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Tuesday, January 18, 2005

Dawn of the Dead

I’m at the Finlay’s painting Emma’s bedroom. It’s late afternoon, Kate calls needing a ride home and Emma’s my navigator as we wend our way through the back roads.

As pure dialogue, this conversation sounds morbid. It wasn’t at all.

“My birthday is in five days?”

“Five days? I thought your birthday was in May?”

I had no idea when her birthday was.

“No, it’s January.”

“What are you going to be? Sixteen, seventeen?”

“No, thirteen.”

That much I did know.

“Emma, Do you dream?”

“No.”

“I mean, do you remember your dreams?”

“No. Do you?”

“I used to remember them better than I do now. I have a recurrent dream where I’m lost and I don’t know how to get where I’m going and sometimes I don’t even know where it is I’m going.”

“My friend Molly had a dream that lasted three nights.”

“Three nights? What do you mean? Like she’d get up in the morning and then that night she’d take up where she left off?”

“Yeah.”

“Wow. She should write it down. Do you know what it was about?”

“Did you see The Dawn of the Dead?”

“Yes.”

“It was like that… .”

“With dead people crawling out of graveyards?

“Dead people that were infected. One of them crawled through a dog door.”

“And died?”

“He was already dead. The good guys didn’t think he could crawl through the dog door but he did.”

“And he killed the good guy.”

“Yeah. I died in the third dream.”

“How did you die?”

“I don’t remember.”

Spurred on, perhaps, by our discussion, I scored a trifecta this morning. In one dream I was lost AND I was running in molasses. In another I was to give a speech in front of a group of people, but I was in a panic because I had forgotten to prepare.

moving_all.jpg
Peter, Diane, Eileen and Linda. Moving day, Acton, 1983.
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posted by michael at 6:12 am  

6 Comments

  1. I have had “being lost” dreams every now and then. One was particularly interesting. Driving all around German Township and finally came to a small kind of courtroom. A judge-like person was standing at a lectern. I told him that I was lost and didn’t know where I was. He said,”You are in a state called Miller.” Pretty funny?

    Comment by Helen — January 18, 2005 @ 10:47 am

  2. That was a funny convorsation. I wish I dreamed happy dreams but I dont remember them.

    Comment by Emma — January 18, 2005 @ 2:53 pm

  3. In high school I dreamed a non-synchronous parallel existence during the course of one year — logically sequential, though discontinuous. All in a remote, expensive house on vast acres, a house which I later drew up in detail at the urging of a teacher; furnished floor plans and exterior elevations. A folio I gave away to a girlfriend, alas…….

    Comment by somewhat grown up — January 18, 2005 @ 3:44 pm

  4. Every now and then I have this nightmare where I have just realized that I have about one minute to get to a final exam that I completely forgot about, can’t remember anything about the course, and am not exactly sure where on the campus the exam is being given. Then there’s the aimless dash through molasses where I try to find the class.

    Finally I wake up gasping for relief that it is a dream, and count my lucky stars that my school years are way behind me, and I don’t have to take any exams ever again. (One of the great benefits of being grown up.)

    Comment by rakkity — January 19, 2005 @ 10:20 am

  5. Welcome Emma!

    Helen: Why am I not surprised?

    somewhat grown up: Why am I not surprised?

    rakkity: I am surprised. I can understand a guy who slept through
    his French final having panicky school dreams (that would be me), but you??

    Comment by michael — January 19, 2005 @ 5:17 pm

  6. My dream last night:
    I’m in the second week of my junior year at college, have had myself a nice little schedule of swimming and reading novels. I’m sitting at lunch with friends who all seem to be working on assignments when I suddenly realize that they are well into the first term and I have not yet registered for classes. I am embarrassed and anxious, ask questions: What courses should I be taking? Do we have required courses? Have I met any of the requirements? all the time wondering if there is any chance at all of catching up.

    Comment by dufus — January 21, 2005 @ 8:20 am

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