Tuesday March 26, 2019

When I wake at 2:40am, fresh in my mind are a set of dreams. I visit some sort of gathering or festival on a farm or a fairgrounds in the company of two childhood friends (who from this point onward I’ll refer to as R. and J.). J. asks us to accompany him to a chain restaurant. R. is skeptical, J. apologetic (“you don’t have to come along,” he says, “I’m just hungry”). I try to mediate on J.’s behalf, explaining to R. the restaurant’s location in relation to places we all visited during childhood like the United Skates roller rink. Elsewhere, perhaps in another dream altogether, my mom lays giant white sheets out in the bedroom of my childhood home, only the second floor of the house is airy and open, with huge, tall windows — some entirely different structure from my home in waking reality, but one that to my dream-self seems entirely familiar. Somehow that segues to a shoot for a music video: maybe something my dream-self watches online, starring a contemporary band covering a song from the 60s, pretending to tear down an old door to hang a large antique mirror with an angel head sculpted into the top of the frame. Someone who looks like a minor acquaintance of mine but who my dream-self understands to be Timothy Leary’s son Zach appears in an interview for the video, as does a local artist from the town in which I currently reside. One of them explains to the interviewer, “I guess I’m waiting for some new judgment, hoping that that era didn’t just die out, you know?” When I wake to pee, I immediately associate the doorway with the Siege Perilous, a portal between worlds featured in a series of X-Men comics that I read as a kid. When I wake again at 4:30am, another dream lingers. Walking through a large circular home with friends and family, waiting for some band from the 60s to perform, I carry a wooden folding chair that transforms over the course of the dream into a beanbag. As I tell my aunt and uncle about other large circular homes that my dream-self claims to have visited in California, a large dog comes bounding over and tries to wrestle the beanbag from my hands, jumping up and licking my left ear, causing me to flinch with fear, at which point I wake with a start. A final dream remembered upon waking at 6:20am: Sarah and her parents purchase a nice, large house for us with large, overgrown grounds, and while Sarah tours me through for the first time (the house already having been purchased without my knowledge), Mick Jagger shows up and we sit around on the couches in the living room and burn a bunch of wooden knick-knacks in the fireplace. Afterwards, perhaps unrelated to the rest of the dream, Sarah races a bunch of kids around a hotel pool and playground, with an alcohol-infused friend providing advice and encouragement to help her across the finish line. Songs running through my head upon waking include “You Just Haven’t Earned It Yet Baby” and “Let’s Spend the Night Together.”