, although I seem to have access to his interiority; I
perceive his feelings (not, as far as I can tell, his thoughts) but I
am not their subject.
  As the dream (or my recollection of it) begins, our hero, a
dark-haired man in his early twenties, is riding a light rail car home.
He’s sitting on a long row of seats that face the windows, so there are
various people to each side of him. His interest, however, is focused
entirely on a girl seated to his left. He holds her hand and I can
sense his fondness for her–not all-consuming love but he’s very
gratified by her presence.
  He gets off alone at his stop and walks toward the large,
pleasant house where he lives. However, when he enters, he is informed
that his aunt, who owned the house, has just passed away and the place
has now been converted into a hotel. He learns that he will have to pay
to access his room and to take the meal he’s expecting. I sense some
apprehensiveness at this but he produces the payment the attendants ask
for and goes on to the cafeteria-type setup where they serve him.
Outwardly, then, he goes with the flow. I wonder what he expects to do
afterward.

  I enter my apartment building (not one resembling anywhere I’ve
lived in waking life). In the bustling lobby, I’m approached by a girl
with a sharp face and Viennese accent who tells me she’s come to visit
the Ice Queen. I offer to admit her to the stairwell and guide her to
the IQ’s apartment. We ascend an even number of floors, four or six.
There’s an apartment whose door is elevated above the floor, so that
several small steps lead to it. I point the visitor to that door and
tell her I think Cissie lives there. I long to linger as she ascends
the steps to ring the doorbell but, exercising the fearful self-control
I’ve exercised in waking life, I move back to the stairwell and
continue my ascent, so that I only dimly hear the angelic voice that
greets the visitor.
  Several stories higher, I enter the apartment where I live. The
living room is occupied by a boisterous group. The sound of their
wassail irritates me a little and I quicken my pace toward my own
quarters. I pass several rooms and through long corridors before
arriving at my own ample room. There’s mail waiting for me on a table.
I pick up my subscription copy of Spider-Man and wonder how it got to
me, because the address printed so barely resembles anything
recognizable. Inside, Spidey meets an aged Venom who seems to be on his
last legs. His limbs are bony and long white hair flows from his masked
head. I’m not sure if they contend.
 

  In this dream, I’m back at my previous grad school, from which I
was expelled for my unacceptable taste in reading. I walk into the
seminar room on the second, or was it third?, floor along with several
of the students. These aren’t my classmates from back then but fresh
recruits. Two of the professors are present in the room. I begin to
discuss important authors like Hamsun. The professors’ reaction is
disapproving, as expected, although more muted than it would be in
waking life. But afterward some of the students express enthusiasm for
the ideas I brought up.
  I hope there’s more to this dream than meets the eye. It’s so
silly to dream of converting bigots or to curry their approbation.

  In the dream, I’m at home (but I don’t think it’s my home in waking life) when Hector arrives. Although I had other plans, I find myself going out with him to hunt for CDs (a wonderful habit we had back in college). I then find myself at a shopping center and my spectacles are missing. I want to ask for Hector’s help but he has disappeared; I search apprehensively for them and finally, despite my blurry eyesight, descry them in the center of a large (by shopping center standards) fountain. I retrieve them and then exit the shopping center through an underground access to the subway. Suddenly, I am jumped by a long-haired Oriental teenager who proclaims he’s a Kung-Fu practitioner and starts raining mock blows on me. In the dream, he is a completely ludicrous, rather than threatening, figure, although I imagine in waking life I’d be more nonplussed by such an act, even if the blows did no damage. Then somehow I’m watching a television screen. A newscast reports two acts of violence. One of them turns out to be the murder of the Kung-Fu teen. They show footage of him in the subway station where I encountered him; he’s been shot. I don’t appear in the footage nor does the newscast connect me with him in any way. I wonder, though, if my dream isn’t implicating me in his unwitnessed murder.

At the end, I’m riding the subway with a female companion and am quite uncertain about whether the route we’re taking will lead us to our destination.