Dreamlife

  In this dream, I’m at a celebration of some kind, among a
gathering sitting around a long oval table. The only other person
recognisable to me from waking life is Eduardo (I think my memory of
this dream omits a conversation with him). I have a camera with me (a
curious camera–it looks like a still-shot camera but works more like a
camcorder, since the scenes it records, each shot, lasts some time). I
mean to capture this scene with my camera. When I lift it to my face,
however, what I see through the viewfinder is not the hall and the
table but a scene of barren, nondescript street corners. I experience
some disquiet I don’t understand. I leave the hall with the table and
walk down a long and very narrow stairwell to the base of the building
we’re in. In contrast with the relatively luxurious chamber I’ve just
quitted, the entrance is a bare, doorless space, extremely wide but not
very deep, that opens directly onto a squalid, bustling street. I find
the din outside unsettling. I may or may not go back upstairs–I have
no definite memory of this. I take out my camera and look at the shots
I’ve taken. They’re blurry, shaky and marked by an unusual luminescence,
as of fire or sundown.

  I’ve let far too many interesting dreams go unrecorded in the
past month because I wasn’t satisfied with the detail and/or coherence
of my recollections. Bad move. This one, too, feels like a fragment of
a larger dream.
  What makes this dream so unusual is that I’m not its
protagonist, although I seem to have access to his interiority; I
perceive his feelings (not, as far as I can tell, his thoughts) but I
am not their subject.
  As the dream (or my recollection of it) begins, our hero, a
dark-haired man in his early twenties, is riding a light rail car home.
He’s sitting on a long row of seats that face the windows, so there are
various people to each side of him. His interest, however, is focused
entirely on a girl seated to his left. He holds her hand and I can
sense his fondness for her–not all-consuming love but he’s very
gratified by her presence.
  He gets off alone at his stop and walks toward the large,
pleasant house where he lives. However, when he enters, he is informed
that his aunt, who owned the house, has just passed away and the place
has now been converted into a hotel. He learns that he will have to pay
to access his room and to take the meal he’s expecting. I sense some
apprehensiveness at this but he produces the payment the attendants ask
for and goes on to the cafeteria-type setup where they serve him.
Outwardly, then, he goes with the flow. I wonder what he expects to do
afterward.