Memories of Dreams

I seldom remember my dreams, and sometimes wish I could more often arrive on the shore of wakefulness clutching on to some or other piece of oneiric flotsam. I envied a one-time colleague of mine, Mr. G______, who, a couple of times a week, would casually relate some details of the latest epically convoluted and weird nocturnal drama of which he had been witness and participant. In a similar vein, I was intrigued when I read an account, last year, of an author who had trained himself, through auto-suggestion, to recall details from his own dreams almost every night: alas, I hadn’t the self-discipline to submit myself to such a regime.

On the rare occasion that I can recollect a dream, then, I will tend to ponder its imagery at length, and wonder protractedly about its significance, if any. The most recent such was last week, when I dreamt that my wife and I arrived at passport-control in a Mexican airport, and, whilst she was waved through without comment, the officials took a look at my passport and stopped me, saying that they didn’t believe that the name thereupon could be mine, that it was somehow ‘too silly’, as though my name was the equivalent to them of something like Donald Duck or Wile E. Coyote…

Beyond this, there are a tiny handful of dreams that I have had which have impressed themselves upon me very deeply, but the memories of which, I suspect, I have unconsciously embellished and embroidered over the years, such that now I can no longer be sure what belonged to the original dream, and what was a narrative flourish, or additional afterthought…

One such was what I have since come to think of as the Harlequin Dream, in which I found myself in a cavernous ballroom, filled with aquamarine light. A dinner-dance was being held there, and had entered its final phase. The tables were abandoned, and the dancefloor crowded with elegantly-dressed couples swaying woozily to some slow big band number that seemed as if played underwater. Ahead was a raised stage where the band could be seen, and where, to one side, a penguin-suited emcee crooned along voicelessly into a microphone: no sound came out of his mouth.

I was distracted by a flicker in my peripheral vision, which resolved itself into the dancing figure of a clown, a harlequin, who had appeared stage-right. He wore a motley diamond-pattern costume and a visor mask part-covering his black-painted face, his mouth made up into a false crimson grin. His dance was continuous and fluid, restless and weird. The harlequin wheeled and gyrated his way ever closer to the emcee, who, still lost in silent song, did not notice as the other stole closer behind him, dancing all the while.

Then, with deliberate gestures, the harlequin drew the fingers of his left hand down the side of his face, smudging his fingertips with greasy facepaint, which he went on to smear into the emcee’s forehead and cheek, seeming to burn him there, as though with vitriol. The unfortunate man’s face twisted into a scream, as silent as his song had been, and the whole scene faded to black… and in the blackness there was a voice that could only have been the harlequin’s, and it said I can open the doors in your dreams.

I woke in a hotel room, sunlight streaming in through the windows. There was a rich smell of new pine. I felt uneasy, disoriented. Then came a scrabbling at the door, which lay just out of my line of sight. Someone was fumbling with the handle! My heart flopped around like a dying fish. The door was creaking, someone was coming in!

The anticlimactic end of it was that it turned out just to be the maid, bringing clean towels, at which point I woke up for real. Never before or since though, have I been less sure of the trueness and solidity of the world around me, than on the morning after that false awakening.

In another dream I was still living, after the fact, at the house where I grew up. There was a knock at the door, and, on opening it, I was met by an elderly couple, unknown to me, of dreary and down-at-heel aspect, wearing grey padded overcoats, and carrying two plastic grocery bags apiece. They said nothing, but it was apparent that they wanted to come in. Even though I felt uneasy, I pitied them - it was raining - and motioned them to enter.

I walked into the kitchen to get a glass of water, uncertain what to do about these unwelcome visitors. I could hear footsteps, as if they were walking around the rest of the house, which upset me, although even then I was reluctant to confront them. I could not think why, but I was afraid of them.

Time passed, and there was silence. I walked upstairs to my room and was shocked to see that several of my belongings had been replaced. My books had been exchanged for others, likewise my CDs, and my cheap stereo. The odd thing was that the replacements were all things I wanted and coveted, things that were all somehow better than my own meagre possessions. Even so, I was bothered by these items’ intrusion into my room, I felt it as an alien presence, a violation.

Walking back downstairs I once again saw the little old man. He still carried the two bags, one in each hand. I was angry with him for what he had done, and he must have sensed this, and seemed afraid of me, yet at the same time resignedly defiant, as if the consequences for him of not carrying out his exchange would be much worse than anything I could ever say or do. I sensed he was merely an agent, a hireling, though for whom I could not guess. So I let him go, but immediately regretted having done so, as if I had been set a test, and had failed it.

The memory of this latter dream returns to trouble me from time to time. I feel as though my dreamself let me down by not fighting for the return of what was genuinely and authentically his, even if the fight may have been a futile one. And I wonder whether my waking, walking self would, in truth, show any more backbone if an analogous situation were to occur in the real world.

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Posted by misteraitch at June 30, 2003 01:21 PM | TrackBack