Dreamovie 58

I am unable to sleep well, and my dream intersects with my waking world. Some birdsong I do not recognize is sounding outside my window. The song is reverberating against this cold wet spring morning and repetitive. I try to recall the song. In my dream, I try to take notes on the song. I imagine I am writing these in bed. First, I have a notepad by my bedside and I write in that, but I realize that I do not have such a pad. So I am lying flat on my back, still asleep, but in my dream, still flat on my back, I am typing my notes into a computer. As I go through my dream, I find more experiences that require me to take notes. After taking dozens of notes, I realize I am dreaming that I do not have my laptop in the bed with me, that I haven't taken any notes at all, and that I'll need to remember these events on my own. I cannot wake myself up to take the notes, so I dream through them.

While trying to remember these notes, I am walking behind my family's house in Tennessee, but it it not in Tennessee nor is it that same house. The backyard is huge, fenced in, dotted with trees, and it slopes gently downward. I walk through that space trying to remember everything I see, trying to take notes in my head as I walk around bushes and avoid trees. Beyond the end of the yard is another large house. I walk up a sudden rise and into that house.

Many people live in that house, and a gathering of some kind is taking place. I am looking for something there, though I cannot recall what. I leave a group of people chatting in the kitchen to find what I am looking for. I find Ray in a bedroom preparing for a trip to Europe. His room is large and neat but filled with knickknacks. The walls of the room are burdened with posters and various plastic trinkets and figurines. As he finishes his packing, we talk. Some mild joke I release into the air gets Ray quite upset. I am surprised by this because I meant no harm at all.

Ray walks outside during our continuing conversation, dragging his rolling suitcase. I follow him and am surprised to find that, by leaving through the other side of the house, we are on a city street. The side I entered on was suburban at best and actually fairly rural. As we walk down the street, I calmly explain that I had no intentions of hurting Ray, and he finally relents and accepts my apology, expressing surprise that I have acted so calmly when he has reacted so emotionally to me.

I am in the basement of the house Ray shares. I am with two other people, colleagues of mine, and we apparently live in that room together. We are planning to go to a conference on the work of bpNichol, and the woman says she needs a bedroom of her own beforehand. I find this a reasonable request and discover that there is a little empty antechamber to Ray's bedroom. I suggest that this will make a good bedroom for her. All I have to do is approve this use of the room with the woman in charge of the house, but as I go to speak to the woman I realize that I am not trying to justify a separate bedroom at a conference but a separate bedroom in the house, and that is a much more difficult justification to make in this culture. I know I will be asked why this woman needs a room of her own.

Somewhere in this house there is a doctor, who sometimes performs surgery on the inhabitants of the house. She finishes with a woman I know, and then it is my turn for surgery. I do not trust her, and I've made that clear during her surgery on my friend. I am lying down, waiting for the surgery to begin. The surgeon carefully unwraps her instruments, which include (for some reason) a flat double-edged razor blade and various needles and pins, as well as scissors, scalpels, and the other expected tools of her trade. I decide I do not want her to conduct surgery on me and I am just about to sit up (I am not anesthetized) when the woman scoops up all of her tools and throws them down onto my face.

I immediately begin pulling the objects out of my cheeks, my forehead, my eyes, even my tongue. The woman becomes disturbed by what she has done and wants to help me, but I tell her to stay away from me. I am bent over, facing the ground, and dropping sharp little bits of metal to the floor. My friend, who has never left the room, is still with me, and she explains, she already knows, that I am blind in my right eye.