Dream

Posted on July 19, 2003 in Dreams

A very long and complicated dream of which I can only remember fragments:

A neighbor has a room — more of a coffin or an outhouse really — that he uses to write and meditate. This room is a polished oak box that allows you only to stand inside and I am not able to enter or remain in it because it is too short. He can, by means of a nylon rope, pull it into a hole in the ceiling. He is retired military officer, a Marine.

I’m off in a war zone, inside a large building where a group of Iraqi nuns are hiding behind a long line of trucks. The “monk” mentioned in the previous paragraph is outside, leading the troops as the Iraqis counterattack. I know the monk is angry at me, thinks I am a coward because I have chosen to remain with the nuns. Someone hands me a rifle that has a skin that sloughs off.

Later, I am trying to write a short story about a ship that was following another ship and became lost at sea. What happened, I learned, is that the ship saw what appeared to be an island and steered around it, far to the north where it ran into the storm. The “island” — previously uncharted — proved to be an optical illusion, condensation welling up to resemble blue mountains. I am trying to make the story believable, claiming that I have found the first mate’s log — how can I write it as if it recorded right to the very end what happened?

The trouble is that I am surrounded by family members making noise. So I go off with my room mate, a young impassioned fellow who thinks he knows what is what. We go to a meeting at a Quaker Meeting House which is sponsored by a local peace center. There are big arguments going on and no focus. A fellow gets up in front of us and begins selling off his lunch, which includes elogated blueberry pancakes. He then “witnesses” to how he became a Quaker.

My roommate gets disgusted and organizes a meeting within the meeting. It turns out that the leader of the peace center is also having a class, an event of which most of the people are unaware. My room mate organizes half the audience into a meeting. The others are busy filling out books for their class, a credentialization as a peace activist. I call everyone’s attention to what my room mate is doing and, jokingly, point to the tin foil pants that he is wearing. He is angry and when I help set the chairs in place and seat myself in a corner, he reorganizes them so that I am out of his half circle. As the peace center director goes to praise him for his work, I sit down alone and keep working on my story.

As I start to wake up, I realize that I can change this ending radically. But the rough-walled passage into consciousness seems the better route.