Monday, June 02, 2003
This past weekend, I've been tormented by several ridiculous "daily residue" dreams - the kind where people, places and situations you come across in real life show up as bizarrely mutated pastiches. Analysts seem to consider them something the dreamer's equivalent of a garbage disposal.
In one, I was in a strange car driving over hills somewhere near Lake Placid, New York. The sunlight was blazingly bright, the coloring of the landscape was an autumnal orange-red, and the gas gauge was on empty (I had watched part of Far From Heaven this weekend, shot in a similar style). I knew I had to stop to fill up, but my passenger kept giving me nonsensical replies as to why we couldn't stop. The next thing I knew I was on an aircraft carrier docked in the middle of a small lake. The deck was marked with a gridwork of two-digit numbers, ranging from about 16 to 29 - and with a wave of my hands I flew upwards from the deck, landing on the opposite shore. In the dream I "knew" those numbers indicated the sounding reading from the deck surface to the bottom of the lake, but I have no idea how an aircraft carrier could draft only 16 feet: mind you, this is only a dream.
Then, I was in Chicago...I didn't recognize the streets, although it looked suspiciously like Lincoln Park fused with my neighborhood - somewhere Uptown but nonexistent. All the "L" lines were underground, which isn't the case in "real" life...my stop was the nonexistent "Lawson" Red Line (I had walked past the Lawson House YMCA on Saturday). In this figment of my dreams, the underground stop was several levels deep - and there was a long ticket counter where "emergency tickets" could be purchased for $ 1.00 (again, in real life one ride costs $1.50). As I tried to make my way to the train all the stairwalls became steep, and lost their handrails, so that it seemed I could fall straight down to the tracks - I felt panicked and couldn't even crawl back upstairs to ground level. Then I woke up with horrible heartburn.
Could it be the spicy andouille Cajun sausages I cooked for supper last night? Laissez les bon temps rouler, my foot.
