Sleep to Dream

15 or so years later, you've gotta admit Jon Brion and Fiona Apple outdid themselves on Tidal.  I think it's fair to say she was a prodigy, turned prodigal...

Now, me, the choice of titles today was directly inspired by my subconscious mind's protest of my current desire to reboot my reality.  It seems to be stuck on the here and now, the pre-existing preoccupations, familiar faces in unfamiliar places.  I have these reoccurring settings, specific ones, in my dreams, some from reality, some that only exist in my mind as far as I know.  Last night's dream took place in this hilly part of some nowhere town that has the look of a bleak suburbia with every house built on this hill, with all their fronts facing the upside of the hill.  Before I was a home owner I dreamed of buying a dilapidated derelict two-story flat type house that wasn't too different than the flats you'd find in South St. Louis when I was a kid.  In the dream I moved from one to a shotgun type house that resembled some of the houses on Pierce Street near Jack's Apple Market on Highway 63 in Kirksville, specifically the one Sarah & Abrey lived in.  Don't quote me on those spellings.

Anyway, I dreamed of those broke down houses many a time, exploring their attics and basements full of cobwebs and insulation, always in disrepair. This dream, maybe my first or second as a home owner, had me there again, but in a smaller version of these houses on hills, more of a ranch house. What may or may not have come next, or before, was what in my mind was the California car caper.  Near my house was a parking lot, where I apparently parked a blue 60s corvette type car, which was conspicuously a nod to the convertible my exes' dad bought and fixed up a few years back.  Adjacent to this lot was a guy who worked on lots of cars.  I came out to get in my car, and there was a orange convertible that looked like a plastic matchbox car in it's place.  My ride had been swapped out.  What followed next was an odd sequence that involved a dramatic weather change, a van load of guys driving by with automatic weapons in hand as I approached some road house on a hill where a band was playing

 I ended up in what looked like one of the Lounges in the Millennium Student Center at UMSL for a banquet or Christmas Party, and everyone started singing a popular song, and one person was leading and I was determined to sing along with her note for note, at max volume. It was awkward.  There was an older gentlemen there, very stately, that in my mind was supposed to be my middle school biology teacher's husband, who himself taught high school civics, but in the dream I couldn't recall his name and he corrected me, to the effect of saying it was Stoudamire, which in reality it was not.  That was my dream state's haphazard recollection of another teacher's name.

I was also there with family, and even a few coworkers, thought I was leery to interact with them, because I have 0 interpersonal contact with them outside of the workplace, which is how it's always been for me since I began working. Friendly coworker yes, friend outside of work, no. The exception was Charles Rupert Rinehart, the elder of  the Rineharts.  In that regard he was more of a mentor, but i'd say I was a friend of the family, I guess that's fair.  I was a friendly patron, who became a friendly employee, not because I needed work, but because they needed a hand, and I think that is what made me more of a friend and less of a worker.  Besides, to me it wasn't work, I was doing something I enjoyed at a time when I was reticent to do what was required to fulfill my degree requirements, and felt no joy in.  It was a formative experience to say the least.

Well, in all this recollection, the main point remains: the last week has been trying. Times and schedules in conflict, opportunities evaporating, the impermanence of time being hammered home again and again.  The feeling of resignation that comes when you're subject to circumstance, confronted with the limitations of mind and body, time and space, leaves you with limited options for coping.  This was a week where, as they have in the past, vices seemed the quickest path to escapism, but I know they aren't escapes, just roundabouts.  Sleep itself, losing consciousness, the respite of choice for the un-medicated, eventually gives way to waking, where you are posed with the reality you let go of when you drifted off.  But somehow, sometimes in the most illogical and mundane scenarios they present, dreams offer some sort of relief, a loosening of tensions.  Not always, sometimes they can make the state of your heart and mind worse, but at least for today, I can say that I feel better for having slept long enough to let a dream run what seemed its course.

The dream ended with discussion of my moving out of the dilapidated house, furniture needing to be rearranged at a family members, my trying to drive the orange plastic convertible.  Those things are a reflection of my desire to accept the changes taking place in my life right now, none of which I planned, or were excited about, but they are happening.  As things progress I have no choice but to embrace them.  Life goes on, not always how I'd like it to, but so it goes.  I have to navigate it cautiously, and it never hurts to be able to recognize when it's time to move on from situations, feelings.  Fall and Winter are the personification of this, and I think that is at the heart of Seasonal Affective Disorder.  Slapping festive occasions over the top of a time period when our part of the world withers and people's health is constantly at risk, it does a number on some of us.  It just rings false.  I don't sleep well when I am cold, and when I wake up I am always worse for wear.  My dreams are bleak and turn nightmares.  I need warmth, in all forms, literal and figurative, to sleep well, and dream sweetly.  I wish that for everyone.