Dream Time
In no time at all, last weekend's events have found there way into my dream life. I actually rose at my usual time this morning and found myself wanting more sleep before starting my day long consumption of caffeine. And, for whatever reason, I was asleep as soon as my head hit the pillow.
At some point during the nearly hour and a quarter that I was asleep, I was able to knit together a fairly complex narrative involving, at a minimum, three favorite memes: 1) the back to high school meme, 2) the back to college meme and 3) the back to work meme. And, I just remembered another one - 4) the feral aquarium meme.
The dream began innocently enough, as a back to Wesleyan dream. I was an adult visiting my alma mater. As a guest of the university, I had a suite of rooms in a fairly luxurious dorm, complete with its own cafeteria. This seems to be a more or less permanent part of my brain's landscape, a place that I escape to that has some resemblance to real buildings, but seems to emphasize easy access to lounging young adults who I befriend and visit and attempt to locate after leaving their company. And, food. There's always a cafeteria scene.
The dream then morphs into a back to high school dream. The students become younger and the venue has aspects of a prep school. Interestingly, among the people I come across, sleeping on a mattress among many such placed in a room, is Michael Jacobster who I didn't know until law school (Michaels' claim to fame was that he graduated from Horace Mann, a private day school in the Bronx.)
That meme continued with other interesting divergences. Usually, I am concerned with passing a course I have not studied for and represents a roadblock of sorts to my gaining entry to college. This time, I seemed concerned with finding a particular teacher, a teacher who bore an uncanny resemblance to my old boss, Heidi. I have to admit that Heidi reminded me a lot of some of the public school teachers I knew growing up. In fact, sixty years ago, Heidi and Miss Weiner would have been cut from the same cloth, young, well-educated, Jewish women with few career options other than teaching children.
But, along the way, I met another old boss, Jeff Grossel, sitting behind the desk in an empty classroom. Something about seeing him filled me with extreme caution and I wound up skipping the opportunity to visit with him.
By this point, I am no longer sure who or what I am walking around looking for. Am I at my old high school? Am I at my old job? Or, is it my old college? It's no longer clear. To make things even murkier, I make a side trip back to my own home (wherever That is) and discover that a pair of adult goldfish have somehow managed to jump into a floating enclosure designed to separate them from some newly hatched baby fish. They are engaged in devouring their young.
I intervene in tie before all the young fry are eaten, first by dumping the fry into the general population of the fish tank and, in effect, punishing the adults by "jailing" them in the much smaller pen. I wake up not long after this episode. In reality, I do have a small 3 to 4 week old old fish in a floating pen surrounded by two ravenous female platys or moonfish who, I believe remain pregnant and are probably dropping offspring during the night. I'm hoping at least a few can escape into the pen with their older sibling before being gobbled up by their parents.
At some point during the nearly hour and a quarter that I was asleep, I was able to knit together a fairly complex narrative involving, at a minimum, three favorite memes: 1) the back to high school meme, 2) the back to college meme and 3) the back to work meme. And, I just remembered another one - 4) the feral aquarium meme.
The dream began innocently enough, as a back to Wesleyan dream. I was an adult visiting my alma mater. As a guest of the university, I had a suite of rooms in a fairly luxurious dorm, complete with its own cafeteria. This seems to be a more or less permanent part of my brain's landscape, a place that I escape to that has some resemblance to real buildings, but seems to emphasize easy access to lounging young adults who I befriend and visit and attempt to locate after leaving their company. And, food. There's always a cafeteria scene.
The dream then morphs into a back to high school dream. The students become younger and the venue has aspects of a prep school. Interestingly, among the people I come across, sleeping on a mattress among many such placed in a room, is Michael Jacobster who I didn't know until law school (Michaels' claim to fame was that he graduated from Horace Mann, a private day school in the Bronx.)
That meme continued with other interesting divergences. Usually, I am concerned with passing a course I have not studied for and represents a roadblock of sorts to my gaining entry to college. This time, I seemed concerned with finding a particular teacher, a teacher who bore an uncanny resemblance to my old boss, Heidi. I have to admit that Heidi reminded me a lot of some of the public school teachers I knew growing up. In fact, sixty years ago, Heidi and Miss Weiner would have been cut from the same cloth, young, well-educated, Jewish women with few career options other than teaching children.
But, along the way, I met another old boss, Jeff Grossel, sitting behind the desk in an empty classroom. Something about seeing him filled me with extreme caution and I wound up skipping the opportunity to visit with him.
By this point, I am no longer sure who or what I am walking around looking for. Am I at my old high school? Am I at my old job? Or, is it my old college? It's no longer clear. To make things even murkier, I make a side trip back to my own home (wherever That is) and discover that a pair of adult goldfish have somehow managed to jump into a floating enclosure designed to separate them from some newly hatched baby fish. They are engaged in devouring their young.
I intervene in tie before all the young fry are eaten, first by dumping the fry into the general population of the fish tank and, in effect, punishing the adults by "jailing" them in the much smaller pen. I wake up not long after this episode. In reality, I do have a small 3 to 4 week old old fish in a floating pen surrounded by two ravenous female platys or moonfish who, I believe remain pregnant and are probably dropping offspring during the night. I'm hoping at least a few can escape into the pen with their older sibling before being gobbled up by their parents.