Wednesday, May 29, 2013

The Dreams We Have At Night

I have vivid and strange dreams. Nearly every morning, I come out of an underworld of dreams so odd and surreal that I am left wondering if someone slipped a little something into my drink before bed. Seeing as how this has been the case for almost all of my life, I know this was no roofie. This is merely my imagination getting up to stretch its legs during what it considers a boring baseball game. My brain will have gotten a serious workout, even though I was lying flat in bed, not moving at all. I usually tie in all kinds of things that have a place in my real life, recent events, etc and then fill in the blanks with a strange putty made up of the craziest shit imaginable.

The dream I had last night brought to my attention once again that I have some weird thing with public restrooms in my dreams. I have lots of dreams in which for some reason or another I must enter a public restroom. Almost all of them are in locations new to me, some place I have never been (and probably doesn't exist). This time it was because I had fallen ill with a strange paralysis. More on that in a minute. This will be like a Tarantino story, stick it out and just re-read it when you are done and it will all come together.


The beginning of the dream has me repeating a phrase and trying to decipher it: 5 flower, 5 flower, 5 flowers? flowers? five of them? 5 of something? I am seeing the number five and the word flower. Not a picture of flowers, but the word. Then the picture. Then the word again. I am trying to associate what it is. In this part of the dream I am significantly younger than I am now. I am stuck on this strange totem. I want to know what it means. It is bothering me to a feverish degree. Where did I get this idea from? Why is this important? Eventually, the sound of my voice fades out and I let it go...

Then I am on a street. There is a tall building across from me. Something bad has happened. I see a window curtain slightly open and I look up to see who or what is there and it closes quickly. I go to the building, go up inside of it. It seems to be from a different time, perhaps about 35-40 years ago by the looks of the interior. I am headed up the stairs. I see brown and orange and wallpaper that makes it all look to be from the 1970's. I realize that there are a lot of police and I wonder why I am there. I am investigating. I am there to find something, find things or people. It comes to my attention that I am supposed to be there, that I belong with the police. Ok, then, let's go investigate. I get to the hall where I think the window was that I saw open. There is a number 5 on the door.

Next thing I know I am on the ground. I am outside of the door, facing an exterior hallway, one that would normally have a railing of some sort but it does not. I know almost immediately that this is a dream, because so many of my dreams have this lovely feature. Concrete blocks, either in a large parking garage or other structure- this time the space between floors, and they are the ledge out from a building or other safe platform and they are narrow, much too narrow all of a sudden and where the hell did the rail or balcony or wall go? Yup, this is a dream.

But I could not get out. I knew and it didn't matter. Because I was on the floor. And I was really dizzy. Nauseatingly so. I am huddled next to the building's exterior wall, on the fifth floor of a building that all of a sudden opens right out to nothing but a five story drop. I am trying to get it together. Maybe ten seconds have passed, but it feels like hours. I look away instead of down and as my vision moves away from the building to the area across the street, I see the street sign: Flower.

It is Christmas Day. Someone keeps saying that over and over. The Christmas Day Massacre. What? Who is talking? Where am I? Oh, shit, I am still on the ground. Only now I have closed my eyes so it looks dark. There is someone huddled down with me. She is asking me to stand up, so we can go inside. I say it now, to make sense of it; 5 Flower.... 5 Flower... is this what I was supposed to see? She says it doesn't matter, but she doesn't know. She has no idea just how much it matters. Doesn't she know how many years I've had this information and didn't see?

We arrive in the dimmest public restroom ever. True to form, this one is crazy town. No stall where the toilets are, even though it seems to be a nice bathroom. Women are everywhere, even though the building was pretty much empty except for all the cops and it is an apartment building. Why wouldn't these women be in their own bathrooms? Wait...in the mirror... what the hell? I catch a glimpse of myself. What the mother fuck am I WEARING? And why did no one tell me my shirt was on backwards? I know, because the tag is sticking out and floundering around down past my collarbone. On this blue and white striped-type loose dolman sleeve blouse that has no connection to anything I really own. Is...oh my god...is that a brown plaid skirt? Where did I get this from? Did I get dressed in the dark? 

No one seems to notice or care. I raise my head to take in the rest of this picture only to see that my hair is up and in a careful chignon, belying the whole thing. Like a Barbie doll that you did the hair so nicely and then ripped the head off and stuck it on one you've written on with markers and left out for the dog to chew on. I look disheveled and official at the same time. With quite a bit of gray in my hair. What is going on here?

The question keeps coming, I can hear the question mark, but I can't hear the words. Then they start fading in one at a time: "Are... you....alright..?" Yes, I'm alright... of course I'm alright... all eyes are on me now. What? What is going on? They want to know why I was on the ground then, mumbling about the address. What did I mean? Was that a seizure? Do I want to go to the hospital?

I wake up.

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