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Sunday, August 28, 2005 |
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Old dark houses. So many rooms. Enormous rooms. High ceilings. Dust. On the beds and sofas and tables were sculptures of objects--on the bed a polished wooden carving of disheveled bedclothes. On the tables, wooden dishes--not individual dishes but a single carved sculpture of a meal in progress. Were there wooden people? I can't remember. I don't think so. At the back through the weeds and wild overgrowth, a chain-link fence, and beyond the fence ... the White House? Surely not. There was a sub- or side-dream. A doctor (Richard Dreyfus) and his sidekick visiting patients in a slum. Doctor bounding up the steps to check on his good friend in a tenement, who had diabetes. Coming back out with sadness, because he'd found the man dead. He sat on the top step and wept. Parents in their late forties, maybe older. A large family. Many grown and nearly grown children. They were moving into the large dark house. Only now it was remote. One traveled days by off-road vehicle and then hiked and rafted to reach it. All the children were tough--they were happy and strong and filled with good humor and love. They couldn't wait to get out of there though and into the populated world. I helped them unpack in the empty old house with its high ceilings and huge rooms. I showed them around. I was surprised; the house had many more rooms than I had thought. I had brought my cats and I introduced the family to them and explained about feeding them and to be careful of accidentally shutting them in somewhere. The cats, too, were exploring and memorizing their new surroundings. The woman was pregnant. Too old to be pregnant. But was. The family was splitting up now. The father was taking half the children with him to the city. They were so excited. Or was he taking them all? The woman wanted to give birth alone. Always gave birth alone and unassisted. There was a little girl of 10 or 11 years old. She embraced her mother in farewell. The mother looked into her eyes. "I want you to understand," she said. "This is the last time we will ever see each other. I love you very much." They hugged and the girl ran off to join her father and siblings for the hike out. There were little subplots like that throughout the dream. The teenaged girls putting on community plays. One of them wild and staying out all night. The boy so inured to remote living he could hike for many days, catch all his own food, sleep on the ground, and so could go anywhere with confidence.
When they arrived at their new house the children ran around happily. No one in the neighborhood had expected them and two strangers were living in the house already, squatters. The father, it turns out, was pregnant as well. Hence the split, because he too always gave birth alone. |
