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.