These are all the pieces I remember of a series of dreams I had last night, and I remember them with more than usual clarity, and haven’t been able to get them out of my head, so I write them here for my own benefit and to post them just for the heck of it.
Blake’s Dream
- Someone telling me that you cannot make a bagel taste like cinnamon toast by preparing it like cinnamon toast, thinking that was crazy, trying it, and being unable to make a bagel come out like regular cinnamon toast.
- Going to some kind of a chapel service at some place that felt like my old highschool to find out that it is just young, senseless people who want their ears to be tickled, and date like the world does. There was a girl or two flirting with me, and I could look around and see other guys and girls flirting or just trying in the most pathetic ways to impress and attract each other–it was like a singles cruise. For some reason I was holding my guitar by my side in my left hand, just letting it rest on the ground. The people who seemed to be leading it were saying some very wrong theological things, and I walked out before too long by myself, not feeling bad at all for missing the “worship” or “preaching”.
- Rooming in an apartment with my brother Reed in Hainan, China (Hainan is an island in the south China sea). The apartment was right by the beach, but on a rocky cliff, and there was a strange room dug out of the lower rock, by the shore, where you could go in by way of a hole in the rock face and be in this square, very artificially lighted room that had walls painted to look like the most beautiful sunsets and ocean scenes to be seen just outside of the room for real. I couldn’t help but noticing the flat upstairs where we lived had a lot of wasted space, and the bathroom was kind of odd… it was narrow but long, with a showerhead just coming out of the wall on one end and a drain on the floor (note: currently, in my Greensboro apartment, we have a kitchen that is narrow and long; also, in Chinese hotel rooms, the shower coming out of the wall with only a drain on the floor is commonplace). Reed already had friends there to go out with and do things with, but for some reason I wasn’t invited. I got the feeling that it was assumed that I could either make all the friends I wanted or I already had my own friends. I stood there as people were leaving with Reed, waiting for them to invite me, but they didn’t.
- Suddenly, living in an apartment in a farmhouse-type building in a place that resembled rural China with its footpaths and countryside, but was definitely in American New England in the height of the summer. I vaguely wanted to walk “to campus” from the apartment, but I had only been there once before and it was a little complicated to get there so I was in doubt as to whether I would get there right away or take a while. I came to a path with grasses and trees on each side, then a small, shallow lake of some kind beginning to appear on the right side. Just then, my old African-American friend Arloa (who I haven’t talked to or hung out with in a year or two) speeds past me on a little wal-mart type bicycle, laughing cheerfully. She turns sharply into the lake and rides for 50 good feet without even getting her knees wet before the lake gets deeper and she goes under, only to splash back up again. I called out to her and called her “Slumber”. I thought how fun swimming in that water must be, but then I thought it wouldn’t be that fun if the bottom was all mushy. I asked Slumber if the bottom was all gushy and she said she would check, then went down, and came up and reported it was.
- I keep on walking a little bit around the lake and see there is a bank on the lakeshore that is higher than the path, with lush verdant grasses on it, and a cataract of water flowing up from the ground and down the blades of grass into the water. I had no idea where this wellspring could be coming from, then I turn to my right and see another, larger lake right by the path, making the path into a kind of raised isle with this higher bank on the right side of it. The lake on the left was the same elevation as the lake on the right, so I didn’t see any explanation for the waterfall, but it satisfied my curiosity just because there was another lake (note: right behind my home in Chapel hill, there are two lakes with mushy bottoms, with a path that I walked every day to get to highschool that goes between them. There is no waterfall, and the lake on the right is actually a higher elevation than the lake on the left, and there is no raised bank, only a sloping downward one).
- The second lake had about a dozen college-age looking frat guys in it playing volleyball, or on the sandy shore. One of them asked me if I had seen Slumber. I said yes, and told him where she was, then stood quietly for a minute, until I couldn’t hold myself back anymore, and pulled off my shirt, and rapidly, yet non-chalantly and casually as possible because I was aware of the other guys there who would be watching, I took a canter-pace into the water till it went above my knees, then did a gliding surface dive into the shimmering glass (note: I really, really love swimming, especially in clear freshwater lakes in New England summers). As I was gliding in the 4 or 5 feet of water, I put my foot down and felt the bottom. It was mushy and slimy, and drastically curbed my delight, as well as made me wonder how on earth those other guys could be playing volleyball?
- I turned around to go back to shore, and woke up in my bed in my apartment in Greensboro with the 830 o’clock sun shining through my open window into my face before I even got half way to the lakeside.
So what does that say about me? Any ideas?
