Mind-Mall
More and more, my dream places are of the same theme. I remember, years ago, when I used to dream about buildings with staircases that went on forever or with windows which let in wonderful amounts of light, when I used to find myself in massive marble cities overlooking green waters or when I'd stand at the edge of a broken parking lot staring out at the ocean. With increasing frequency, the places in my dreams are shopping malls or roads to shopping malls or, sometimes, train stations or airports or hotels attached or parking lots attached to shopping malls. I don't go to many malls. A couple of times a year, maybe? I don't like shopping. I don't have desires for lots of material goods, either. Sure, a few things, like a washer and dryer and an ice cream maker, but nothing which would suggest material possessions are at the top of my thoughts when I drift off to sleep.
So, I've been thinking a lot, lately, about why this sort of place is nudging out all of my other dream places.
It's not a new thing. I've always had a couple of malls in my dream world. The first one that I remember was huge and blue. On the outside, I mean. It was fantastical and impossible in design, and I'm pretty sure that I've described it before in some long-ago entry. There were twisted spires and unbalanced towers. The parking lot was closed off, with no entrance or exit, just a big, complex series of lots and connectors ringing the mall. Inside, it was usually dim, either poorly lit or, possibly, after regular business hours. Inside, the decor is mostly blues and greys and bluish greys and greyish blues. It's vast, but I remember the movie theatres most, one which is very spacious where I would sometimes meet kids I went to school with, all grown-up but easily identified, and one on the lower levels which was darker and seedier and showed mostly horror movies. I think, sometimes, that the malls I dream up now are evolutions of this one.
There were, too, for a while, open air markets, like Rice's. Boardwalks with sturdy stalls on either side which was like a mall beneath the sunshine. Sometimes, I still dream of places like this, though they're less organized now. They tend more toward great big flea markets with trinkets and books piled on sheets or spread out on tables arranged in sloppy, uneven lines, mazes of treasure winding along grass yards beneath towering amusement park rides or amid flashing midway lights.
Sometimes, it's a whole town. My brain has stored away some weird mashed up Doylestown/New Hope hybrid which is only vaguely like either of them which is full of strange and interesting shops and fabulous little restaurants... and neat, even, grid-like roads which are still somehow confusing. There's a building in the middle somewhere which has nothing but carnival and casino games lining the walls and filling the middle, games of chance more than skill with lots of lights and noise. It used to be something else. Sometimes, it still is. There's a shop which is set up like a house, where you can walk through the house and buy the knickknacks and clothing and whatever else you find. It's been very carefully set up to look just-lived-in-enough, though that gets ruined a touch by the people rifling through the hamper or drawers and leaving things out of place. There's a dock on one side of the city, with a guarded gate you have to go through to get in, and it's very easy to find yourself stuck and unable to turn around before you get to the gate. If you drive straight on the road leaving the private dock--which I think is owned by a big company--there's some sort of military depot on the right, though it's all neat lines of white-topped structures. I'm really not sure what it is. It doesn't feel menacing or militaristic, but I'm pretty sure it's governmental of some sort. It's behind a chain link fence. I remember dreaming, once, long ago, that my favorite restaurant there was closed or had moved.
Then there are the mall-airport-hotel combos which are usually located somewhere along 611 for some reason. It's all sleek and white and chrome and glass. There's a train (possibly subway) station down below with lots of glass walls and doors with steel fixtures, yellow lights telling people where to go or shining out through the darker parts where the trains actually are. There are a lot of escalators which seem, to me, strangely placed. Much of the mall and hotel is circular, and walkways stretch out like spokes from the smaller upper floor to connect to double sided escalators in the middle of wide, open space. There are lots of restaurants on the lower floor, some of which do not have walls to separate them from their surroundings. One of which has greenery growing all over it, vines crawling up whitish grey bricks, with a stage toward the front and a mezzanine toward the back. The hotel itself has one set of elevators which go up through the countless floors, from which the hallways curl out and back, circling it. There's a nice lobby with comfortable grey couches which connects to a medical center, perhaps... though now I think I might be confusing this place with another, as I think there's a school down here, too, but they feel so similar, like they belong together even if I dreamt them separately. Whenever I leave this place, I get lost, thinking the road looks so familiar, but unable to identify landmarks correctly.
A lot of my driving dreams are like that. I see shopping centers which look familiar, but not quite familiar enough. I get lost, missing turns and second-guessing myself. I remember things incorrectly, imagining places which I'm sure belong someplace that they've never been. I think this relates to a traumatic experience when I first got my license in which I got so stupidly lost going to one of my favorite shops on my own. I kept second-guessing myself and turning around. Repeatedly. So I was lost for hours, going nowhere. It broke something inside of me, I'm sure. Maybe that's why shopping centers and malls matter so much, then, in my driving dreams, at least. I was heading out to this shopping center in Souderton with a huge thrift store right next to a shop that sold neat things from around the world. I don't even remember if I ever got there or if I just gave up.
But I guess that's what I was trying to get at when I began this post oh so many paragraphs ago: I think there must be a reason why I dream about these sorts of places so much.
I remember my mom taking us out one winter morning, before the stores opened. She was wearing her cream-colored knit cap, and we were playing Follow the Leader the way we so often did when we went out shopping with her. There were four of us, then, and it made keeping us in line a lot easier, and she usually made the game really fun. But we went to a mall somewhere this day. I can't remember which one. The front doors were open, but the shops were all closed because it was too early, so we had to wait. I remember thinking that we'd get in trouble, that a security guard would swing by any minute and kick us all out, but we were left alone. I felt like we were entirely alone, just the five of us, walking on the marble benches and marching down the wide empty halls flanked with metal grates of closed shops or the warm glow of just-opened stores. It was exciting and strange and a little scary and... magical. We were invading a world where we weren't meant to be quite yet, and I loved it.
The feeling is so similar to another memory I had, one which exhilarates me even now.
My mom dated this guy for a while who was a janitor at a big, private catholic school right on the Delaware River. I think it was called St. Mary's, but I'm not entirely sure now. It was a long time ago. I must have been about nine, give or take a year or two. It was a huge building, by my measure at the time, and I don't recall anyone else but us being there after school let out, like he was the only janitor for the entire place. He used to bring us there while he worked, and I'd get to wander the halls and classrooms. I remember there were felt boards with felt shapes that you could stick to it to make pictures. I remember chalk boards and costumes and toys that I could play with to my heart's content as long as I put them back where they belonged when I was done. A lot of the time, I was helping him clean, going into classrooms where toys were left out and putting them back on shelves. It might have been work, but it felt like adventure. I loved exploring this world-which-was-not-mine in which I was the only inhabitant. It felt dangerous, especially as the sun set and the rooms grew dark, but weirdly magical, like in The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe, as if there was no telling where the next door would take me or what sort of strange things I'd learn about this world and these people. It was terrifying, and I loved it.
Most terrifying was the night the power went out. It was storming, and there was a loud crash of thunder then sudden darkness. I was on the far end of the building. If I'm recalling correctly--and even if I'm not, this is how it felt to me as a child--the halls all circled the chapel, which was in the center of the school. The church felt like a full cathedral to me, as a kid, with its impossibly high ceilings and its stained glass windows and its shiny wooden pews. I was so lost, trying to find my way back to my family through this half-familiar world which was suddenly so dark. I remember pushing through the chapel doors--big, swinging double doors--and entering just as lightning flashed, illuminating the stained glass. It was awe-inspiring. And horrifying. I'm pretty sure that's where I was found, standing fairly paralyzed just inside the chapel doors. I was brought to the room my mom was waiting in--small and white and sparsely furnished--while we waited for him to go turn the generator on.
That feeling of being in someone else's world--and it being okay as long as I don't mess anything up--is still a feeling which thrills me. I remember finding that side room when we were at Jim and Tiff's wedding which had a mirror and all those hats in it; it was fun dressing up in the dark for a few minutes, invading that darkened world with a little well-meant mischief. It might be why I was so comfortable with third shift, living in that in-between world after most everyone else has gone to sleep. It's probably why I like doing my grocery shopping at weird hours.
And it probably contributes, in some way, to why I dream about shopping malls despite a disinterest in shopping in them.
Some of that, too might come from a love of world creation. I like the ideas of things. I like the ideas of themed stores and fancy restaurants. I like the idea of communities, whole worlds springing up around these things. I like the idea of exploring and window-shopping and watching, being there but separate.
I don't know.
My dream last night took place in a squarish mall in what, I determined, must have been Daytona. It wasn't quite perfectly square, but roughly, with walkways large enough for a race car to drive through. Because they did. This sounds dangerous, I'm sure, but it didn't feel that scary in the dream. It felt exciting, but expected. As the cars raced through the mall, we would press ourselves to the walls or slip into stores or cling to the vending machines nearby. The mall must have been huge because the laps were very long. In retrospect, I realize they couldn't have been racing because the 'road' wasn't wide enough for more than one car, so there was no opportunity for cars to pass one another.
I had been hanging out with a group of people for a few days who seemed very laidback and fun. I'd especially been spending time with this tall man with curly dark blonde hair who looked something like someone I knew from high school, but not quite. We really enjoyed each other's company and were getting fairly flirtatious when he cut through all that nervousness and just kiss me. It was a fantastic kiss. The sort that says, "There's more where that came from," but then he left. It didn't feel like a goodbye. He didn't say goodbye, and that kiss certainly promised more than he delivered. His friends sort of lingered for a few days, but eventually started to scatter, too. I remember hanging out with a couple of them and getting distracted. I was staring at one--this very handsome black man with stunning eyes--and, when he asked, "What?" I told him how pretty he was instead of asking how to get in touch with my friend (whose name I forget). He smiled, said thanks, then got distracted and left. One of his other friends stayed behind, and I got an email address from him, so I used my phone to shoot off a quick email. After some time, though, I hadn't gotten a response--and the address had seemed really weird--so, I started calling around to ask about getting a phone number. I got in touch with the first guy, with the pretty eyes, whose name was, I think, Chris D., and asked for a phone number. He gave it to me in a combination of letters and numbers, so I was confused at first before I realized what he was doing. I asked him to repeat himself, but he was clearly (predictably?) distracted and would only give me a digit here or there. I went to his house--why did I have his phone number and address but not my friend's?--to find him being pounced by some chick, so I opted to just walk off and give up on that lead.
Mind you, this is all taking place inside the mall. That's all there is in my world, with greenish blue skies and palm trees and ocean air out on the balconies and patios, but no concern about whatever else is out there.*
I decide that I should just walk around and try to find him, which is a very video-gamey concept now that I think about it. I don't know where this person lives, but I know the area and something will alert me when I'm close. I remember just knowing when I was at the right house, as if it were blinking on some minimap, though there was no such overlay in my dream. The trek around the mall was interesting and involved climbing a pile of stuff to get to the next level instead of going up stairs, but it feels mostly irrelevant. When I got to his house, it was very open, with square pillars and furniture determining what the space was for: a large living room in the center flanked by a large, messy bedroom and a big kitchen/dining room area. He and his mother were sleeping on couches in the living room, set at a right angle from one another, with the television playing some bluish cartoon. He had a lot of medical equipment around him. I tiptoed to not wake anyone and snuck around the house quietly. His dad was sleeping in the bedroom.
At some point, I realized he was a kid. Like... ten years old. Kid. I knew it was him, though. As people started waking, I sank down against the wall in the bedroom and closed my eyes. I'm pretty sure they knew I was there and didn't mind, but I was keeping out of the way, trying not to see him while he was like this. They took care of him, changing his colostomy bag and cleaning him up. When he was done, he came to me and grabbed my hand and pulled me up. He was him again, all grown up. He didn't say much, but I knew he felt awkward. He didn't want me to know about all of this. I saw him as a kid because that's how he felt, what he projected, being small and vulnerable and unable to care for himself. He didn't want me to see him like that, the way he saw himself then. I remember there was a moment of understanding, but I woke up then for some reason, well before my alarm, and couldn't quite get back to sleep.
* It strikes me, as I'm writing this, that most of these places are very insular. There are no exits or, in some cases, simply no desire to leave. When I am out in the world, I'm often lost and confused and keep ending up back at the same place anyway. I wonder where that comes from, why my mind builds these places from which there's no escape. It's not a scary thing. In most cases, it's comforting, the world being small and defined, the limits known and attainable. Only when I try to leave do I get frustrated. Only in transit from one place to another do I find myself lost and upset.
So, I've been thinking a lot, lately, about why this sort of place is nudging out all of my other dream places.
It's not a new thing. I've always had a couple of malls in my dream world. The first one that I remember was huge and blue. On the outside, I mean. It was fantastical and impossible in design, and I'm pretty sure that I've described it before in some long-ago entry. There were twisted spires and unbalanced towers. The parking lot was closed off, with no entrance or exit, just a big, complex series of lots and connectors ringing the mall. Inside, it was usually dim, either poorly lit or, possibly, after regular business hours. Inside, the decor is mostly blues and greys and bluish greys and greyish blues. It's vast, but I remember the movie theatres most, one which is very spacious where I would sometimes meet kids I went to school with, all grown-up but easily identified, and one on the lower levels which was darker and seedier and showed mostly horror movies. I think, sometimes, that the malls I dream up now are evolutions of this one.
There were, too, for a while, open air markets, like Rice's. Boardwalks with sturdy stalls on either side which was like a mall beneath the sunshine. Sometimes, I still dream of places like this, though they're less organized now. They tend more toward great big flea markets with trinkets and books piled on sheets or spread out on tables arranged in sloppy, uneven lines, mazes of treasure winding along grass yards beneath towering amusement park rides or amid flashing midway lights.
Sometimes, it's a whole town. My brain has stored away some weird mashed up Doylestown/New Hope hybrid which is only vaguely like either of them which is full of strange and interesting shops and fabulous little restaurants... and neat, even, grid-like roads which are still somehow confusing. There's a building in the middle somewhere which has nothing but carnival and casino games lining the walls and filling the middle, games of chance more than skill with lots of lights and noise. It used to be something else. Sometimes, it still is. There's a shop which is set up like a house, where you can walk through the house and buy the knickknacks and clothing and whatever else you find. It's been very carefully set up to look just-lived-in-enough, though that gets ruined a touch by the people rifling through the hamper or drawers and leaving things out of place. There's a dock on one side of the city, with a guarded gate you have to go through to get in, and it's very easy to find yourself stuck and unable to turn around before you get to the gate. If you drive straight on the road leaving the private dock--which I think is owned by a big company--there's some sort of military depot on the right, though it's all neat lines of white-topped structures. I'm really not sure what it is. It doesn't feel menacing or militaristic, but I'm pretty sure it's governmental of some sort. It's behind a chain link fence. I remember dreaming, once, long ago, that my favorite restaurant there was closed or had moved.
Then there are the mall-airport-hotel combos which are usually located somewhere along 611 for some reason. It's all sleek and white and chrome and glass. There's a train (possibly subway) station down below with lots of glass walls and doors with steel fixtures, yellow lights telling people where to go or shining out through the darker parts where the trains actually are. There are a lot of escalators which seem, to me, strangely placed. Much of the mall and hotel is circular, and walkways stretch out like spokes from the smaller upper floor to connect to double sided escalators in the middle of wide, open space. There are lots of restaurants on the lower floor, some of which do not have walls to separate them from their surroundings. One of which has greenery growing all over it, vines crawling up whitish grey bricks, with a stage toward the front and a mezzanine toward the back. The hotel itself has one set of elevators which go up through the countless floors, from which the hallways curl out and back, circling it. There's a nice lobby with comfortable grey couches which connects to a medical center, perhaps... though now I think I might be confusing this place with another, as I think there's a school down here, too, but they feel so similar, like they belong together even if I dreamt them separately. Whenever I leave this place, I get lost, thinking the road looks so familiar, but unable to identify landmarks correctly.
A lot of my driving dreams are like that. I see shopping centers which look familiar, but not quite familiar enough. I get lost, missing turns and second-guessing myself. I remember things incorrectly, imagining places which I'm sure belong someplace that they've never been. I think this relates to a traumatic experience when I first got my license in which I got so stupidly lost going to one of my favorite shops on my own. I kept second-guessing myself and turning around. Repeatedly. So I was lost for hours, going nowhere. It broke something inside of me, I'm sure. Maybe that's why shopping centers and malls matter so much, then, in my driving dreams, at least. I was heading out to this shopping center in Souderton with a huge thrift store right next to a shop that sold neat things from around the world. I don't even remember if I ever got there or if I just gave up.
But I guess that's what I was trying to get at when I began this post oh so many paragraphs ago: I think there must be a reason why I dream about these sorts of places so much.
I remember my mom taking us out one winter morning, before the stores opened. She was wearing her cream-colored knit cap, and we were playing Follow the Leader the way we so often did when we went out shopping with her. There were four of us, then, and it made keeping us in line a lot easier, and she usually made the game really fun. But we went to a mall somewhere this day. I can't remember which one. The front doors were open, but the shops were all closed because it was too early, so we had to wait. I remember thinking that we'd get in trouble, that a security guard would swing by any minute and kick us all out, but we were left alone. I felt like we were entirely alone, just the five of us, walking on the marble benches and marching down the wide empty halls flanked with metal grates of closed shops or the warm glow of just-opened stores. It was exciting and strange and a little scary and... magical. We were invading a world where we weren't meant to be quite yet, and I loved it.
The feeling is so similar to another memory I had, one which exhilarates me even now.
My mom dated this guy for a while who was a janitor at a big, private catholic school right on the Delaware River. I think it was called St. Mary's, but I'm not entirely sure now. It was a long time ago. I must have been about nine, give or take a year or two. It was a huge building, by my measure at the time, and I don't recall anyone else but us being there after school let out, like he was the only janitor for the entire place. He used to bring us there while he worked, and I'd get to wander the halls and classrooms. I remember there were felt boards with felt shapes that you could stick to it to make pictures. I remember chalk boards and costumes and toys that I could play with to my heart's content as long as I put them back where they belonged when I was done. A lot of the time, I was helping him clean, going into classrooms where toys were left out and putting them back on shelves. It might have been work, but it felt like adventure. I loved exploring this world-which-was-not-mine in which I was the only inhabitant. It felt dangerous, especially as the sun set and the rooms grew dark, but weirdly magical, like in The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe, as if there was no telling where the next door would take me or what sort of strange things I'd learn about this world and these people. It was terrifying, and I loved it.
Most terrifying was the night the power went out. It was storming, and there was a loud crash of thunder then sudden darkness. I was on the far end of the building. If I'm recalling correctly--and even if I'm not, this is how it felt to me as a child--the halls all circled the chapel, which was in the center of the school. The church felt like a full cathedral to me, as a kid, with its impossibly high ceilings and its stained glass windows and its shiny wooden pews. I was so lost, trying to find my way back to my family through this half-familiar world which was suddenly so dark. I remember pushing through the chapel doors--big, swinging double doors--and entering just as lightning flashed, illuminating the stained glass. It was awe-inspiring. And horrifying. I'm pretty sure that's where I was found, standing fairly paralyzed just inside the chapel doors. I was brought to the room my mom was waiting in--small and white and sparsely furnished--while we waited for him to go turn the generator on.
That feeling of being in someone else's world--and it being okay as long as I don't mess anything up--is still a feeling which thrills me. I remember finding that side room when we were at Jim and Tiff's wedding which had a mirror and all those hats in it; it was fun dressing up in the dark for a few minutes, invading that darkened world with a little well-meant mischief. It might be why I was so comfortable with third shift, living in that in-between world after most everyone else has gone to sleep. It's probably why I like doing my grocery shopping at weird hours.
And it probably contributes, in some way, to why I dream about shopping malls despite a disinterest in shopping in them.
Some of that, too might come from a love of world creation. I like the ideas of things. I like the ideas of themed stores and fancy restaurants. I like the idea of communities, whole worlds springing up around these things. I like the idea of exploring and window-shopping and watching, being there but separate.
I don't know.
My dream last night took place in a squarish mall in what, I determined, must have been Daytona. It wasn't quite perfectly square, but roughly, with walkways large enough for a race car to drive through. Because they did. This sounds dangerous, I'm sure, but it didn't feel that scary in the dream. It felt exciting, but expected. As the cars raced through the mall, we would press ourselves to the walls or slip into stores or cling to the vending machines nearby. The mall must have been huge because the laps were very long. In retrospect, I realize they couldn't have been racing because the 'road' wasn't wide enough for more than one car, so there was no opportunity for cars to pass one another.
I had been hanging out with a group of people for a few days who seemed very laidback and fun. I'd especially been spending time with this tall man with curly dark blonde hair who looked something like someone I knew from high school, but not quite. We really enjoyed each other's company and were getting fairly flirtatious when he cut through all that nervousness and just kiss me. It was a fantastic kiss. The sort that says, "There's more where that came from," but then he left. It didn't feel like a goodbye. He didn't say goodbye, and that kiss certainly promised more than he delivered. His friends sort of lingered for a few days, but eventually started to scatter, too. I remember hanging out with a couple of them and getting distracted. I was staring at one--this very handsome black man with stunning eyes--and, when he asked, "What?" I told him how pretty he was instead of asking how to get in touch with my friend (whose name I forget). He smiled, said thanks, then got distracted and left. One of his other friends stayed behind, and I got an email address from him, so I used my phone to shoot off a quick email. After some time, though, I hadn't gotten a response--and the address had seemed really weird--so, I started calling around to ask about getting a phone number. I got in touch with the first guy, with the pretty eyes, whose name was, I think, Chris D., and asked for a phone number. He gave it to me in a combination of letters and numbers, so I was confused at first before I realized what he was doing. I asked him to repeat himself, but he was clearly (predictably?) distracted and would only give me a digit here or there. I went to his house--why did I have his phone number and address but not my friend's?--to find him being pounced by some chick, so I opted to just walk off and give up on that lead.
Mind you, this is all taking place inside the mall. That's all there is in my world, with greenish blue skies and palm trees and ocean air out on the balconies and patios, but no concern about whatever else is out there.*
I decide that I should just walk around and try to find him, which is a very video-gamey concept now that I think about it. I don't know where this person lives, but I know the area and something will alert me when I'm close. I remember just knowing when I was at the right house, as if it were blinking on some minimap, though there was no such overlay in my dream. The trek around the mall was interesting and involved climbing a pile of stuff to get to the next level instead of going up stairs, but it feels mostly irrelevant. When I got to his house, it was very open, with square pillars and furniture determining what the space was for: a large living room in the center flanked by a large, messy bedroom and a big kitchen/dining room area. He and his mother were sleeping on couches in the living room, set at a right angle from one another, with the television playing some bluish cartoon. He had a lot of medical equipment around him. I tiptoed to not wake anyone and snuck around the house quietly. His dad was sleeping in the bedroom.
At some point, I realized he was a kid. Like... ten years old. Kid. I knew it was him, though. As people started waking, I sank down against the wall in the bedroom and closed my eyes. I'm pretty sure they knew I was there and didn't mind, but I was keeping out of the way, trying not to see him while he was like this. They took care of him, changing his colostomy bag and cleaning him up. When he was done, he came to me and grabbed my hand and pulled me up. He was him again, all grown up. He didn't say much, but I knew he felt awkward. He didn't want me to know about all of this. I saw him as a kid because that's how he felt, what he projected, being small and vulnerable and unable to care for himself. He didn't want me to see him like that, the way he saw himself then. I remember there was a moment of understanding, but I woke up then for some reason, well before my alarm, and couldn't quite get back to sleep.
* It strikes me, as I'm writing this, that most of these places are very insular. There are no exits or, in some cases, simply no desire to leave. When I am out in the world, I'm often lost and confused and keep ending up back at the same place anyway. I wonder where that comes from, why my mind builds these places from which there's no escape. It's not a scary thing. In most cases, it's comforting, the world being small and defined, the limits known and attainable. Only when I try to leave do I get frustrated. Only in transit from one place to another do I find myself lost and upset.