Dreamville

In the closet of corpus callosum, I often dream of unseen ghosts, of spirits that tip floors to a slant that sends the rooms contents sideways. Or the spirit brings a freezing atmosphere into the white attic bedroom where I sleep, surrounded by carved wooden windowsills. If the being is in my parent's house behind the plywood wall my Dad built when he actually did convert the attic into bedrooms for us kids, there is a dark sinister feeling of possession that runs through my bones and slows my hands as I retrieve a missing item, usually a glass of milk, as the invisible thing is waiting behind the door to wreak mental havoc. In the dream, I experience the same sensation of fear as I did in the dark as a child. I was a real ball of wax.

I am able to make friends with the slanted floor ghost, placate the freezing air ghost, but there is no reasoning with the spirit inhabiting the area from where I am supposed to get the milk. There are people beyond the door also, dark women in turbans that ignore me, a boy who sits on a stool with a guitar. The milk is allegedly fresh, yet years old, but it must come out so that there is nourishment for either my little brother, my son, or an anonymous, small Hispanic boy. Don't like that dream so much, but who can be choosy? You don't appreciate the good ones if you don't have a clinker every so often.

I love the candy store in the woods dream, where chocolate bunnies and dipped figs are displayed on outdoor tables. The shop is run by foreign, heavy women; usually Russians, and the store is at the midpoint of a horseshoe shaped path in the darkest part of the woods. Leaves and branches hang down over the tables, it is dusk, and the shop is closing but I arrived just in time. Jellies, chestnut pastels, maple and vanilla cremes are all dipped in chocolate, the aroma is deep and dark, the women are pulling in their wares and curling up the awning, but they recognize me and make sure I have a brown paper bag of chocolates to purchase. This vision is short and usually connected to any longer story, but I enjoy the stop.

In some dreams I own a stable of older fifties cars: Pontiacs, Hudsons, LaSalles, DeSotos. Also there are later model Fiats which break down easily but I take them to the garage that lives in this dream and they never take long to fix. Some of the cars are wildly futuristic and look like smooth oblongs with wheels, others are no more than hand-cranked carts that run on the sidewalk. Again, it is a fun vision especially because the bill is never more than $40 for parts, and I get to drive everywhere, able to get out of any snowdrift or muddy rut that exists.

I don't try to figure these out, why flying, why floating on my back down the river, why working sporadically in a restaurant kitchen, hardly showing up for work? There are kittens in the basement and immense sharks in the sea, monstrous shells to collect, and my mother as a woman in her thirties. That is the strangest of all, for in the dream it is known that she was sick, so very ill, but has now gotten better and is up and around. It is odd to acknowledge that she had died, but is now back in better health than ever. For what it is, it is good to see her.

I am ready to sleep, to thud my head down onto the pillow and drift away to some familiar place. There is a dream where a drugstore has put all their Halloween stock on sale, just up the curve from the hot dog stand near the custard place. The streetlights come on and in the early dusk, I am able to go trick or treating even as an adult, no questions asked. I see people that I know going door to door behind masks or with flashlights, some children, many adults in costume, all with bags for loot. There is excitement and blamelessness, we return to our homes bags full.

Sleep well and safe. Dreamville.