Dreamtime: Rip Van Winkle Edition
So, it really feels as though I've been sleepwalking these last few months. The summer was just one more COVID dominated pall. Big Bro' and wife took a dangerous car trip to another funeral right after we buried Aunt Nannie, leaving Sis and I to ride the Amtrak together back to New York. It was the most time Sis and I had spent together since her husband died and I was completely weirded out by the experience. After 25 years of living with one man, the person left behind after his death is an amalgam of the younger sister I knew as a pre-teen and the near spinster she had become after years of deferring marraige. She is remarkably timid and uncurious about the world despite having spent the last 40% of her life in the company of a hip-hop music producer.
The lively and vivacious host of her husband's memorial service in June was now lost and adrift. While waiting in the train station she asked me whether the conductors would search her bags. I was so taken aback by the question that I didn't even answer it directly but instead tried to refresh her memory as to the last time she took a train. I know for a fact that it was less than ten years ago. She couldn't recall whether they had overhead baggage racks.
Things like that have so unnerved me that it's taken until a few moments ago to find the quiet time to jot them down.
And, to retrace last night's dream.
It was the latest in an emerging meme regarding the apartment in Connecticut. It resembles an old meme involving going back to Wesleyan but seems less reliant on the people and places I knew while in college and much more grounded in the here and now. Or, as close to the Here and Now as any of my dreams ever are.
It also managed to combine itself with another frequent meme I have: The Bathroom Dream.
Let's start.
It took place in the new apartment. And, like many of my dreams about various homes I've occupied, it was a greatly augmented space, newly appointed according to an apparently unconscious wish-list I have. For instance, it had suddenly turned into a duplex with definite levels connected by a staircase. And, it was populated by the members of this summer's Big Brother cast - the one that ultimately resulted in a Final Six consisting of all the African-American house guests.
And, then it suddenly turned into a bathroom dream. Apparently, Mom had secretly competely gutted the old bathroom and replaced everything in it as a kind of surprise gift to me. I'm not sure how I knew this - she was not physically present in the dream. I just remember discovering it and being gob-smacked by how beautiful it looked: it was cavernous, the ceiling possibly reaching the second floor of the duplex.
On the lower level, there were a row of glass enclosed johns such that you could tell who was sitting on the toilet. I thought I recognized one of the Big Brother contestants and called out his name (I thought it was the hunky lawyer nicknamed "X" by the other houseguests) but realized I had mistaken his identity (it was another somewhat less hunky African-American man named "Robert" in the dream*).
The shower and bath were located around an L-shaped bend. And, there was travertine all over the place: the sinks, the shower stalls - and the floor, in diamond shaped patterns of alternating light and dark browns. It was so incredibly beautiful that when I realized Mom had been behind it all, I broke down crying.
End of dream.
* "Robert" FWIW, was also the name of my late brother-in-law.
The lively and vivacious host of her husband's memorial service in June was now lost and adrift. While waiting in the train station she asked me whether the conductors would search her bags. I was so taken aback by the question that I didn't even answer it directly but instead tried to refresh her memory as to the last time she took a train. I know for a fact that it was less than ten years ago. She couldn't recall whether they had overhead baggage racks.
Things like that have so unnerved me that it's taken until a few moments ago to find the quiet time to jot them down.
And, to retrace last night's dream.
It was the latest in an emerging meme regarding the apartment in Connecticut. It resembles an old meme involving going back to Wesleyan but seems less reliant on the people and places I knew while in college and much more grounded in the here and now. Or, as close to the Here and Now as any of my dreams ever are.
It also managed to combine itself with another frequent meme I have: The Bathroom Dream.
Let's start.
It took place in the new apartment. And, like many of my dreams about various homes I've occupied, it was a greatly augmented space, newly appointed according to an apparently unconscious wish-list I have. For instance, it had suddenly turned into a duplex with definite levels connected by a staircase. And, it was populated by the members of this summer's Big Brother cast - the one that ultimately resulted in a Final Six consisting of all the African-American house guests.
And, then it suddenly turned into a bathroom dream. Apparently, Mom had secretly competely gutted the old bathroom and replaced everything in it as a kind of surprise gift to me. I'm not sure how I knew this - she was not physically present in the dream. I just remember discovering it and being gob-smacked by how beautiful it looked: it was cavernous, the ceiling possibly reaching the second floor of the duplex.
On the lower level, there were a row of glass enclosed johns such that you could tell who was sitting on the toilet. I thought I recognized one of the Big Brother contestants and called out his name (I thought it was the hunky lawyer nicknamed "X" by the other houseguests) but realized I had mistaken his identity (it was another somewhat less hunky African-American man named "Robert" in the dream*).
The shower and bath were located around an L-shaped bend. And, there was travertine all over the place: the sinks, the shower stalls - and the floor, in diamond shaped patterns of alternating light and dark browns. It was so incredibly beautiful that when I realized Mom had been behind it all, I broke down crying.
End of dream.
* "Robert" FWIW, was also the name of my late brother-in-law.