An island, a toe path, a canal, an ocean, a pier
An island, a tow path, a canal, an ocean, a pier
That is my mantra as I lie in bed. I do not want to forget last night’s dream about the island, which jogs the memory of another and another and another dream. Dreams with water.
An island, a tow path, a canal, an ocean, a pier
I type the mantra, hints to remember the dreams when they will have been fading.
And a digression: toe path? or tow path? It’s a path for toes, but I intuit from some recess of my brain that it is the path next to the canal where boats are towed. I do not think to investigate further. The dreams are demanding my attention.
Do not forget. An island, a tow path, a canal, an ocean, a pier
An island. My dream from last night. Water figures prominently. The water dreams flood my memory. I do not remember if these dreams are last night’s dreams, or if they are recently dreamt but no so recently as last night. I think they have spanned, let’s say, the last week.
The island. A tropical island with white sand and clear blue water. I find a dog; a white English Sheep type of dog with matted fur on its belly. This dog is for rescuing. I will rescue it. I run across a white South African family caravanning and picnicking on the beach; I tell them about the dog and they promise to take it in because they have children and want a dog. So I go to find the dog, and when I do, I look across the beach at the water surrounding the island and at the mainland and I wonder how am I going to get to the mainland with the dog. I think about how I would love to go swimming; the water looks inviting, but its dusk; it will be dark soon, and I have an irrational fear of swimming in the dark. I am certain I will be eaten by sharks if I swim in the dark. This fear of mine is real and known to my waking brain, not just dream-conjured.
The tow path.
Again, the aside. About the spelling of tow, toe path.
I am riding my bicycle along a tow path. To my left, there is a small, inland canal for small craft (to tow those craft?). It is green country, obviously England. There has been rain because I ride my push bike through some puddles. I reach a point where I can go no farther. Do I turn back? There are two cyclists behind me; my companions. I do not see their faces. They are waiting for me to decide what we do.
A canal.
A proper Venetian style canal. Wide and deep and leading out, if not to an ocean, at least to a sea. I am guiding, not a boat, but a raft. My pole is a proper gondola style pole. My raft is a proper Huck Finn type of craft. It is a perfect square raft; the water is calm, but there is significant canal traffic. I have to watch out for eddies and tides and currents and boats, and whichwaystoturn when I get to a junction in the canal maze.
I do find my way to open water. Like a salmon. I think that in the dream. That I have accomplished a salmon’s ½ life.
An ocean (or in retrospect a sea? Because this dream might be the continuation of the one above)
I am on an ocean liner. A Titanticesque vehicle with fancy people and glasses of champagne. My outfit is not appropriate. I’m wandering the wooden deck. I don’t know that I’m looking for a change of clothes (something smarter!) but that is what I’m doing. I picture something red, but before I find it, the ship lurches, sways, and turns on its side. It is sinking. Suddenly it is no longer an ocean liner, but just a rather large and swank yacht, the kind of thing you’d find moored up in Monaco or Cannes or St. Tropez. It is still in trouble, still on its side, and its deckhands (who are Hollywood style deckhands, big muscling things with well combed hair and deep voices and perfectly fitted trousers with belts. They are bellowing seafaring crisis orders with confident airs of authority, but the ship is still going down).
I am on an edge of the yacht. I’m going in the water. There is no question about it. I am in the water. I am afraid of sharks. But I have found a pole that has been plunged down some depths. It is like a massive telephone pole, and the tippy top is right here where I can stand, balanced safe from the sharks.
The Pier.
A dock stretching out over water. It could be a lake, but it’s a Sea. The pier is old. Planks are missing. The sky is gray, the ocean too. Choppy waves lap against the wooden beams that hold up the pier. One section of the pier is impassable. I will have to jump across to a little sub section of dock … this is like no dock or pier in the awake world. It is a stupid and ugly design that just happens to be practical and will save my skin in the present circumstances. At the sub section of dock to which I have jumped, a vessel – a massive Zodiac large enough to fit 30 or so people – zips around to pick me up.
The Mista is somewhere in the background in all of these dreams. Crossing the water with me, behind me, always out of site but there.
What’s all this about? The recent rain?
I dream a pedestrian nightmare.
My boss, the dotted-line-one with the ginger hair who influences me on a day-to-day basis more than the dotted-line might suggest, has a certificate with my signature on it. I don’t remember signing it; at least I don’t clearly remember signing it. I remember one time signing something of which the dotted-line, ginger-haired boss had made a triviality, a formality, “admin for the finance guy”.
Now my boss explains how I am qualified to give birth to women (or better said, help women give birth), to deliver babies.
“So, if anyone asks, you’re a doctor. You deliver babies.”
I wanted to argue that what he was telling me was that I was a midwife, but I know my boss, and I knew he would have countered and I would have counter countered and the result would be that after an energy-draining tussle, he might concede “just between the two of us, yes, ‘midwife’ might sum it up, but for presentation purposes, you need to be ‘a doctor who delivers babies, ok?”
And I would agree. “Okay.”
So, I don’t have that argument. I reserve my energy for bigger fish.
“But I’m not a doctor who delivers babies. I’m in IT, and I’m not even technical. I can’t deliver babies.”
He gives me the amused look a realist gives an idealist when faced with the shattering of illusions.
“You won’t have to actually deliver any babies. It’s for tax purposes only. “
By some strange twist of the tax scheme, my company won’t have to pay taxes if it can be proven that we have three ‘doctors who deliver babies’ on staff. I am to be one of these doctors. My signature proves it.
“Who are the other two?”
My boss names two others who, although not qualified to deliver babies, are now, on paper, qualified to deliver babies. He tells me the other two didn’t make the fuss that I am now making. I was chosen because I was considered to be a team player. The implicit question not asked was “Were we wrong?”
The other two are English and haven’t had to have their professions stamped in their passports. Another vagary of my dream: non-English have to have their professions stamped in their passports. So every time I travel, I have to worry about some pregnant lady going into labour.
The ginger-haired-dotted-line boss tells me to stop making a mountain out of a molehill.
Hardly seems a ‘nightmare’ on paper. No monsters. No death. No trying to run through quicksand. I still the feeling of relief to wake up to a different reality.
The Mista is sometimes patient, mostly not, when I recount my dreams. When he’s NOT patient, he lets me finish while he listens with half an ear and makes fun of me for having to share my dreams with him. This dream, though, made him listen. It made him ask questions which make me ask questions about me.
Could this have anything to do with my drinking?
Everyone’s saying the same thing: “It’s the sixth of April … snow???!!!! What the fuck?”
Or some variation thereof.
“And just yesterday ….”
Who am I to be any different?
Just yesterday I woke up with only one clear nostril (the left one), which, because I was sleeping on my left side, was pressed closed against my pillow. The right nostril was blocked by allergy related mucus, and I had no other alternative than to breathe out of my mouth whilst I slept. When I awoke, my mouth was uncomfortably dry, my right nostril was uncomfortabley crusty, and I thought, “Fuck, I’m not supposed to get hayfever until June!” A roll of loo paper sat on the nightstand next to me, apparently secured during a somnabulant trip to the toilet in search of relief. The Mista insisted that I had been talking nonsense upon my return with the toilet paper.
Every year like clockwork, June arrives, and I become an achoo-ing, snot-nosed, bloated-faced, itchy-roof-of-the-mouth victim of floral mating.
It is not June; it’s not even May; it’s barely April, and yet the microsopic flying things are already here and bombarding me with whatever it is that makes me so miserable.
Every year since I learned that there is a jab they can give you, I have meant to go and seek out that jab. But June arrives and passes, and with it my hayfever; so no need. This year might be the year I get my act together and get that jab, because this year with its unreasonable, unseasonable temperatures threatens a longer, sustained period of allergy hell.
This morning I woke up, again on my left side but with a clearer nose. The Mista laid on his right side and faced me. He opened his eyes first while I struggled to rid myself of the vestiges of an unpleasant dream: Butters drowning, her wet limp body too heavy for me to carry.
“It’s snowing.”
“What?!!” I forget all about the dead dog and turn to look up and out the window. Sure enough, white feathery flakes promised me the slightest respite from premature allergy season.
Everyone’s talking about it: the world’s going crazy.
Last night I dreamt I had a husband different than the Mista. In my dream my husband was the actor who played the most gay of the hobbits in Peter Jackson’s might-as-well-be-one-and-only-master-oeuvre. The gay hobbit only made a brief appearance in my dream. He held my (our!) little boy up by the hands to give him (our! little boy) balance as he teetered along on recently learned steps. During his teetering and tottering our! little boy exclaimed, “God Bless America!”
I was shocked silent. I think I was torn between a parent’s jubilation at the little things their children learn and the dismay of thinking I was raising a patriot.
My gay hobbit husband reacted more quickly than I.
“Don’t you ever say that again!”
I suppose I have more in common with the gay hobbit than I would have thought.
Right now, in this very moment of writing this inane little post I realise why the gay little hobbit was in my consciousness last night while I slept. All morning I’ve thought about my odd dream and wondered what it meant and how that actor got into my head. What it means, I don’t know. Not much, I suspect. But, why the actor was there is so obvious I should be ashamed to have had to wonder so long. The actor (somebody Astin; I do not currently have Internet access to google his first name … Steve? Brian?) is in a movie or TV series, which is advertised on a billboard in Holborn Station in front of the place I normally stand on the westbound platform. He got into my head in transit.
The other thing I think about as I write this post is the possible reaction to my seemingly homophobic reference to the gay little hobbit. I like gay people a whole lot. Really I do. Some of my best friends and all that. Samwise Gamgee couldn’t have been any gayer than as portrayed by Mr. Astin, and that just didn’t jive with my impression of him from the book. That’s all.
Not Quite! Not quite all! A footnote: Sean! Sean is his name. (My memory doesn’t deserve the credit. The billboard in Holborn does.)
