Dreamlife

In this dream, my obtrusive US landlady has achieved her ambition of
inviting herself back home with me. We’re en route to my house and stop
to eat at a rather barren restaurant, without tables, chairs or patrons
other than us but simply a salad bar. At this point she starts becoming
more obtrusive, attempting to put her arm around my waist. I move my
arm to forcefully deflect hers. Then she reaches out to touch my face
and I strike her. At that, she starts behaving politely again. We
continue on to my house, where my family is waiting for me. We’re going
somewhere and my landlady invites herself along, piling into a car
along with the rest of us. When my grandfather emerges from the house,
it turns out he can’t fit into the car because my landlady takes up too
much space. I’m very distressed at this.

  Same date, different dream: I am in my constant dream companion,
the automobile. I’m driving very slowly and cautiously up a narrow,
winding, spiral-shaped ramp without any sort of railing. It is slow
going, and the difficulty is compounded by my tendency to slip into
unconsciousness. I don’t know if I’m ill or narcoleptic, but at several
points my vision blacks out and when I return to consciousness
seemingly a moment later, my vehicle is precariously positioned and it
takes the most cautious maneuveurs to continue. At several points I
have the sense that I have the option of getting off the ramp and onto
a connected building but each time I resolve to press ahead with my
slow, parlous ascent.

In this dream, my obtrusive US landlady has achieved her ambition of inviting herself back home with me. We’re en route to my house and stop to eat at a rather barren restaurant, without tables, chairs or patrons other than us but simply a salad bar. At this point she starts becoming more obtrusive, attempting to put her arm around my waist. I move my arm to forcefully deflect hers. Then she reaches out to touch my face and I strike her. At that, she starts behaving politely again. We continue on to my house, where my family is waiting for me. We’re going somewhere and my landlady invites herself along, piling into a car along with the rest of us. When my grandfather emerges from the house, it turns out he can’t fit into the car because my landlady takes up too much space. I’m very distressed at this.
Same date, different dream: I am in my constant dream companion, the automobile. I’m driving very slowly and cautiously up a narrow, winding, spiral-shaped ramp without any sort of railing. It is slow going, and the difficulty is compounded by my tendency to slip into unconsciousness. I don’t know if I’m ill or narcoleptic, but at several points my vision blacks out and when I return to consciousness seemingly a moment later, my vehicle is precariously positioned and it takes the most cautious maneuveurs to continue. At several points I have the sense that I have the option of getting off the ramp and onto a connected building but each time I resolve to press ahead with my slow, parlous ascent.

  Motor vehicles seem to have become a constant in my dreams. I say this on the basis of  last night’s dream as well as other recent dreams, too dimly remembered to transcribe. Unusual responsibilities seem to be a motif of tonight’s.

  I’m not sure I even recall the correct sequence of this dream. One possible starting point: I’m in Israel and a youth, who is my friend in the dream, entrusts me with the task of returning a large SUV he’s borrowed or rented. I believe there’s some purpose to the use of this vehicle that I’m sympathetic to, but I’ve forgotten what it is. Entering this vehicle is like immersing myself in a different kind of space, a feeling I could perhaps compare to being alone in a dark, well-made chapel.  The interior is very dark, with only the small bright light from the dashboard interrupting the darkness. Curiously, there is no perceptible outside; the windows seem opaque, yet I have no trouble navigating.

  At another point, before or after the SUV sojourn, I’m in something like an apartment building, except there’s no obvious separation between one apartment and the next; they’re all continuous. Danny, the bibulous, feckless superintendent of the building I live in in waking life, lives there. In the dream, he’s crippled and new flaws have joined his half-closed eye and the purple marks on his face. Frustratingly, that is all I remember about my visit to this building, yet I’m certain that seeing Danny wasn’t my purpose in going there.

  Finally, in the last dream sequence, Hugh, my boss in waking life, is asking me to choose unknown candidates for an unknown post. I go along with this for some time. I remember going to a separate room and removing my Egyptian-patterned rings for some purpose involved in appearing to discharge this obligation. However, I finally admit to Hugh that I don’t know the people he’s trying to choose among and can’t make an informed decision. He takes this in stride and hands me their dossiers. Reading them, I realize that what is being selected is a new police chief. This is a curious contrast to another recent dream, almost completely unremembered, in which Hugh is cast as a drug dealer and I am also working for him. In that dream, this job apparently gets me in the line of fire: Grim is a rival drug dealer. He shows up at Hugh’s headquarters in a trenchcoat and the ridiculous cowboy getup he wears in waking life and casts a rose with a prominent thorn at me.

  Dismally partial recollection of this one. In the dream, I’m
upset because I attached tickets to a poetry reading to a paper and
someone, presumably one of my students, has ripped them off and made
off with them. (An unlikely event in waking life–you couldn’t get most
of these dunces to listen to poetry if you paid them.) Mendacious
Allegra offers some advice I’ve completely forgotten, but I remember
she illustrates this by showing me a lovely landscape painting attached
to an essay. I then go to a room that looks like a hospital room to
discuss this same problem with my colleagues, who occupy the beds. The
only one I remember or rather, I think, the only one with a waking life
counterpart is Jessica. She is sitting naked on one of the beds, with a
sheet covering her lap. Her arms are folded across her chest and I
notice intriguingly patterned tatoos spanning the length of each of her
forearms. Although her arms cover most of her chest, I can make out
that it is covered by thin black lines in a pattern that seems to
emanate from her solar plexus and radiate outwards. I don’t remember
what we say to each other.