The pregnant lady

In my dream, I am pregnant. I’m not exactly sure how far along I am, but I know that my belly gets in the way of things like steering wheels, tables, other people, and being close to anything.

            Because of this, the outdoor café table at which I sit is far enough away that I have to look up from the book I’m reading to reach for my cup of tea. I notice a man in a suit in the ironwrought chair across from me. His appearance does not stir any emotional response in me at first except for a mild surprise. I immediately understand why.

            This man is the devil.

            He sits straight-backed and still in the chair, one leg cocked and resting on the other. His hair is sleek, slicked, curly and dark. His skin is pale but not noticeably so; the crisp cream-colored suit he wears compliments his strong, sturdy frame nicely.

            The only inhumanity that betrays him is his eyes: they are bright bluewhite, as if his brain were an electrical plant gone AWOL. His face is no face and every face; handsome but indistinguishable. He does not blink. He does not smile.

            I don’t either.

            “Hi,” I say, closing my book.

            “Hi,” he says in a rich, silky purr.

            I know this man well. We’re past small talk.

            He reaches out an unblemished hand and picks up my teacup. He moves with a fluid, unbroken grace that only exists for him. He sips, never taking his wild, lurid eyes off mine.

            Later, as we talk, I realize that there is steam rising from my cup where there wasn’t before. Every so often I check. The tea never cools. I don’t touch the cup again.

            “Your child will have a good singing voice,” he says in his own sweet baritone that nearly drove me out of my mind with need for him. “Your child will have good eyesight and gentle hands. It will grow wise and compassionate. It will love easily and be loved by nearly everyone close to it.”

            “Nearly everyone?” I ask, the answer dangling just out of reach on the hinge of my mind.

            He nods once, slowly. For the first time since he sat down, his eyes stray from me. I look at him now in profile.  As he speaks, I watch with interest the words riding out of his mouth on a heat shimmer so intense it blurs the color of the space behind him into a watery grey.

            “Your child has nothing to prove to you. But you won’t remember that.”

            I cock my head. I am not angry or defensive or even confused. I am curious.

            The baby kicks me high in the ribs once.

            “I would never ask it to prove anything to me. Unless I were teaching it how to argue.”

            The devil sighs. Twin blasts of heat billow out from his flared nostrils. The air distorted by the heat is mesmerizing. There is no breeze in the cool spring morning, but I catch a whiff of burning leaves.

            He returns his face to me, etched in lines of sadness. Those lines look foreign, alien, on the plain white clay of his skin. His eyes spark with something that is not sadness. It is not greed or rage or lust or envy or hunger or pride. It is not human; it is not emotion. All I know is what it is not. His eyes spark and glitter, and the not-knowing is the water that urges the feeling of unease into full, queasy bloom. It is never outright fear, not around him.

            “What do you gain from having this child?” He asks.

            “The knowledge of another part of myself,” I reply.

            The baby kicks me again, this time low.

            The devil stands up, not even a whisper of silk on silk accompanying his movement. It is then that I notice a song playing softly through the speakers on the café’s eaves:

                        Time it took us

                        To where the water was

                        That’s what the water gave me

                        And time goes quicker

                        Between the two of us

                        Oh, my love, don’t forsake me

                        Take what the water gave me

This song would be playing throughout the rest of the dream.

            The devil rests a hand on my shoulder. My eyes trail up the length of his arm. The suit fits him so well there is barely a fold or a ridge. He’s got his eyes on me, those cold-burning blue eyes, those eyes that have seen the firstborn chaos of the universe, those eyes made of entropy. They uncouple me from the hook of reality.

            When I surface from the moorless depths of disassociation, I am sitting at the edge of a large lake at dusk. I breathe in the dimness, but my lungs cannot expand.

            Partially because the darkness is thick and sticky and it coats my lungs like tar. Partially because the baby has grown so big that it presses against my diaphragm. I cough, but it does no good.

            Darkness drops fully like water from a bucket and I look for the source of my unease.  To calm myself, I begin humming under my breath.

                        Lay me down

                        Let the only sound be the overflow

                        Pockets full of stones

                        Lay me down

                        Let the only sound be the overflow

It’s a struggle to stand. I keep stepping on the gauzy, flowing dress I find myself in. It feels wonderful against my skin, but it’s little comfort. With the smell of rotting lake all around me and cold mud sucking at my knees and feet, I am immobilized by the mire in my mind.

            The moon is broken and sickly, gives off a drunken yellow light that does not illuminate but confuses. I grab at something near me upon which the light sizzles like sluggish oil. It’s an oar.  I pry myself out of the swamp by clawing up its length. My legs are rubbery and uncooperative, so I stand swaying for a moment, resting a hand on my belly and feeling the mud squelch up between my bare toes.

            I can’t catch my breath. But years of dealing with asthma have taught me not to panic and gasp, so I don’t.

            In, out, in, out, in, out.

            There are soft voices behind me. Familiar familial voices.

            Oh no.

            The thought sparks in my head and lights a flame of fear. I know what this means. When I dream of water, I dream of drowning.

            There is a log cabin set several dozen feet back from the lake. Lights burn fitfully in the windows, casting shadows that leap like rabid things over the walls. The voices inside are risen in song. I open the screen door and the flickering candlelight flays me. I cringe and squint and am assaulted by life, foaming at the mouth. My family, extended, adopted, all, is crammed into the cabin. They are exuberant, they are wild, they are loud and completely unlike themselves. They dance as if there is nothing left for them in the world. There is gravity here, and it grabs at my chest, wanting me.

            “Hey!” I scream into the light, the heat, the rush, the motion, the oppressing life. “The water is rising! You have to get out! Get out! Get out!”

            I lean as far in as my arms will let me, my hands holding onto the outside edge of the doorframe for dear life. For a moment, the terror of getting lost in the press of bodies overwhelms the sick, sinking knowledge of the water behind me.

            Nobody hears me. Suddenly, my feet are cold. I jump and look down. Water, ankle deep. Moonlight slathers itself on the little lapping ripples like rancid butter. Still gripping the doorframe with both hands, I twist my neck as far as it will go. The grass is gone. The gravel path from the lake to the house is gone. The creeping fingers of the lake have taken it all. The darkness, I realize then, did not grow down from the sky. It grew up from the water like vines and infected the world. The smell of decay, of murky, evil water, gets thicker. I feel it trickling into the hollow spaces in me, filling me, making me feel heavy and awkward.

            I hear singing in my head:

 They took your loved ones
But returned them in exchange for you
But would you have it any other way?
Would you have it any other way?
You couldn't have it any other way

I rend myself from the doorframe of the cabin and shut the door against the painful light inside, against the rising liquid darkness outside. I pray that my family is safe from the water inside the cabin. I hope that the energy they create will be enough to fight the water back. I cannot help them now.

            The water is knee-deep. My dress is no longer gauzy and light but floppy and sloppy. I slog back toward where the bank of the lake used to be. My leg bumps something. I reach down into the freezing black, curving my back so that my chest doesn’t touch the surface, and pull up the oar I used to help me stand. The water drips off the oar onto my arm and it’s not water but a condensation, a concentration, of the darkness. It leaves oily trails on my arm.

            There is a small wooden canoe to match the oar, but it’s way out on the lake. Yards away. To reach it, I’d have to swim.

            I lay my hand on my belly. The baby has been quiet for a long time. I worry for it. Will my heat be enough to keep it alive in the impossible cold of the water? Will the weight of it, plus the weight of the darkness in my lungs and the weight of the dress drag me to the bottom?

                                   

Lay me down
Let the only sound be the overflow
Pockets full of stones
Lay me down
Let the only sound be the overflow

The water reaches lustfully for my hips. As I wade toward the canoe, I keep an ear trained back toward the cabin. The terrible cold rips the breath from my lungs. It swallows my belly. The baby does not kick. The water licks my neck. I fight the air for breath.

            In, out, in, out, in, out.

            Kick.

            I kick.

            I’ve lost the bottom; I float now, kicking to keep my head above the grabby little waves. Soon, my legs disappear into the numbing black. So I wave my arms and, despite what I’d feared the most, I reach the canoe. The devil is sitting in it. I know it’s him because his eyes slice through the darkness like knives made of electricity. They seem to scream at me. He sings:

Oh, poor Atlas
The world’s a beast of a burden
You’ve been holding on a long time
And all this longing
And the ships are left to rust
That’s what the water gave us

            I know better than to reach out a hand to him. I cling to the side of the canoe. I am past cold, past shivering, and I know that if I don’t get out of the water, both the baby and I will die.

            “You remind me of Ophelia in that dress,” the devil says. “Or the Lady of Shalott.”

            “The Lady of Shalott didn’t drown,” I say.

            “I’ll write your name round about the prow,” says the devil. “Then you can sing me your last song.”

            With some untouchable force that is brother to the darkness, the devil pries my frozen hands from the edge of the canoe. I swallow my panic, force it down into my gut to warm me, give me buoyancy, buy me time.

            The sick yellow-grey moonlight wanes. Only the high edges of things are lit, and even then they aren’t lit but painted with light. It drips from the tops of the trees and falls thickly onto the devil’s shoulders and head. He chuckles deeply as he carves my name into the inside of the canoe. That chuckle finishes what the water started; it crawls into my ears and piles up at the base of my brain, sinking me.

            I sing with the last breath I have:

She’s a cruel mistress
And a bargain must be made
But oh, my love, don’t forget me
I let the water take me

It’s peaceful in the deep.

The arms of the water are no longer crushing. They welcome now; they curl around me protectively as I curl around my belly. The fingers of the water no longer grope and want; they soothe me and smooth my hair and my dress.

            I rest in the black sanctuary. Now that I don’t have the sound of the devil or the cabin in my ears, I can hear the singing:

Lay me down
Let the only sound be the overflow
Pockets full of stones
Lay me down
Let the only sound be the overflow

            It seems to take hours to lift my head far enough to look up at the surface. The last bit of moonlight is fractured by the waves and sluggish fragments float down at me.  They never reach me because I’m sinking.

            I look forward to reaching the bottom. I’ll finally have somewhere still and quiet to rest my head.  

Is this what it feels like to give up? I ask myself.

            The baby kicks once, hard.

(Song: What The Water Gave Me by Florence + The Machine

Don't let the bed bugs bite

I had a waterbed and in the dream, I had it in my mind that I set it up at 2am. I was sleeping and saw ants crawling on me. I got up and saw some blue frogs and another weird thing like a centipede but fatter. It was making screeching noises at me. I tried to get a picture of the frogs and they turned into kittens. I got up and pulled the mattress back, there was dirt and grass, leaves and all sorts of crap under the mattress. I was trying to figure out where the ants were coming from to get a trap set up. I had a broom and was sweeping up all the junk, blaming myself for setting the bed up in the dark not seeing all the dirt. My co-workers went by, stopped and asked why I was working so hard. Then I woke up.

Guitar

I was supposed to be playing classical guitar in a quartet performance of the Nutcracker,* along with a cellist, pianist, and... other musician? In real life, I haven't played my guitar in ages and can't really sightread.

In the dream I knew it was a bad idea to be sucked into this performance without having practiced with the group--let alone looked at the music--beforehand, but I hoped maybe it wouldn't be too noticeable. I didn't even have the music, so I had to read off the copy of the woman beside me, who was singing as a member of either the choir or the audience.

Naturally, I was terrible. Weirdly, it didn't bother me as much as it should have.

*Or perhaps the Messiah; it shifted.

Friends and pig heads

I was visiting a friend, she has blue streaks in her hair and they were present in the dream. We walked up to a woman who was sitting poolside and I wasn't introduced. I said 'nice to meet you' and shook her hand, which felt like she had something wrong with it. Her hand was disfigured. It looked like a shopping mall with a pool and tables inside.

People started to show up and it became more like a dinner party. Everyone who came to sit at our table told my friend she looked fabulous. I felt uncomfortable and bored, I didn't know why we were here.

A man was carrying around a pig head on top of a bucket. I was uninterested. The head looked like it was alive with pink flesh. It had fake eyes that looked like blue human eyes. The man was making the eyes blink as he brought the head around to all the tables, as if it were on display.

An older woman started talking about what a long walk it was to get outside for a cigarette. She was going on for a while and I started to look around. I saw the pool and people walking on a cement walkway behind it. Then, an attractive and young black girl with a drink in her hand approached the pool. She had a black strapless ball gown. She walked down the pool steps and into the pool, seeming to go unnoticed and she was very casual about it. She held her drink over her head and went in until the water touched the top of her dress. I remembered thinking it looked refreshing and I wanted to try it. I pointed her out when people seemed interested in knowing what I was looking at. She started walking up the pool steps and had a white dress, like a wedding gown, with pearl beads and layered in front like an open style. Everyone in the place clapped and hooted when they saw her. She waved and walked on.

The pig was getting too heavy for the man to carry. He set it on a table and was going to carve it. Before he set it down I couldn't stop looking at the eyes as he made them blink. We then were served what was called garlic shrimp, but it was fried and overcooked. The women at the table said 'isn't it fabulous?' I nodded but didn't think it was. I thought it was dry. I looked at the sauces, red and yellow... I was looking for melted butter. Then I woke up. - GirlX

Back in high school... and anthrax?

I'm new to this blog, but I found it fascinating to read about other people's dreams. I have a lot of my old dreams documented, so I thought I'd share one today. - GirlX

I was back in high school and I saw M in the line for lunch. (Side note: M is a girl who my ex boyfriend cheated on me with in real life, then left me for her and later married her.) She was talking to a girl that I know and have been trying to get a hold of lately. I hate M, so I didn’t want to talk to her. I noticed she’d lost some more weight, and grew her hair. She looked good (of course) and she was talking to someone else I thought I knew. I started wandering the halls trying to find something – my locker? Someone else’s? Then I felt I had to leave.

I was standing by a friend of mine while she was running a cash register, and I wanted to buy some things since she gets a discount. A guy was giving her grief in line, and she held up a button that said ‘can YOU do this job?’ Her mom was there and told her to stop acting like that. The friend freaked out a little and walked away. I was trying to grab the things I wanted to buy but was told not to worry about it and the friend would take them home for me.

I was driving home and saw an old guy friend in a car going past me. His eyebrows were raising, then lowering, and in the rhythm of the eyebrows raising and lowering his eyes were turning into a creature’s eyes – yellow in color, and he had an evil sort of grin on his face and he blew past me. In the dream I said to myself "that it was something I’d seen before in a Stephen King book or movie" I thought it was one of the characters. I laughed it off. I pulled into the driveway of a house where I lived, got out of the car and was checking the mail. I had a lot of mail from military establishments, a few of which were open and a powder was inside them that got on my hands. It was anthrax, I was sure of it. I quickly wiped off my hands and continued pulling mail out of the mailbox. The box was taller than me, and when I pulled out another envelope that was a bit larger, the powder fell out of it and into my mouth. I started to panic at first, then realized I’m going to die in a few days. I tried to figure out where the letters were from, and as I was walking up the driveway there was a strange man in a delivery truck waiting for me. He said he had a package to deliver. I started to shut the garage door, and then laughed and apologized – I was just in a daze from what had happened and wasn’t paying attention to the man. I started to walk into the house with him following, and thought it would be unsafe to let him in. He gave me a bad vibe. I turned and asked him what he had for me, and he replied "it's a package, but it's a little damaged." I was walking back to his truck, saw blood on a cotton ball on the ground in my garage. I asked him where the package was from, he said it was from a military address. I was afraid to see what it was, and asked him if he knew who it came from. He said no, and while he was digging in the truck to find it, I woke up.

weird combination

In all this time I haven't posted, of course I've had a lot of dreams. Last night's were particularly impressive, though. First, I had a terrible dream about my husband getting shot in the head. We were somewhere with a group of very young people (I don't know if we were as young in the dream, or just out of place). We were hanging around in a semi-derelict house, and one of the guys had a gun. He started messing around with it, shooting out the door at something outside. In theory it wasn't supposed to be dangerous because he was just shooting at a target, but somehow he accidentally shot my husband in the back of the head.

I don't need to go on about how awful that was, because it's self-evident. He was still alive, though, so the awfulness just escalated. The kids freaked out and didn't want to take responsibility (didn't even want to call 911). Of course I immediately started to try to stanch the blood (of which there was surprisingly little) and call 911. I failed at first at calling because I kept getting distracted with my first-aid attempts. Then, every time I tried to dial I couldn't get it right. I accidentally entered the wrong sequence of numbers, an extra number appeared at the end, I accidentally erased all the numbers, I pushed the wrong button, I accidentally hung up on the dispatcher, etc. etc. I couldn't find my own phone, which had fallen down somewhere, and kept trying on a variety of phones that were lying around, none of which I could figure out how to use (usually it was the crucial "call" button that I couldn't locate). Finally I decided to look for help on foot, while simultaneously trying to prevent the kids from burying my still-alive husband to hide the evidence of their accident. I eventually ran into some people outside who seemed helpful and competent. I think at that point I must have woken up and realized that he hadn't actually been shot, because I don't remember how it ended.

The other part was considerably less harrowing. I was composing poetry, which is something that I think I've dreamed occasionally before*. Usually when that happens I can't remember any of it in the morning, but this time I remembered part of it. It was a medium-sized poem, so at least half of it is probably gone for good. The missing part was along the same lines. I think it was inspired in part by some recent thinking about my personality and priorities and how to deal with people with conflicting personalities and priorities; and in part by a book I've been reading about slowness. Anyway, this is all I remember:

Manifesto

We reserve the right to dawdle, to hem and haw, to hedge.

We write poetry in our dreams, and knowing that it was graven once in the gray folds of our unconscious is enough.

We are not waiting for happiness.

We know it when we see it.

I found the dream really interesting and amusing, because I remember the thought process I went through choosing the wording there, including a debate about whether the word "graven" was too stilted (I'm still very much on the fence about that). I think the lines that came more easily were the ones I forgot.

*In real life, I haven't dabbled in poetry since late adolescence, when I think one is contractually obligated to do so.

retail

I haven't been remembering many dreams lately, although I know the group-living dreams are continuing, since I can recall a snippet of one from the other night (a friend was fixing a computer for me, pulled out a long, nasty string of mold/cobwebs, then carefully replaced it in the bowels of the computer).

Last night, though, or rather this morning just before waking up, I was having a different recurring-theme dream, a theme I like better than the group-living one. I was in an Anthropologie-esque store, looking at the sale section*. Actually, this store was a lot less attractive than a real Anthropologie store, resembling more closely a mall Dillard's or something like that. The merchandise, however, included some very cute clothing. I particularly remember a strapless dress made out of a linen-y fabric with multicolored blowsy roses printed on a deep rose background. It doesn't sound like me, not being either a strapless-dress or a cabbage rose kind of girl, but it was actually very appealing, and I was sorry it wasn't in my size.

The really great thing on offer, though, was a home fix-it book. It had simple, clearly written instructions on all kinds of things, accompanied by photos and drawings. The design was very well done, clean and attractive and just girly enough to be a good fit with the store (but not too girly; not festooned with pink). There were instructions on unclogging a drain** and rewiring a lamp, and I don't remember what else. It was quite disappointing to wake up and realize that I couldn't actually buy the book for $5.99 or however much it was on sale for.




*Not too far off from reality, since I often troll the sale room at Anthropologie, it being my "pass" to park in their parking lot so I can avoid the highly unpleasant Whole Foods parking garage. This particular retail dream differs from the usual, though, in that it's the first I can remember not involving secondhand merchandise.
**Also reality-based, since we've been having some bathtub drainage issues.

more celebrity appearances

Well. I'm tempted to restate my lack of real interest in celebrities, but since they keep showing up, I guess it would sound like a case of "doth protest too much". Here are the latest two cameo appearances.

The other night I dreamed that I was transitioning to a group living arrangement (of course). I suppose I was in school, because it was rather dorm-like, but I don't remember the details. I was supposed to be sharing accommodations with Chloe Sevigny, which startled me a little--didn't she have enough money to live in a place of her own? After my initial surprise, I thought she might be an interesting roommate. She seemed interesting, nice enough, and I figured she would probably have interesting taste and introduce me to interesting people. Being an introvert who has a hard time meeting people, the idea of a built-in source of acquaintances appealed to me.

I was still in the process of beginning to move my possessions in when Chloe presented me with an itemized rundown of all the food that she estimated I'd consumed or would consume within a certain time period. This included groceries and eating out, and I was floored by her attention to detail. It was all listed by item, estimated serving size, and price--including estimated tax. The estimated-tax part rankled me a little, and I started to think that maybe her financial fastidiousness was going to be a pain.

++++++++++++++++++

I'm not completely sure who last night's cameo was. It was either Ben Stiller, Adam Sandler, or a hybrid thereof. My husband and I were in the process of establishing ourselves in yet another group-living arrangement* (sharing a house, I think; we had our own space, at least, but it was within a larger dwelling). We had pretty much settled in, and our dogs--our real-life Doberman and a dream German Shepherd--had too, making themselves comfortable on a top bunk that our Doberman would never be able to jump up on. Despite some climate-control issues (no heat?), it was a fairly comfortable arrangement, and we took a break with a movie.

The movie was some kind of comedy featuring a gone-to-seed boys' band. They were singing a semi-choreographed song in which they wandered around a vacant lot. The lyrics included something about "until my hips get soft", which puzzled me--I wasn't sure if it was meant to be a sexy double-entendre or a wry commentary on their age (they were all 40-/50-something). They were dressed in either jeans/black leather getups or track suit/gold jewelry ensembles, and the Ben Stiller/ Adam Sandler hybrid sported a spectacularly ugly hairdo: slightly bleached (orangey) dark hair on top, curly but brushed out to fluffiness, and a darker, gelled longer layer (mulletlike but equally long all around) consisting of tiny, bouncy little curls. I was transfixed by its ugliness.



*WHAT is UP with this? What unconscious fixation keeps making me dream about group living arrangements? Am I going to have to join a kibbutz to exorcise this?

Tsunami

I'm pretty sure I was reading some Lacan-esque French theory, something about a sea lion/regular lion and a polar bear, and recognizing the Other or some such business. I'm not sure if I was studying this while at the beach, or if the elaborate literary metaphor sort of just came alive for me, but at some point I was definitely being rocked by the waves.

The tide on this U-shaped beach was coming in, though, and I decided I was done with the water. When the waves pulled back, a whitish pebbly beach was revealed at the bottom of the U, and I ran across to get the backpack(s) and corkscrew (?!) that I'd left there on a ledge. Back on the other side, the door to the hotel/apartment/dorm was locked, so a beach employee (?!) kindly let me in. It was an odd sort of industrial-looking stairwell, so as she was in there with me, I asked her whether I'd be able to get out on my floor. She was assuring me that I would, just as she received a message, which I couldn't decipher, on her radio.

"Up!" she said to me. "Up! Run!"

"What happened?" I asked, as I started up the stairs. "What is it?"

"Up, up!" she shouted, pushing me. "Go!"

I was struck by the realization that we were trying to make it to higher ground, because a tsunami was coming. I tried to run faster, taking two steps at a time, but my legs were tired and then we started to run into crowds in the stairwell, also trying to get up to higher ground. They were quite orderly and not pushing or shoving--primarily just polite and a bit bemused.

Suddenly it got darker in the stairwell, and I realized the wave was coming. There was a window in the stairwell, separated by a gap of several feet from where I stood on the stairs. As I looked out, I saw a wall of water rising, in incredible colors--glowing sage-y green, then golden, then red. It reached up to a few inches above the window, and then sank, and I thought, with relief, that we were all going to be fine. But then came what I instantly knew was the Second Wave, higher than the first, and I could feel the foundations of the building shaking. This wave filled the window with incredible sparkling droplets of water, glowing red. I thought to myself that I might well die, but even if it did, it would be after seeing the most beautiful scene of my life--and that it would be okay.

I'm disappointed in you, George

Here's another embarrassing one. Alert Readers may recall that I've had two or three dreams in which George Clooney shows up randomly and reveals himself to be a charming conversationalist and a good companion to kill a little bit of time with while waiting in public places (??). Unfortunately it turns out he has a darker side below the charm.

This encounter began with my needing to take one of our dogs to the vet. I had found a vet that was more conveniently located in relation to my house and work, and wanted to try it out (inexplicably, we were living in something resembling a poor-ish neighborhood of a third-world city). The building was a three-story concrete building, with parts of it in okay shape and other parts that either had never been completed or had been destroyed by some unidentifiable catastrophe. I was poking around trying to figure out where the vet office was located (not easy, despite a prominent sign on the roof indicating that it was somewhere in the building). At some point I realized that I had forgotten to bring the dog (??), but since I didn't have time to go back for him I decided to at least locate the place and see how it looked, and maybe try to ask a couple of questions.

In the midst of my pokings-around, I ran into George, who was sitting at a counter in a cafe/bar restaurant in the building, looking out a large glassless window onto the parking area (keep in mind that the whole atmosphere was one of picturesque third-world decay, almost post-apocalyptic). I decided to play it cool and ask him if he knew where the vet's office was (you know, treat him like a regular layperson). He was, as usual, charming and helpful, and gave me directions involving navigating the destroyed part of the building that looked "like Kosovo" (his words). He then invited me to sit down and eat something with him, an offer I accepted both because I was hungry and because who would refuse a lunch invitation from George Clooney? We had a pizza, which was quite good.

We got along famously over the pizza, although I don't remember the conversation. Nor do I remember how we got to his house, but the next thing I can remember we were in his house, which had a larger selection of chotchkes displayed than you'd expect. By this time I felt like I had known him for ages, and he was being very nice, in the manner of a guy that you're getting to know and fast moving toward relationship territory with (you know, very interested in what you have to say, doing all the right body-language things to appear interested but not creepy). I was enjoying myself very much, although I certainly wasn't thinking "I'm going to have an affair with George Clooney"; he was much too smooth to provoke thoughts like that.

This is where things started to go downhill fast. In an embarrassingly ham-handed bit of G-rated symbolism, my subconscious chose to indicate his wish to take things further by having a wrapped condom drop out of his pocket onto the floor (??!?). Of course I freaked out because I had just been basking in the warm glow of his charming company and apparent general regard for me. I backed away and started sputtering, at which he abruptly lost his temper completely. He started yelling that I had been leading him on, with the reasoning that I accepted his gift of lunch ("you took the first piece of pizza, too! You just jumped in there."), and that the logical implication of that was that I was agreeing implicitly to "pay" later. I was completely crushed--what I thought was a spontaneous meeting of minds (and, well, yes, I did find him charming) was actually, in his mind, a way to get some action. I was crying by this time (loud wails and hiccups, the whole spectacle) and said, "but I'm MARRied", which I figured would surely appeal to both his reason and what gentlemanly side he did have (although I was beginning to realize I had seriously overestimated his gentlemanly side).

As I was wailing and he was berating, a young brunette slipped out of a bedroom and left the house, obviously having been there all night. Of course that didn't help things either. I beat a retreat, having completely changed my assessment of Mr. Clooney.

But that wasn't the end, oddly. A short time after I got home, someone delivered a medium-sized box, from George. I opened it and found a wild assortment of things, heavy on the books but with other things like event tickets, information on the stock market, etc. As I started to look through it, I realized that this was George's identity encapsulated in a box, and that he had somehow, drawing on his celebrity status as bosser-around of assistants and obtainer-of-favors, to assemble all this in that short amount of time (there were documents that would have had to be obtained from businesses and agencies, for example). Despite my resolve to have nothing more to do with the nefarious George, I began to soften as I realized what an effort he had made to be understood and explain himself.

What an odd and embarrassing dream. Once again, I promise I am not obsessed with Mr. Clooney. The only times I think about him are when confronted with a bit of celebrity gossip and when I have these random dreams in which he shows up. I have to say, though, I'm curious whether his Jekyll or Hyde side will show up in the next one (I doubt I've seen the last of him).

Gandhi??!

I've been having lots of really detailed dreams that don't stay around once I've woken up. Here are the two that I remember best--they're widely divergent in style/subject, as you'll see.

The first is kind of embarrassing, and I hesitated to post it, but it's just so surreal I couldn't resist. I'm not sure what the situation or setting was, just that it involved men coming out of the woodwork to reveal that they had all been coerced by Gandhi (!!?!) into performing sexual favors on him. It was alarmingly and gross-out-inducingly explicit (which is the embarrassing part). Obviously this was brought on in part by the recent scandals involving politicians, but why Gandhi?

The other dream was one I would rate as one of my best overall, for subject matter and scenery. I was taking a boat tour of a South Carolina swamp with my husband, and there were animals all over, a range from animals that would actually be in a southern American swamp (alligators) to real animals that live somewhere else (hippos) to completely made-up animals. There was a small fish/mammal/bird hybrid that I caught in my hand and kept holding onto because I wanted to take a picture of it. I don't remember exactly what it looked like, but I think it was bright orange, and very wiggly.

the mechanics of dream crying

I had the saddest dream last night. So sad, in fact, that I woke myself up crying (or maybe the dog barking woke me up; it was simultaneous). My husband and I were living (with other people, of course--I couldn't possibly have a dream in which I don't live in a group arrangement) in a rooftop apartment. It was really just a small box-shaped one-room building with extremely low ceilings, on top of the flat roof of an older building. I think the building itself contained a mixture of offices and apartments, and it wasn't in great shape.

We had been out and about and were returning home, if you can call such a living arrangement "home". It had been raining, and as we neared the top of the stairs leading to the roof, I noticed water pouring down the stairs from the rooftop. I made a note to let the building manager know (incidentally, the same guy who manages the building at my real-life office). It didn't really occur to me to be worried until we came out onto the roof and saw that it was completely flooded, almost up to the wall around the edges, which was about six feet tall. We could still walk through the water easily, but it was threatening to fill up the apartment to roof level. When we went inside, everyone was confusedly trying to gather up their things to evacuate. I looked around for our dogs with an increasingly sinking feeling. I asked someone about them, and just as they started to answer I brushed up against what was obviously one of their bodies floating around under the surface of the water*.

Of course no one had thought or had time to rescue our dogs, and it was terrible to think about them struggling to keep their heads above water in the middle of the crowded bunkbed setup (the room was filled with bunkbeds like a summer camp). I felt terrible realizing that if we had been there we could easily have gotten them out of there, and terrible in a different way thinking that if the roof had had proper drainage this wouldn't have happened at all.

I've always kind of wondered about the mechanics of crying in dreams, in those cases where you wake yourself up sobbing violently--how long are you actually crying in "real time" (it always seems to me like I cry for hours in the dream), and are real tears coming out? I still have no conclusion, but found it interesting that I woke up with tears in my eyes (but not streaming down my face) after what seemed like ages of crying. I also woke up slowly enough to note that I was gasping, sob-like, but my sleeping partner is a heavy enough sleeper that I've never been able to get an outside observation of whether I'm actually sobbing or just gasping.

Anyway, it was a harrowing dream, and I was very glad to hear the dogs barking when I woke up from it.


*This seems like a weird detail, that they would be floating around at a 3' depth, but I don't know enough about the physics of water and dog corpses to say whether it's really inaccurate. Another weird physics-related detail was that after we had removed the dog corpses from the flooded rooftop I was carrying them around in a garbage bag, casually slung over my shoulder--all 170 pounds of them, which I would surely not be able to do in real life, especially if racked by sobs.

Which reminds me of another gorily specific detail: I was carrying the dogs around because I hoped to find someone to flay them and preserve their hides for me, and also to remove and clean up their skulls so I could keep them as mementos**. When my husband expressed dismay at this weird and excessive desire, I said, "but think, don't you know any hunters who could do it? It would be easy for a hunter who was used to processing deer!"


**I probably shouldn't confess this, but I have considered in real life (although purely theoretically) the possibility of keeping the skull of a dead pet as a memento (in my defense, the hide idea hadn't occurred to me), although I'm sure I wouldn't due to a lack of butchering/taxidermy skills/cast-iron emotional constitution, and the fact that I don't know any local hunters.