dream

Dream 07.15.08

Again with the nicotine patches. That always makes dreams weird and especially vivid.

there is a place, a huge, bustling metropolis that is also a large outdoor market of some sort, the size of a small city perhaps. There are indoor-ish areas where there is refrigeration and groceries are sold, but there are also wide avenues and streets you walk down to get to other sections of the supersuperstore. It is as if Wal-Mart has taken over every type of retail there is, and enclosed an entire city under a dome.

I am working, but the sense is one of killing time, as if it is more a lark for me than the others. I feel like I am only here temporarily, and tagging these coats and moving around these cantaloupes is something I might as well do while I am waiting for whatever is going to happen.

I am working with an older woman who I don’t really know, but with whom I am comfortable. I don’t really know any of these people at first, but they seem familiar anyhow. I keep running back to the bathroom way far out near the entrance to the mall/dome for some reason. It’s like I am doing coke, but I’m not. I’m not sure why I keep doing that.

Soon, Denise F. comes to find me, with a credit card receipt for vet bills I owed her. It seems I filled it out for $419 when I actually owed her $819. She is upset and an accusatory, and I tell her I don’t have enough in my account to cover the difference, she keeps nagging at me and I finally tell her I will call the bank so she can hear what my balance is, and that I will pay her in a few days. She continues to press, and I finally tell her I am disappointed that she doesn’t seem to believe me, or that she thinks I might have deliberately ripped her off.

She has an assistant walk along with me to hear the bank message, a nice enough kid, and I am dialing when she catches up with us as we are walking back toward the entrance, saying she might as well go this way, as it is lunch break and everyone is heading that way. I give her a dirty look cause I am really pissed with her, and I say, ‘well, you two go on a ahead then. I’ll go somewhere on my own.’

Earlier, and this might be why the whole communal store situation developed, I was living at a place that was almost like a compound of log cabins out in the woods. It is a familial, communal atmosphere, with adults, children, older folks. It’s almost like it is a former city of log cabin structures, but one that has fallen in disrepair in places, with some houses abandoned and dusty. There is snow on the ground and I need to get the car down to the other end of a long ‘road’ that runs along in front of the houses. There is snow on the ground, plenty of it, and only one or two tire tracks in the extremely narrow path. And although there is an easier way, if I had just followed my friends as they went around to the front of the first row of cabins to the main street, for some reason I decide to plow ahead in my truck.

Which I soon regret. The road narrows to the point of the ridiculous, with rock outcroppings nearly scraping the sides of the vehicle, and still with miles to go. I look back, though, and it seems like I have come as far as I still have to go, and so I press on.

At some point I pick up passengers, other friends from the log cabin commune, and as we are getting ready to debark and go into the building we were trying to reach, I see that Ben has snuck aboard the truck. I grab him and ask someone to hold onto him tight while I park the truck.

I think it is my mom who finally takes him and says, ‘Oh, I’ve got him, I’ve got him.’ I try to explain how much he hates being held, and that he is very squirmy and wily, and apt to escape, and that out here in the woods away from home, I’m not sure I’d be able to get him to come back. She swears she’s got it covered.

But as I am backing the car up, I hear her yelling, in a panic, and I know she has lost him.

Explain that, Dr. Freud.

Oh! Almost forgot: I had had one earlier, from which I awoke with my heart racing and unable to go back to sleep for a while. It is that sad, near-twilight hour, on perhaps a Sunday. Everyone has stuff to do tomorrow, and so all have said good-bye, and I am more morose for not having anyone around than happy for the time I spent with them earlier. I am inside, in the basement apartment, only the architecture is somewhat askew. And I see a man’s feet outside my window on the stairs, and for some reason I hug up against a wall, hoping he won’t see me. There is a mirror on the opposite wall, however, and I see that he has seen me. He lurches his way easily down into the apartment through the window, but casually, as if he enters this way all the time. He is a dumpy, bespectacled, nerdy looking guy, but with two huge knives strapped to him, one nearly the size of a machete.

He slowly, threateningly eases one in and out of its sheath, saying something totally casual like ‘Oh, hey, thought I’d stop by...’

I think about dashing for a weapon but realize it’s too late for now. of course, i watched 'funny games' earlier that night before, so a dream about a casual home invasion isn't all that unlikely, i guess. :)