{"id":3325,"date":"2009-02-15T13:58:19","date_gmt":"2009-02-15T18:58:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/?p=3325"},"modified":"2009-02-15T13:58:19","modified_gmt":"2009-02-15T18:58:19","slug":"dream-talk","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/2009\/02\/dream-talk\/","title":{"rendered":"Dream Talk"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"
\nSomewhere around here we’ve got one of those little reference books to help you interpret your dreams. You know the ones — structured sort of like a thesaurus, so when you look up a word or phrase (“coffee,” say, or “horror movie” or “lava lamp”) you get an instant read on what that object or experience represents. Especially if you look up more than one dream-thing at a time, and combine the interpretations. (“You are concerned about sleeping too much” + “You need more Citizen Kane<\/em> and less hockey-mask Jason in your life” + “You vaguely remember your life of 30-40 years ago” = “Dude<\/em>…”)<\/p>\n

I need to find it to look up my two most recent (remembered) dreams. At least they were on different days, so there’s no chance (is there?) that they’re related. Both had a curious visual quality to them — not quite animated, and not quite like viewed as an old scratchy film, but not not quite not<\/em> animated or scratchy, either.<\/p>\n

Sunday morning, minutes before waking<\/p>\n

\"\"I<\/span> dream that I am lying in bed, and that I am in that pleasant half-conscious state where one has the option of getting out of bed right that moment or drowsing a little longer. In the dream, I opt to get out of bed finally when I hear dream-voices.<\/p>\n

In the dream’s master bathroom, our next-door neighbor (whom I will call Mrs. L) is discussing something with The Missus. Mrs. L has a clipboard in one hand, which she consults or annotates from time to time, and I get the distinct impression that Mrs. L is our landlady (although we don’t rent this house).<\/p>\n

My dream-self gets out of bed. Uncharacteristically — so<\/em> uncharacteristically that I know this must be a dream — I’m not self-conscious about standing there in my underwear. I kind of give the women a little finger-wave and then, because I obviously can’t use the master bathroom at the moment, I walk briskly down the short hall to the guest bathroom.<\/p>\n

But you know, there’s something odd about this guest bathroom. Or rather, some things<\/em>.<\/p>\n

The tub is gone. There is no sign a tub ever occupied that part of the bathroom: the wall is blank, the tile floor extends right up to the wall. There is nothing at all in that roughly 3’x6′ area. Nothing hangs on the wall. It’s just… empty.<\/p>\n

There is no toilet.<\/p>\n

The vanity is lower, only about thigh-high or so, and not as broad as the real thing. It’s like a two-thirds-scale model vanity, in fact. No mirror is on the wall above it.<\/p>\n

Everywhere — around the edges where the vanity meets the wall and floors, between the tiles — the grout is fresh.<\/p>\n

“Uh, honey?” my dream-self calls. “What happened to the guest bathroom?”<\/p>\n

The Missus materializes at my side. “Oh,” she explains, “the pipes were clogged.”<\/p>\n

And that’s when I woke up.
\n<\/p>\n

In the wee small hours of Friday morning<\/p>\n

I<\/span> am dead.<\/p>\n

Or rather — this doesn’t feel like quite the same thing — I have died. At least, everyone around me seems to think so; although I am going about my usual everyday life, they all seem sad and distraught. They keep talking about me in the past tense.<\/p>\n

Oddly, although I’m there with them and talking<\/em> to them, they can’t hear me.<\/p>\n

I’m in a big empty warehouse of some kind, with one of my sisters. Apparently we were planning on buying or renting this warehouse and this is the inspection tour we never got to take, now that I am dead (have died). She’s talking to me as though I’m actually there but she’s not actually talking with<\/em> me: she’s talking at me, over my interruptions and asides and replies.<\/p>\n

Then I’m on the shoulder of a two-lane highway, somewhere out in the country. It’s a sunny day, not especially warm, and although I’m not by nature someone who tries to hitch rides with strangers — and besides, I’m dead (have died), so no one would stop for me anyway — I’m vaguely hoping that someone will stop and offer me a ride. As if I knew where I was going.<\/p>\n

\"\"Finally a big black car — mid-20th-century vintage — pulls up and stops. I open the passenger-side door to the front seat and get in.<\/p>\n

The driver is my father, but obviously not my father. He died in 1988, after all — died for real, I mean. And it doesn’t even look like him. You remember that guy — I think he was an ex-football player — the big blond crewcut guy, who starred in those TV commercials with Teri Hatcher for… was it Radio Shack? The “Dad” behind the wheel of this dreamcar looked like that guy.<\/p>\n

We pull away from the side of the road and we head down the highway.<\/p>\n

As with my sister, “Dad” talks to me as if I’m really there, and (as with my sister) I am frustrated that he’s not able to hear me in return. But one sharp difference marks this conversation: “Dad” talks to me as if I’m really there because he knows I am<\/em>. He knows, too, that I can hear him, but that I can’t make myself heard. This saddens him as it does me. He tells me he knows how frustrated it makes me, that it will be all right.<\/p>\n

And then, as if in a movie, the point of view switches to that of a person standing in the road, watching as the big black car dwindles into the sunny distance, trailing dust.<\/p>\n

And then I wake up.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Somewhere around here we’ve got one of those little reference books to help you interpret your dreams. You know the ones — structured sort of like a thesaurus, so when you look up a word or phrase (“coffee,” say, or “horror movie” or “lava lamp”) you get an instant read on what that object or […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","h5ap_radio_sources":[],"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"activitypub_content_warning":"","activitypub_content_visibility":"","activitypub_max_image_attachments":3,"activitypub_interaction_policy_quote":"anyone","activitypub_status":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[183,14,16,15],"tags":[992,993,994,995],"class_list":{"0":"post-3325","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-everyday-life","7":"category-01_intheblood","8":"category-themissus","9":"category-family","10":"tag-dreams","11":"tag-dreaming","12":"tag-sleep","13":"tag-symbolism-or-otherwise","14":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6kZSG-RD","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3325","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3325"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3325\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3335,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3325\/revisions\/3335"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3325"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3325"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3325"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}