dreams . . .

Since Jenny posted her dream, I guess it's okay for me to post mine. (yes, i do indeed take some of my "cool cues" from Jenny).

So, in last night's dream nightmare, a female colleague from the Philosophy department had clearly been given my job as Theater Manager of the Sundance Screening Room during the Sundance Film Festival. I showed up to work to find the offices flooded with water and no one seeming to care about it at all; I pointed out that we had computers and things that might need protecting (or at least our care so as not to topple them or their dangling wires into the puddles). What the workers did seem to care about was Philosopher/Manager Chris' new mandate regarding how we were to conduct ourselves during the ticket distribution moment just before a screening. We were told to wear bathing suits and Santa hats, to give a patron a ticket along with a kiss on the cheek, and then to do a little twirl, once around, just before heading back up to the office for more tickets (as in dreamworld, this scenario resembles our routine in no discernible way). So, time comes to head out to the line, a big, single-file line that spread down the mountain (not at all how we do it). I'm wearing my blue speedo, an old favorite from my childhood, the one I wore during the boatwreck (i still remember going to the local and non-massively-chained sports store years ago; we'd go every year for new suits because we were always swimming and ours would wear out anually. I'd have to search for my suit from among boxes, not hangers; Speedos were packaged in nondescript grey rectangular boxes, and I had to have a pretty big one for a little kid, which was always humiliating for my mother and probably wouldn't have been for me if not for said mother's humiliation. I loved my blue Speedo! I remember that the logo used to sit at the hip, just above where the suit ends and the thigh begins. I have a very clear memory of that.

So but back to the dream. I'm wearing some really old hiking boots I used to wear when I lived in Arizona (I recently donated them), and on top, I have some kind of brown wintery jacket. On the very top, said Santa hat. It's not a good look. Not a good look at all. And, as you might imagine, I was the only one dressed in The Outfit. And I didn't get the sense that they had played a joke on me, so it was extra disorienting and weird for me, not to mention just plain humiliating (I've never been a big fan of showing leg; I've always been pretty ashamed of my legs, despite my lovely Grandmother's proclamation that I had "good sturdy legs" -- God love Grandma). I also seemed to be the only one who was having difficulty navigating the mountainside. It seemed to be a slippery, rocky surface, like one i remember from long ago, and I was falling on my side as I struggled to approach my patron (my person-in-line). After I did my horrifying deed (the kiss, the twirl), I scrambled up the mountain and was heading across the road, back to the office. There, for some reason, was a frat house just off to the left, a big frat party having its moment. Clearly, I did not want to spend any time being harassed by frat boys, so I set off with greater determination for said office, . . . and then . . . it faded . . . and, mercifully, I woke.

I see several different actually-lived narrative moments converging in this dream. The blue speedo (the boatwreck), my longtime loathing of the thighs, my actual hiking boots, my actual Santa hat (yes. I have one), the slippery rocks like the ones i used to fear when I went fishing w/ my Dad as a child (and the slippery rocks that we used to slide on in North Carolina, the ones upon which my sister Carrie slid, and, after an ill-advised attempt to sneak past the fallen-over tree trunk -- the one we used to grab on to in order to stop ourselves -- falling down the post tree-trunk 200 foot waterfall, nearly to her death. She survived, but it was gruesome; and I did have to run frantically up the mountain, scraping against sharp weeds and slipping in the mud to get to the gas station to call for help) . . . so much more.

The weird shift is that my dreams are almost *never* about my actual life as far as I can tell. The scenes I create are almost wholly imaginary. Places I've never seen. Clothes I've never worn. People and creatures and things I've never encountered. A parallel universe that doesn't *actually* exist. My husband has *real* dreams about us all the time, and I often feel so guilty that I don't dream about us. And I feel angry about it, given that I'm seriously romantic. Maybe something is shifting, something that will allow me to dream *real* dreams. maybe they will help me. I don't know.