Dreamscapes - March 13th

Last night, I had a particularly long and convoluted dream; it went a little something like this...

The first thing I remember, I'm the age I am now, lying on my sofa, feeling sick. There's no one around - no one in my apartment building, no one on the street. I leave my building, which is in Vancouver, and suddenly I'm walking along Lakeshore Boulevard in Kelowna, the street my mother lives on, where I haven't lived for a decade. I'm walking to her house - trudging is more like it - and the farther I go the farther away it seems. It's an overcast day, near dusk.

When I'm almost there I remember that I parked my car near her place a long time ago; this would be easy to forget as I have never owned a car. I turn a corner and see the car parked on the side of the road near the cafe where I used to hang out. The car is the red Datsun F150 we owned in Regina in 1982; when I get up to it I just know there's going to be a ticket on it, since I remember parking it there two months earlier. Sure enough the ticket is for $500.78, which bums me out even more, since how the Hell am I gonna afford to pay that on top of all the other money I owe? Plus, it's a City of Vancouver ticket.

I get to my mother's house, which is not the house she lives in now but the house she lived in in Ottawa two decades ago - the basement of a wee cottage, with eccentric walls and an Escher-like floor. I go down the stairs and knock, then just let myself in.

Inside it's not my mother's house in Ottawa but my friend Doug's current apartment, only two or three times the size, only lit like the house he and I shared five years ago. My mother isn't there, but Doug and Seumas are. I say hello and then fall onto their sofa, which looks suspiciously like my sofa. There is some desultory small-talk; Seumas is trying to cheer me up, sitting in the chair my grandmother used to own, an enormous orange number we all called the Great Pumpkin. Doug is cleaning up, but unnecessarily, since the apartment is immaculate. This is incongruous in many ways, but consistent with the dream.

When he finally gets around to the part of the room I'm in he pushes against me and says (more brusquely than he ever would in real-life) that I need to move because I smell, so I get up and leave; as I'm leaving I hear Seumas tutting, but can't tell if it's at me or at him. Outside I'm on the street my mother's house was on in Ottawa, whereas when I came in her Ottawa house was where her Kelowna house is now. I notice my car is gone (as it would be since I've somehow switched cities) and before I can react I hear a siren.

I turn to see where it's coming from, and wake up with a start; there is an ambulance going past my building, and my alarm clock is ringing. I begin my day with a profound sense of dread, when I remember it's payday, which temporarily lifts the dread, until I remember how broke I am. I take an extra long shower, after which I feel much better.

Typically, I dream opposite to life; the dreams seem to burn off any residual emotion or anxiety I may be feeling. If I'm having a test, the night before I may dream of failure - that sort of thing. It's been a long time since I've had such a vivid and prolonged dream; I thought I'd share it with you now for no other reason than it was so vivid the best way to keep myself from dwelling on it is to express it. ~ MSM