Thursday, October 18, 2007

Long Night

I should preface this by saying that last night was wine and cheese Wednesday and that consequently, I went to bed very drunk, which undoubtedly influenced my unconscious. I dreamt, constantly, all night last night. They woke me up, and some of them alarmed me. Being awake was less work than dreaming, so consequently I didn't get much sleep, but spent the interim between dreams thinking about the dreams and also about being awake, all night long until everything blended.
I can't remember most of it, only that all the dreams were borderline disturbing, and each time I woke up, I always wanted to call a friend to tell him about it, before realizing that said friend currently has no phone, and even if he did it's one, or two, or three in the morning.
Right now, I can only remember one of them clearly. Here it is.
I was at a deserted playground and walking along a railroad tie that older playgrounds tend to have as a means to separate the gravel from the grass. My friend Peter was there and we looked at the sun together. He mentioned that he wanted a chandelier. I told him they were expensive, but if he wanted we could drive out to this fairgrounds by the airport to look for a cheap used one. I calculated the mileage and gas and everything for him. We drove out the next day.
On the drive down, the car became a train and Peter became my father. We were nomads. We had no home except for the train car, which shortly became an old school bus. It was painted in bright colors exactly like one I saw with my father in real life when we went to Washington a few years ago. People were living in this bus and driving around sneaking fruit from orchards. Then we were in a buggy, being driven by a woman from Sumatra. There were oxen driving the buggy and she kept yelling at us. Some Jamaican renegades pulled up alongside us in a motorcycle. They yelled at the driver and she yelled back. I don't know how the nationalities of the people in my dream were determined, except that they were and that was that.
I felt very disturbed by the men on the motorbike. It felt like they were taking a piece of me away with them. Typically, in my violent dreams, someone I love is killed or hurt. This dream felt like it was going to end that way but it didn't. Instead, it felt like the men on the motorbike were stealing some abstract ephemeral part of myself and like I couldn't do anything to stop them. They pursued us and as the chase progressed the region we were in became less and less like the plains of Colorado and more and more like a rainforest.
Then I woke up.
When I fell asleep again, I had a series of dreams about arguing, and friendship, and loss, and ghosts, all so lifelike that when I finally woke up this morning I felt like the dreams were incorporated into my life and experience, and were just memories that I forgot, which is an unusual way for me to feel about my dreams.

No comments: