beautiful, funny, sad & true

I’m in a town that is not named or known to me, but it looks like the north end of 55th Avenue in Yakima, the street and the town in which I grew up, so we’ll just say it’s that.

I’m walking with two friends around my own age. One is a guy with whom I work in real life, the other is a woman who I don’t know in real life. The two know each other in the dream, though. We’re walking up at the end of the street, where Cascade Avenue meets 55th, and there are two young hoodlum kids walking around near us, trying to associate themselves with us. We try our best to ignore them, and we turn and walk away, down the hill toward the Chestnut end of 55th.

The two kids stay up at the end of the street, which leaves the three of us. I’m a few steps ahead of them, so I stop to let them pass, and the woman asks, “What did you do that for?”

I replied, “Oh, it’s just that I hate to have people walking around behind me, so I usually just let them go around.” [This is true in real life too, actually.]

“Oh, okay.”

We’re keeping an eye on the two kids up the street, and then my companions decide it’s time for them to go home, and they turn and walk in a different direction, away from both me and the kids. I’m now walking alone down the street, and I hear the kids start to yell something to me. They’re trying to get each other fired up and talk themselves into whatever it is they’re intending to do to me. I walk deliberately slowly, to show them that I’m not afraid. I turn and walk into my house.

Inside, the house is nothing like our house on 55th was. It has windows that stretch clear to the floor, with large vertical blinds covering them. The walls are painted black, except where they are white above the windows. It’s very stark and interesting, and also decorated in a very Modern Art style, in a way that our house definitely was not.

From inside, I can hear the two kids yelling things to each other like, “Hey, I think he went into THIS house.” They run from window to window, trying to see in, and I’m quickly trying to turn off lights and close the blinds to make it appear that no one’s home. Too many blinds are open, and that worries me, but the kids don’t seem to notice me, so I go around to the back of the house, where there is a bay window that is rounded instead of angled, with a cobblestone floor. It’s sort of a room that overlooks the gardens in the back yard. I lie down on my right side against the cement wall, and one of the kids comes to the window and puts his face against it. I’m directly beneath him, so he can’t see me. I panic and my panic awakens me.

I’m lying in the same position I was in in the dream, except that I’m on my left side, so it takes me a minute to orient myself and figure out what just happened.

Life may imitate art, but dreams also imitate life sometimes too.

Last night, I dreamt that I was rehearsing for the play, and that it was completely chaotic, and nobody–myself included–seemed to know what was happening. So it was pretty much like last night’s tech rehearsal.

From there, the dream changed its location to a dusty basement, full of Tossed In and all the other actors. It seems we had thrown a party recently, but not cleaned up after it, so we were walking around in this basement looking at all of the stuff we’d left behind. Barbecue with the charred remains of animal of undetermined species, various dishes, cooking pots, wine bottles, everything was all over the place. Tossed In told me that if I could make a list of all the stuff that was down there, that would be great “because then we can delegate” people to clean it all up. “Okay,” I said, “but I won’t have any time to do it until after Saturday [when the play is over].”

Then I had an almost completely unrelated dream, in which I’m lying on the sofa in the same basement (the relation to the other dream stops there) cuddling with an ex-girlfriend who will remain nameless here. (It’s probably not who you think.) We’re not really doing anything, but my hand is underneath her shirt. We’re lying there silently for quite a while, when she gets up abruptly and says, “I don’t think so.” I make apologies, but she leaves. I stay on the sofa alone for a long time after that, feeling uncomfortable and remorseful.

It’s safe to say that last night wasn’t the most restful night I’ve ever had.

Last night, I actually had two dreams that I remember.

The first was a car crash dream, but it was different from the countless others that I’ve had, by virtue of the fact that it involved my car.

* * * * *

I’m in Yakima, and I’m driving on 54th Avenue. I’m stopped at a stop sign, and attempting to turn right onto Lincoln Avenue. Justin B. is riding in the passenger seat, and we notice that there have been quite a few accidents already. There’s one wreck to our left, and three or four groups of totaled cars to our right. We pull out to look past the wreck on our left, when a blue Chevy pickup comes racing past all the wrecks. We see him, and have only enough time to say, in unison, “We’re screwed,” before the truck hits my fender and sends my car spinning to the side of the road. We’re not hurt, but the fender goes sliding up the road, and suddenly my car’s interior is all white and padded with cloth. I get out and walk up the street to retrieve the fender. The back side of it is painted a sort of olive-green abalone color, and as it reflects in the sun, I think, ‘Wow, that’s really pretty. I wonder why they didn’t paint the car that color instead?’

* * * * *

And then here’s the second dream.

* * * * *

I’m on vacation, and I’ve brought a couple of friends with me; EngagedFriendChris (though he’s not engaged in the dream) and a woman he is on his first date with. We are on a tropical island in the Caribbean called Tuva. [No, it’s not the real Tuva, and yes, I know where the real Tuva is, and that it’s not an island.]

Anyway. I’m riding an old bicycle around, and Chris and his woman friend are walking. I’ve been to this island before, so I tell them that we “HAVE to go to the little village that’s just up the road. It’s really beautiful.” We continue on to a place where the road forks, and we can choose between going down the hill toward the water, where the town is, and up the hill toward the forest. The sun is starting to set, so we decide to go to the town. Once we get there, Chris and his friend go off on their own, and I decide to explore the town by bicycle. The town has narrow, cobblestone streets, and there are lots of little shops and restaurants. I ride down an alley, and I’m surprised to find that after a few sharp turns, it comes to an end in a tiny courtyard restaurant. I turn back, so as not to disturb the patrons.

I head back toward the waterfront, and come to a hotel where my family is staying. I don’t go meet them, but instead go down to the large basement room of the hotel, where there are a bunch of other bicycles parked in a rack, and a bunch of little kids down there playing. I leave my bike there, and walk to the other side of the room, to find a few shirts that appear to have been left there. I take them and walk upstairs to the room with my family. We visit for a while, and then I realize that I need to take the shirts back. I go back downstairs and hand the shirts to the man–also an American–who is supervising the children. I go to pick up my bike, but it isn’t where I’d left it. I look everywhere in the room, but it’s nowhere to be found.

* * * * *

Oh yeah, and I just remembered: One Year Ago

This morning, I had a short–but interesting–dream. I always set my clock for 6:45 (too early) every day, and then hit the snooze button three or four times, until it’s 7:20 or so (too late). During one of those snooze sessions is when this dream happened.

* * * * * * *

I’m in my room at my childhood home on 55th Avenue in Yakima. It’s the middle of the night, and I’m in bed. The curtains are open, and the moon is shining brightly into the room. It’s bright enough that I actually think, ‘I bet I could probably read in bed if I wanted to.’ I reach for a book on my bedside table, when suddenly I see a bright orange flash coming from the end of the street. One of the houses at the Summitview end [that’s a street in Yakima] of the street has just exploded into a thirty-foot wall of fire.

A fire truck races by with all its lights flashing, but the engine is silent. I get up and walk to the window to look, when suddenly about eight or ten pieces of flaming debris start to land in our yard, and on our house. The house up the street explodes a second time, with an even larger wall of fire. I run to wake up my mom and my brother, and then I see that in our front yard, there are lots of small fires burning.

I pull on a pair of jeans and quickly try to decide which of my instruments to take out to my car. I decide on the cello, the accordion and my ancient white Guild electric guitar. Interesting that the instruments were all the ones that I have now, and that the car was the red Honda that I have now.

* * * * *

That’s the point at which I woke up, one minute before the next snooze alarm went off.

Also interesting that today is the day I’m going to visit my dad. Hunh. I’m sure that fact and this dream don’t have the merest possibility of a hint at a suggestion of a connection.

Maybe it’s not that at all. Maybe I’m like the main character in the book The Lathe of Heaven, whose dreams change the real world–and he’s the only one who remembers the way things were before he dreamed the changes–and that maybe I’m nocturnally bound and determined to destroy Yakima once and for all, via my dreams.

I’m driving along a two-lane road, with dense forest on both sides. Snorsha (not her real name) and Tossed In (not his real name, either, but it sounds like that) are with me in the car. We are returning from an exploration trip of some sort.

On the left side of the road is an opulent Spanish-style mansion, which has since fallen into disrepair, and been overgrown by the forest. It appears to have been built before the turn of the last century, around 1880 or so. Moss covers everything, and ferns are growing out of every open ground space, but the place is still mostly intact, including all of the glass windows.

There is a long, low stucco and brick wall along the edge of the mile-long property, and the building complex itself is probably a half mile long. I say to my companions, “Look at this amazing place! Can you imagine what it must have looked like in its heyday? And didn’t it used to be a mausoleum or cemetery or something, after that?” Neither of them knows the answer, but we are all entranced by the place as we drive by.

Eventually, we come to the end of the property, where there is an enormous, open courtyard paved entirely with red bricks. It’s about four o’clock on an overcast day, so the orange fluorescent floodlights are beginning to light up. There is a dip in the curb, so I drive into the courtyard and park the car in the middle of it. The three of us get out and walk back toward the building complex. On the side of the courtyard, away from the building, we can see that there is, in fact, an old cemetery that recedes down the hill and away from the courtyard and main complex.

We’re not the only ones who are investigating. There are a few people milling around in groups of two or three, all there for the purpose of investigating this tremendous, unusual and remote place. The three of us decide to separate. I walk toward what seems to be the main entrance. A man has set up a tiny food cart near the door, where he sells roasted chicken and chocolate-covered ice cream bars.

I walk through the entrance and into a large room–probably five hundred feet across and one hundred feet deep–that is also floored with red brick. Despite the patina left by years of this type of foot traffic, the floor in this room still retains a slight polish that reveals its exquisite quality. The room is softly illuminated by natural light, which shines through the ceiling that is made almost entirely of frosted glass. I wander through this room for a while, and then I notice a double door along one wall. I walk to it, open it and step through.

The room I enter is much smaller, perhaps a hundred feet across. The room is dark, except for torches that have been lit and placed in holders on the walls. The floor is made up of large, gray marble tiles. The ceilings are so high that they disappear into the darkness, high above the faint light from the torches.

There are a few other people like myself in the room. There is also a group of around ten actors in beautiful, multi-colored costumes. They are holding out scripts and reading from them, but still acting the parts at the same time. The performance is excellent and riveting, and the audience is spellbound. The actors are not confined to a corner of the room, but instead are walking around everywhere. If not for the bright costumes, the actors and the audience would be indistinguishable. I spend quite a bit of time watching and listening.

This is the point at which I woke up.