caveat emptor

No Chess, So a Dream Recounted Instead

I came downtown to observe the Friday night chess games at the coffee shop, but no chess players showed up, so, instead, I will regale you, the anonymous reader, with last night’s dream, about which I cannot stop thinking. I’m skeptical and scoff at most dream interpretations (please do not take this as a personal affront if you value them), so I’m not looking for meaning in it. I just want to recount it for you because it’s a story and telling stories is what I used to enjoy very much. I hope to rediscover that joy soon.

The setting was my home, but not my home. It was some fitful amalgamation of disjoint places to which I’ve never been and never hope to go. The mood was full of stress and dread, angry and worried. The house was bustling with my children and too many other people I didn’t know – ostensibly their friends – but no one specific. I was feeling generally invaded and deprived of my rightful privacy, as though I were trying to change underwear or examine some blemish in a delicate location while people kept opening the door and barging in for no good reason.

The first scene of the dream (or at least the earliest I recall) had River late for work. In the dream I felt as though he was being flippant about it and needed to display greater urgency, and I got bizarrely furious over it, to a point that I was roughly manhandling him (something I’ve never done) in an attempt to convey the gravity of his lackadaisical work ethic. It was strange and not at all pleasant.

I don’t remember the segue, but the next and last scene had everyone gone and me in my bedroom, alone and in a foul mood. I was getting dressed for bed when I noticed an odd motion under a towel strewn over a stuffed chair there in my room. Walking over, I removed the towel, and there, lying in the chair, was a strange baby girl. She was tiny, like an infant, but thinner and with long hair and an almost adult face, like some bizarre, baby grown up. I remember that she could talk, but I don’t remember what she said in her oddly grown voice. I remember feeling empathy for her – here where no one knew her and she obviously did not belong – but I also remember this sense that there was something darkly unnatural and even sinister – though not willfully so – about her. For some reason I picked her up and carried her to the hallway, where I turned to look in the mirror. I was immediately struck by something unusual in her reflection. I turned a bit, to change the perspective, but the peculiarity was still there, and the nature of it was specifically this: Her reflection was not in the correct place. It was five or six inches to the left of where it should have been. From my perspective in the dream I could look down in front of me and see her in my arms and I could also see the reflection, and it was shifted. They didn’t match. I remember being overcome with a sense of wrongness about it, and then I awoke.

That’s it. Not my favorite dream, but I cannot stop thinking about it. Odd, don’t you think?

Hello, friends. I hope you’re well.

Later. Love.

How Houses Grow

A house takes no note when the inhabitant leaves for the last time. However elegant or civilized humans might consider the structure, a house does not differentiate itself from the external world. A house is just a complex arrangement of materials, participating, like everything else, in the dance of elements, creatures and the shifting firmament. A house in neither eternal nor impregnable. The outside will not stay outside. Insects will patiently wheedle their way in. Water will search for the smallest cracks and expand them. Ice, heat and wind will swell, shrink and buffet the edifice. Minerals in the soil will react with and decay the foundation. Beams will fall out of level and plumb. Angles will skew. Joints will weaken. An empty house, unmaintained by human ambition and optimism, will eventually sag and fall. We think it looks sad, abandoned, empty. This, however, is life for inanimate objects. This is the way where there is no will. It is not sad, it’s progress, growth. A house, left to its own devices, will turn back into an empty field. The wind, water and creatures will carry away the detritus. It takes great patience to see the end result, but it’s beautiful in its own way. Come out of your house and settle on the lawn. Watch the show.

Hello, friends. I trust you are well.

Later. Love.

The Dream Where You Were Still Alive

In the dream you were still alive. We were at some strange art and music fair and you were playing an impossible dream violin that used a long, flowing curtain instead of a bow. I cannot describe how it worked. Everyone was watching you, amazed, and I kept trying to come over and talk to you but you would always move on to some other room through the crowded, labyrinthine dream venue and I could never catch up with you. Then, as happens in dreams, we were at home and you were sitting on the foot of the bed looking down at the carpet and I was standing in the doorway to the bathroom facing you. I felt anxious and guilty because we’d had a funeral and everyone had been so sad and here you were, still alive. I was about to say, “We had a funeral for you. What if people find out you’re still alive?” but then a realization washed over me and I said, “You died, didn’t you. You died.” And you wouldn’t look at me. Then I woke up with the fading feeling that you were there.

Life is good, but not perfect. I’ve been playing the guitar quite a bit. I’m horrible at it, but I expect that to improve, if slowly, as long as I don’t stop. I might stop. It’s a thing I do. I’m not quite on top of shopping and cooking, but we’re getting by. I need to go back to the gym. The housekeeper has been great, though she was on vacation this week. I have been spending a little more money than is prudent, but not dangerously so. Work is very busy. Robyn is off in Colorado doing charity work for the week. River is working a lot and taking  summer. Rayn is spending time with friends, especially Lauren, whose house caught fire last week. All her cats died, as did her bird, but the Labradoodle made it through unharmed. They won’t be able to move back in for months. Rayn and Lauren will be heading off to camp in a couple of weeks. They always enjoy that. Life is good, but not perfect.

If I could control my dreams I would take you out to dinner and talk to you all evening. There would be no cancer and no medication, so we’d be sharing a bottle of wine like we used to, before you got sick. You would look me in the eye and smile as we spoke, laugh even. Later, at home, I’d pick you up like I used to before you had so much pain all the time and I would carry you into the bedroom. I cannot control these dreams, however. They tease me with you from a distance and then leave me bewildered and hollow. I don’t know why.