A disordered dream, stubbornly refusing recollection. Fragments:
I experience the unremembered thrill and fulfillment I used to feel
when I sensed or believed the Ice Queen was reading my thoughts
sympathetically. However, I learn it is not the IQ but another who is
responding to me. In the dream she has a name; I no longer remember it
but I believe it was Anglo-Saxon. She’s somewhat thin and her face
wears a kind expression. Her hair is flaxen and her characteristic
attire is a one piece white tunic. I wonder if she’s the IQ’s alter
ego, although there seems to be nothing to connect them. In the dream,
I have access to traces of this girl–images, her writings–but she
herself is gone–from whence to where, I cannot say.
I return to my room (bearing no resemblance to anywhere I’ve lived in
my waking life). A nondescript teenage lad with an unprepossessing face
is there, making ill and destructive use of my belongings. I don’t
complain. I’m not exercising restraint; neither his unexplained
presence nor whatever damage he is doing to my belongings bothers me,
although I don’t welcome it either. I wait without impatience for him
to leave. However, later when I knot my tie I notice it has many
threads coming loose–the young man’s handiwork.
Then I’m in California with my benevolent friend Jeremy. We’re
driving to some kind of ceremony. The road we’re driving on is not
terribly wide and seems to cut a swath through hills. Cliffs rise
steeply above us to either side of the road and these are dotted with
decrepit shanties. It’s clear that these are inhabited and that its
inhabitants live in squalor but I don’t think we actually catch sight
of any of them, let alone interact with them. My memory of what
transpires when we reach our destination grows very murky. We enter an
unremarkable room and other people are already there in advance of
whatever it is we’ve gone to do. I don’t remember who they are,
although I think I speak to an older man I respect. Something is
unexpected; perhaps what I do runs afoul of some protocol I’m unaware
of. I want to say that we have gathered for something related to a
funeral, although I have no distinct memory to confirm that and it may
be something my mind is imposing retrospectively. If the memory is
correct (what is the standard for a memory of a dream being correct? is
it the same as for memory of an outward event being accurate?), that
raises the further question of whose funeral it might be. Hers whom I
connected with the IQ? Does it matter?