The strange dreams continue. Is it the season? Or the ongoing threat of Covid-19?
I woke up around 4 am. My dog had walked through my sewing kit and I could hear buttons and spools - but I woke thinking "needles." She needed to go out. So did I.
But I managed to fall back asleep. I remembered three strange dreams. This one was a visit with a member of my short fiction writing group.
This man was a bit of a mystery. I first met him at a writing class focused on short fiction at a community college night class. He wrote the shortest of short stories. One pagers. If you're wondering how a one pager can qualify as a short story, well, if there is the slightest change in a character's viewpoint, that would qualify.
If I knew him today, I would suggest that each short was actually a chapter. He wrote scenarios that seemed to focus on people with mental illness.
He never stayed to chat or get personal after we had critiqued each other's stories.
He would stand up, bid us a hearty fare-well, and walk out in an almost military fashion, with his notebooks in one hand.
Then one day I was telling a friend about this man and his work when he said, "Wait a minute. I think my dad knows this man!" And not only did his dad know the man, but they had worked together, and his dad had introduced him to his wife. Who, it turned out, became seriously mentally ill.
I felt that this man did not want our group to know this.
So one day I encountered him and I spit it out. "I know so and so. I'm friends with his son. I know."
To which he said nothing in response.
But I felt maybe I had relieved him some.
In my dream I was wearing my reading glasses. My reading glasses are really ugly. I made a mistake choosing them. The first thing I saw was that he came up to me wearing the same reading glasses. He was smiling. I said "I thought you were dead!"
In waking life I have been thinking this for some time - years. One day I happened upon a newspaper I don't normally read and there was a one liner. It said So and So was dead, as if it was the least someone could do. There was absolutely no mention of a wife, family, friend, or children. Somehow I assumed it was him.
In the dream he was sitting with a woman I didn't recognize at all but knew to be his wife. They were together, well, and happy. They had two young people with them - perhaps grandchildren? What was most important to me was that they were happy. I looked over this woman, who I had never seen in waking life, thoroughly. Now if I ever see a photo of her and I learn it is her, I'll probably get one of those shocks up my spine.
C 2020 Christine Trzyna
All Rights Reseved
