July 11th, 2006
115257817465359652
I hear you everywhere
In a particular episode of TNG, the crew of the Enterprise begins to slowly go insane for lack of REM sleep, i.e. no one can dream. The idea always terrified me, because I dream so frequently and with such clarity that it’s hard to imagine living otherwise.
The time that I dream is almost certainly the space between the first alarm and when I actually get up each morning. Sometimes it’s ten minutes, sometimes two hours. Most frequently I dream about Brandon. This has been the case for the last six years. I suppose much of my “issues” or current mental jewelry may be bound up in him somewhat. Aside from that, I dream of my parents, especially of late since they are careening closer to what they’ve been orbiting for the last ten years… divorce. Regardless, I have found recently that my dreams are genuinely multilingual, and I take this as a positive sign that I am about to reach a new level of Japanese assimilation.
This morning I had a dream that I was in a nearly vacant shopping mall, with many of the stores under construction and boarded up, blocking clear view of the main arcades. At the far end (I believe this was based on Francis Scott Key Mall), I found a little girl, maybe six or eight, and she was wandering about. It’s already been twenty minutes since I woke up and I watered my plants before a shower, so there’s not much left to my mind, unfortunately. However, essentially it seems that I was quite taken with her; a bond in an unspoken kind of way. I had to show her the way back to the train station at the other end, because she was idly talking about going home. I bought her something from the Candy Clown, brightly colored chewables, maybe Skittles. It kind of made me sad, how incredibly vacant and detached she seemed, but there was something between us that made me feel responsible. Maybe she’ll be my daughter one day.
As the years go by and I soften more with all the bumps and scrapes of life, an acceptance grows like a still lake in my heart. I know that I am going to be a wonderful father, and love my child with an unfathomable depth.
