The first dream, I remember. Lady, my pointer bulldog mix of 70 pounds and soft kisses to kill, is wagging her 14-inch tail. This is a possible exaggeration in length; she is fast asleep as I type this and looks far too adorable to disturb.
We’ve only just stepped out of the car and she is eager to play with the other puppers at day care, a new facility near my parents’ mansion, a home that hardly five humans call home, the fifth being me—a temporary fifth, as much as I love the comfort of chai toast and rent-free living.
We enter this new day care, and I see a man in uniform, a white man with red-brown ringlets shaped so by nature and with little work in the mirror. I look to my right toward the rest of the crew, all wearing ruby red polos and khaki slacks, all smiles, all as eager as Lady for a day of play.
A quick glance back, and there’s the man again, his ringlets fuller near the nape of his neck. I don’t see his face, only a blurred portrait and back-of-the-head. Does he wear freckles? A beard, a mustache; is he clean-shaven instead?
I watch him from a distance, notice the uniform doesn’t match. He wears a red polo, maybe a t-shirt. He wears blue jeans, no khaki slacks. In his left hand, a leash. Attached to the leash, my Lady.
It registers too late; I feel panic, and dogs around me begin to sense it. They rush toward me, a herd hug that trips me up and slings me to the ground.
The uniformed workers, exasperated, cry out for help. I open my eyes, I scream for Lady. I tell them a man took her there, thataway; I saw him take her. There was a tunnel, something dark around him. A tornado viewed from convection zone up. Just one bright white light at his feet, made of fur and kisses. Lady is not a defender dog. She doesn’t always know who to trust.
The second dream: There is water, I think. A creature not quite human. Purple and blue. Waves, floating, space. Either jelly or water, but more fluid than gel. I remember nothing else. I’m angry with myself for not remembering. The anger seeps into my day.
I’ve been trying my best to capture the hypnagogic sleep states between writing while conscious. A notebook sleeps under my pillow, another on my nightstand, yet another on the rug beside me. Pens and pencils abound. Every time I forget a dream, I feel something is lost.
That second dream, the forgotten one, I know it mattered. I can’t figure out why, but I know it mattered. I woke up still floating in bed when my eyelids shifted up this morning, and I know there was something I could have, should have recalled.
There is something to lucid dreams and writing, I keep thinking.
“What is the purpose of all art if not to puncture the illusion of fragmentation, to reveal the commonality of human experience, to return us—if briefly—to those collective waters?”
Something to read: What, to the Writer, Are Dreams?
—fiza