Over the course of maybe the last year, I have had a series of dreams that I had not thought much of and I thought were unrelated, until last night, when they all came together. They clearly Mean Something, or Are Trying to Tell Me Something. But I don’t know what.
Here are some facts:
- I grew up outside of Houston, and my extended family lived in two rural towns — one small, one very small — about ninety minutes away that we would visit often
- My paternal grandmother lived next to the cemetery
- My maternal grandmother lived on land that backed up to the Colorado River
- To get to my maternal grandmother’s, you had to know the way. The roads were winding and unmarked. Written directions would have included lines like, “When you reach the ‘T’ where the road is paved again, go left.”
- As a teenager, I believed I had once had a dream that, standing by the river, you could crane your neck and see a scene out of a Dutch painting…a farmhouse surrounded by blooms of every color. This seemed so unlikely because everything around the property was corn and cotton fields. But I was wrong — it had not been a dream. It was something I had actually seen as a child, decided must have been a dream, and yet saw once again, completely unexpectedly, many years later.
- My father recently sold his mother’s house. Now someone else lives next to the cemetery.
Here are the dreams:
- Dream #1, about a year ago: I was a teenager, on a drive somewhere with a friend. There was a small, remote cabin my family owned, but no one occupied, where I had played as a child. On the car trip, I recognized the area, told my friend about the cabin, and wondered if I could still find the way. I did. We found the cabin, and spent some time exploring the dusty, empty shell of it, surrounded as it was by tall grasses and trees in the middle-distance. It was magical.
- Dream #2, a couple months ago: Driving again, now with my wife, I remembered a small town on the way between two places. It was a shortcut that probably didn’t actually save any time, but was lovely. When we got into the town, it was as I had remembered, until we reached the main street. A big box store had been built recently, and it had become the central hub of the town. (We went inside and found they sold guitars, and while a few of them looked nice, they were all off-brands and played shitty.) We drove on.
- Dream #3, a few weeks ago: I dreamt that in college, I had driven a lonely stretch of Highway 290 many times, moving between my home and college (this is actually true), and that there was a big, swooping, 270-degree exit off the highway that would take me to a late-night diner (this is not true). They had the best pancakes. I had gone there many times, on many overnight drives, and I wondered if I could still find it. Happily, I did. But the diner was run-down. A strip-mall had sprung up around it and, in the years of my absence, it too had grown run-down. Everything was grimy and forgotten. There were a lot of empty stores in the strip-mall. I went to the diner and got lousy service.
- Dream #4, last night: Driving. Now. I remembered each of these places in turn, and tried to find them. I could not. I could not remember the secret way to the cabin, or even if my family still owned it. I could not remember the shortcut that wasn’t through the town that now featured lovely, hundred-year-old Victorian houses and wide aisles of fluorescent lighting. I could not find the swooping highway exit that would lead to pancakes. On the radio was Conor Oberst’s “Gossamer Thin.”
I don’t want to eat or get out of bed
Try to recall what the therapist said
Ego and Id, the Essential Self
You are who you are and you are someone else
Waking up with that running through my head was really the last straw that made me wonder what the hell was going on. All interpretations are welcome in the comments below.