Driving the Car with The Child
I think the dream started here. I was driving a car along city blocks in the dark. I want to say it was before dawn, but it might have been the night. What was important was that it was dark. I made a right-hand turn onto a slightly busy street and realized A), I was in the back seat of the car and couldn't reach the controls, B) The Child was in the front passenger seat and would need to steer the car out of the path of oncoming traffic.
The Child was freaking out a little, and not able to drive, so I managed somehow (through dream fluidity) to get back into the driver's seat and continue going.
There's a break in the narrative. I might have been coming home for a lunch break. I sort of remember parking the car at some point, and I have a jumbled recollection of a dream setting that was a mash-up of our house, Mark's work, and a cafeteria. I think it was a cold day.
I'd come home for lunch. Mark was home, too. We had a short conversation about how our mornings had gone. I started to change into different clothes and then it turned into a standing make-out session with Mark. We somehow moved out of a bedroom/living-room and into a kind of entry hall: our door was in the middle of a long space with glass doors on either end; opposite our door was a bank of cash registers and vending machines, and a raised dining area. There were three or four people at various tables, who were too busy eating or whatever to notice us.
We'd backed up against a vending machine or phone booth when I looked over Mark's shoulder and saw a generic dream guy (dark slacks, white shirt, blue striped business tie) from Mark's work walk through the doors. He sort of saw us -- the recessed booth we were in blocked the view of us from about the waist down. A startled, range of expressions crossed his face, that went something like "Ooh! Whoops! Oh my! Where do I look? Yikes, they see me seeing them. Smile! I'm going to pretend this didn't happen and go get lunch."
"Oh," I said, "I'd better get dressed." Getting dressed in this case meant throwing my old purple-and-black cloak over my shoulders and holding it closed. During the rest of the dream, I went back and forth wearing underwear, my regular bathrobe, or nothing under the cloak.
Lunch in my cloak. With Hillary.
There was another break. Somehow I was on a college campus (possibly Reed, only with less brick buildings), eating lunch with The Child and Hillary Clinton. The sun was shining, the temperature was pleasant, the grass was green and flowers growing. We had been walking, but found a space under a building to have a kind of private lunch. I recall park benches of some sort, the space was dark, with a dry gravelly ground, sort of like being underneath a bridge or underpass.
Hillary and I were chatting, with occasional comments from The Child. I think The Child said something a ten-year-old would say about The Joker. I told a story about being at Reed, which involved me being the only guy on a road-trip with five women (there was an important reason that I was the only guy on this trip, but I don't recall what I was trying to tell Hillary). Hillary asked The Child about his day. The lunch was informal and friendly.
And then it was time to go. Hillary and The Child scrambled through a gap underneath the wall to the bright sunny campus outside. I had to roll up my cloak around my mostly naked body and rolled on the ground under the wall.
We chatted a bit as we walked. I think there was another break because it was just The Child and me, when I realized I hadn't asked Hillary about her stance on NeoPaganism and then Hillary (in white) was on a bicycle in front of us.
"Hang on, bud," I said, "There's something I forgot to ask her."
Politics and Religion
I caught up to her and said, "Mrs. Clinton, do mind if I ask you a campaign related question?" and proceeded to ask her what her stance on NeoPaganism was, which lead to a muddled explanation of what it was, with comparisons to Universalist Unitarians. Meanwhile we're walking to her next appointment, and The Child is somewhere behind us.
I don't remember her answer exactly, but NeoPaganism wasn't on her radar, and she said something generically ecumenical. "Oh, and it's time for my next appointment." We walked into a wood-paneled classroom, which was also my place of employment. It was 1:15. My co-workers sat in a row of wooden lecture chairs (the kind with a little desktop built on the right side). My boss was the instructor, and she was standing at the head of the class, looking at me with a controlled expression that managed to say, "Why are you fifteen minutes late?" and "Why are you at work dressed only in a cloak?"
I was so busted. "It was nice having lunch with you, Mrs. Clinton," I said. "I hope to see you soon." Which was awkward, because we both new that I should be in this room, too, and that I would need to leave to get properly dressed.
Get me to the class on time
I scurried out. The setting had shifted a bit, it was still campus and outdoors, but it was also the inside of a vaulted college building. I looked around for The Child, whom I needed to get to his class.
There was a commotion and I heard him. "Oh," I thought, "Someone's found him and they're taking him along his way."
I turned a corner and I saw a woman, an amalgam of various severe teachers, dragging The Child to a class. She was berating him non-stop. He was trying to explain that he'd been lunching with me. Then he tripped or something, and she became exasperated with him and pushed him as he was trying to get up.
I sailed over. "You," I growled in my mama-bear voice, "sit!"
She had a whiny English nanny voice. "But he's late for his very important Artistic Expressions class." Her red hair was done up on top of her head, and she had a beaded ribbon falling along one side of her head.
"Sit!"
She sat resignedly on a bench or pew at the side of the hall.
"You do not treat my child in that manner. Do I make myself perfectly clear?"
And the dream ended...
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Commentary.
In the 1980's, I used to dream that I'd be driving through the streets of Corvallis, and suddenly my mother would be in the car and we'd either switched places, or else the steering wheel would switch over to her side of the car. While I will occasionally have "I'm not in control of the car" dreams, this is the first time I've been displaced to the back seat in a while (it's more likely these days that the car's breaks or steering wheel stop working).
The make-out section of the dream is obvious anxiety about giving our back-door neighbors a show. Which is theoretically possible, but unlikely. Unless they're standing on our deck.
Usually, when I wear my cloak in dreams, I can fly in it. And I'm usually not naked. In this case I would sort of remember that I was in a state of undress, and then the dream would continue as if it were normal.
Lunch with The Child and Hillary Clinton? The Child is preoccupied with Trump in the same sort of way he's preoccupied with The Joker. I can only imagine that speaking about the primaries with Mark (who was reviewing local candidates for city posts) is behind this. Though why I would want to know what Hillary's stance on NeoPaganis is is beyond me. Maybe she'll lead us to a Goddess-based theocracy?
I will sometimes dream The Child is in peril (usually because he's stupidly climbed onto a railing at the top of the Empire State building). This is the first time the peril has come from a person, much less a mash-up of teachers. Hmmm... the dream teacher was mix of some of his teachers whom he hasn't always liked the best, but the Very Important Self-Expression Art class seems straight out of the mouth of one of my teachers who wanted you do create your own unique art her way.
This is the most that I've dreamed of The Child in more-or-less one sitting. Maybe he was talking in his sleep.
Working out: Monday afternoon's session: 20 minutes and 210 cal on the elliptical. 3x12x50lbs on the pec fly. 3x12x80 on the lat pull-down. 3x12 curl-ups. 3x12x35lbs on the barbells. 3x12x10lbs with an overhead triceps curl.
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