So I have a couple of dreams that need writing down. Unusually, they have stuck in the craw of my mind since waking with them yesterday. “good” dreams usually fade fairly quickly, but I was somewhat sick yesterday so perhaps the dream-state was closer and more able to continue reminding me of goings-on in the underworld of me, the unconscious.

There was a girlfriend dream, a moving into a house dream, and one longer dream earlier in the week with my whole family on a hillside. Somewhere there is a fourth dream, but it has finally slipped away.

The girlfriend dream was about tenderness, friendship, and intimacy. And it lead to the house dream. She has dark medium-length hair, is fairly short, rides an old bicycle (like the kind you find on college campuses such as Oberlin), wears boyish clothes, but has an undeniable femininity. We are leaving a Frisbee party and making plans for later. It is late afternoon in autumn, but it is really warm. As I come outside and see her sitting next to her bike…on the ground, or on a short bench of some kind, I run over and smother her in an embrace, which gets us both laughing. She’s tying her shoes and I tell her that I love her and that she is amazing. She’s been herself again, and won my heart again. There is a moment where we lock eyes and know the depth of joy we find together.

….

Later, I’m moving into this house that I’ve been moving into for months, in the dream world. Each time its fairly boring because there is really nobody there, or there are roommates that seem strange and distant. But this time, as I moved in I realized that I really liked my roommates. We’re having a party on the night I move in.

I’m exploring my suite. Its actually rather huge. First floor, left side as you enter the deceptively large house from the street. The front room of my suite seemed at first like all there was. But its only a parlor. Through curtains, bathroom on the outside wall, small hallway, then the second ‘parlor’, with a really nice desk and computer setup, comfy couches, tapestries and artwork everywhere. I realize that these things are mine, but don’t remember decorating, let alone owning these things. As I continue back through the suite I see it splits off. On the right is a private hallway with a private staircase up to a second floor room and back-of-house-second-floor-deck. On the left is a massive livingroom / bedroom.

My hammered dulcimer is already setup. I dimly remember setting it up earlier, but I had not appreciated how great a house this was then. I’m happy. I hear people in the rest of the house laughing and realize that they are my friends and that we’re going to have several great years here together as a family of sorts. A family of choice rather than accident of birth.

I test out the dulcimer, playing a few licks with the padded side of the ornate but comfy hammers. It seems the old tunes are coming to me easily. A few missed notes, but mostly right on target. I try a few flams and arpeggios, and then a chord progression comes to mind. I hammer it out. I like it. I do it again with variations. I find a melody. Its very much a rhythmic, driven, rock song of sorts. I start really wailing on the dulcimer and loving it. Josh Jones / John Smith comes in and turns on the amplifier after catching my eye. I agree: This would be cool to blast around the house.

I’m rocking out, knowing that I’ll soon have an audience and get some dancing going. Where did this improve talent come from? I think its from joy. Its from feeling at home, finally.

And this is all a Very Good Thing as far as my real life goes. I wake up.

…….

I hike with my brother. We meet our family on a steep hillside by a river. We explain that we have to keep going to get to the good parts of the river and park. The family tries to say: “No, this is it!”. We say our goodbyes and Tom shows me that the path goes away from the river and up the hill, to bypass some cliffs. I know that we’ll come back to the river soon, and I’m not too sad about having to leave the parents and other siblings behind. They would never be able to go further downstream, and its time to accept that.

……

The other day I was at a Rite Aid, buying toiletries. As I entered I saw a middle-aged woman with pretty long brown hair. Some gray hairs in there, but something about her seemed young, from the back. She turned around and stared at me with the widest-eyed expression I’ve seen short of terror. Her eyes were probably blue, but what I really noticed was some light grey sheen over her whole face, more of an impression or aura than anything real. I smiled. She kept her expression and passed me.

I found my razor blades and soap and such and came to the checkout, where she was talking with the cashier about how she wanted extra bags to bag up her purchases, which were: 4 matching hideous green-yellow-swirled goblets, like the kind you serve iced tea in in the south. 4 matching hideous plastic plates that only sort-of matched the goblets. A plastic complicated pump-spray toy of some kind in the usual cheap-toy packaging.

Apparently she wanted each plastic goblet in its own bag so that they wouldn’t bump and scratch each other. It was fine, and the cashier understood, and I was in no hurry, but she suggested she do the rewrap herself so he could ring my purchases up. Fine.

It was then that I noticed that her red leather pocketbook, on the counter, was greasily stained and worn from many years of use. It was of a 70’s style. Her purse was also old. Mid-eighties brown leather with big faux gold loops joining the strap to the bag, which had an almost patch-work leather look to it. I never notice these things, but this woman was interesting.

The old items and new plastic purchases together, her care over the plastic, but slight personal disarray. These things told me something about her that I could relate with personally. I didn’t feel I was projecting, and still don’t. She’s stuck in a half-finished psychological house. She’s probably 42 or so, but lives in a world that was defined when she was 8, 14, and 22. No relationships have impacted her development since those times. She’s terrified, but has a few strong comforts. She’s somebody’s crazy aunt, but to me she’s a sister in a world that has brought lonely traumas early enough to disrupt full maturation of the personality.

Not that normal people are mature. But there is something I share with this 70s woman that is tragic. A quashed soul that is ever tethered to the past, a past where love was misshapen and trust destroyed such that it holds us in those long-ago moments and so rarely lets us come to the present without the elastic of poorly shaped but strong early impressions (universalizations, normalizations, trauma).

………

Other events in another post. I’m moooooooving on.