the shape of a subconscious
I find it interesting... that any time I have a dream in which I'm "at home" in a house, it's always the house that I grew up in, for the first 16 and a half years of my life in Altadena, CA. I can be all grown up in my dream, dreaming about things that are happening currently in my life, and yet if the setting of the dream is a specific house (rather than a made-up one as sometimes happens, or out of doors, or ambiguous), it's always the one that I knew as a child and during the first half of my teenage years. Sometimes the furniture or appliances are moved around a bit, but the shape and location of the rooms is always the same, just the way they were when I was growing up. I actually can't remember ever having a dream in which I have been in any house that I've lived in more recently... and it's been over 10 years since I've lived in that first house.