"In dreams and in love there are no impossibilities." -- Janos Arany
After
watching The West Wing last night at work, being stretched out across my
bunk just felt too good. I knew I shouldn't have. But I couldn't resist.
I bunched my pillow up beneath my head and closed my eyes. I slept for about
an hour... knowing that I'd be up the rest of the night.
I finally returned to sleep about 3 a.m., catching a little more than three
hours before leaving work. Once home, most of my morning and early afternoon
was spent watching Inaugural-related television. On days like today, I'm
not so much interested in who the president is... I just enjoy watching the
pomp and circumstance of it all. About two or so, but body took over and
demanded that I rest. I crawled into bed and slept in 30 minute increments
until nearly 6 p.m. -- each session filled with very vivid dreams.
I'm always caught in a odd place when it comes to dreams. When I wake up
and have a dream fresh in my head... I want to write it down. But if I start
putting pen to paper... I'm awake. And when I come out of a fresh, lush dream,
I don't want to be awake. I close my eyes quickly and try to dive back in.
I know I probably won't land where I left, but I hope that the next one will
be even better. Of course, when I finally wake up for good... I'm usually
left only with the feeling that I've had good dreams and not actual memories
of them.
For the most part, the theme of the
day was Jessie.
Jessie's birthday is on Halloween. In one dream, I was walking down a long
alley lined with doors to residences in buildings that must have been tall...
I don't remember seeing much sky.
As I reached down to open the door to my home, there was some sort of plastic
amputated hand near the knob. Jessie has decorated for Halloween, I thought.
When I walked in, it wasn't just my place. It seemed that she lived there,
too. But there was also a third person on a couch in the living room. I have
no idea who they were, but it felt like they might have lived there, too.
Suddenly, it hit me. It was Halloween. It was Jessie's birthday.
And I hadn't gotten her anything. I walked into the room and we began to
have a conversation -- none of which I remember except that I tried to avoid
the topic of her birthday. And then I woke up.
Hours after my coma and series of dreams
were over, I suddenly had memories of something pop into my head. They must
have been from the afternoon's dreams... because they were memories of something
that's never occurred. I don't recall every detail, but the scenes that popped
in had me finding a building on fire while on my day off. Somehow, I was
able to go in and extinguish the fire before the fire department arrived.
Nothing like that has ever happened to me.
The most realistic of the dreams came
somewhere in the middle of the afternoon.
Jessie and I were in an apartment that felt very much like the one in the
earlier dream. We were talking about something that seemed totally unimportant...
When, out of the blue, the topic changed to the failed engagement of someone
we knew -- who that is specifically, I don't know. I admitted that after
his fiance had given the ring back, that our friend had passed it on to me.
I pulled it out and leaned in close to her.
There is a feeling that you get right before you kiss someone you like for
the very first time... It's much like the knot that forms between your heart
and your stomach when you first profess your love for someone. In the dream,
I had that feeling so strongly that it lingered once I woke up.
Before waking, however, I leaned into Jessie... opened the ring box... and
asked her to marry me. I'm not sure what her initial answer was. I'm not
even sure if she gave one. Before we could think about that, we were looking
at the ring. We talked about how it might be bad to use someone else's ring.
Then she asked me if I really wanted to marry her. I didn't answer. She suggested
that it might not be a good idea just yet and I woke up...
Copyright © 2005, Thomas Fletcher. All Rights Reserved.