House party

I was bringing grad school friends Anita and Jim to see my childhood home, and I was quite proud to show it off. As is always the case in dreams, the house was an "off" version of itself, with much higher steps and a more majestic entrance. When we got inside, I found that the caterers for my father's retirement party had arrived and were at work setting up for the fete, but the house was a MESS because my father hadn't bothered to clean it or have it cleaned.

The party began; all his colleagues were there (some with food over their eyes). They all greeted me and congratulated me on my pregnancy warmly. The atmosphere was quite festive, despite the dirty house.

20 Years

At my 20-year high school reunion (actually happening this year and to which I cannot go), the room teemed with people. And everyone's fates made sense to me: tall willowy Kristen was a dancer and choreographer; Christine had just left an abusive marriage. My gay friend Mark was wandering around in a pink coat, not really talking to anyone. There were of course the usual dream intruders: an East-Indian looking fellow in a tweed vest chided me for not saying hello to him. In the dream I dimly remembered him but in Life I schooled with no such person.

When Josh (my reunion date) went to take a picture of the Senior Prom King and Queen, Bob and Kathy, and another couple, I wept with nostalgia. I wore my Junior Prom dress, a frilly blue concoction, and recalled fondly having been crowned Queen. Even as I marked who was there and visited with them, my mind catalogued so many others I wanted to see. But, in the usual enormity of dreams, I didn't get to everyone in the room.

Transport & Trailing

In one scene, I was stopping at my friend Dawn's house, which in the dream was tres moderne, circular and modular, while she wasn't home. I was with other, unidentified people, and when I emerged into the street, a dirty-faced, South American street urchin--a girl about ten--kept following me and saying, "Take me with you; you have to take care of me." I dodged her then, but she reappeared later and I grudgingly took her with me.

The scene shifted and then I was in a train station, waiting for train after train until I could get on. There were masses of people--troops of soldiers, faces I recognized from high school, the rich and famous. (At one point I sat next to a prominent and well-known gent named Victor or Alexander, I can't recall which). But I couldn't ever get on the train; my companions (again, unidentifed) procured themselves some peppermint schnapps, but I declined to partake. We did finally board a train, but then I awakened.

If I've gotten the job . . .

why am I still dreaming about the interview?


I was one of three candidates for a teaching position (the others, also women, looked like children--or at least like college students. One was named Julie, I think). While I was waiting my turn, my husband listened in on the candidate before me. "Wow," he said, "She used the word 'ethnu' in her presentation. I've never heard that word before." I was irritated that he seemed impressed with her.

The interview consisted of assimilating a whole pile of books, articles, and magazines--while the committee looked on. When time was up, I had to formulate questions and teach from the books I'd read in a hurry. Fortunately, one was about Picasso and Braque, and I felt that was in my wheelhouse. Another was about Flemish painter Memling; the book title called him Fred Memling, but I would show my superior knowledge to the committee by referring to him as Hans Memling. One older article discussed an archaeological breakthrough: round, hard stonelike objects found in the American Southwest were not, in fact, turds. They were the preserved, calcified thoughts of the Desert Fathers who settled there hundreds of years ago.

When time was up, I began formulating a comparative question about the high Cubism of Picasso and Braque to a senior faculty member.

My real-life alarm went off at that point, though. Did I get the job?

"Weirdest. . . Dream . . . Ever"

For the purposes of this dream, Virginia Woolf died when a train she was riding caught fire and exploded; for some reason I think it was the 10.05 p.m. (In reality, she drowned herself in the Ouse River in 1941). My friend Becky and I were taking the same train, years later, but the possibility for explosion was the same. We decided to take the train anyway (for some reason I think it was "a thing Woolf scholars did"--but I am a Woolf scholar and Becky is not). We promised each other that if the train blew up, we'd die together. Lo & behold, the furnace engine got out of control and fire started to pour through the grate with tremendous heat (I could feel it in my dream). We turned our backs to the flame and held hands, and the fire consumed us. I was sure we had died.

There was a curtain of red, which slowly ebbed, and Becky & I were still there. We looked at each other. I saw that the skin on her face skin was white and tender, like new skin, and her facial hair had been singed off in places, but she was otherwise OK. I looked the same, as the mirror in a little room showed me. I told her not to touch the new skin. We moved out of this anteroom (with blue-green curtains) where we had discovered we were alive. We moved into a stage set of some kind, where only a few characters roamed. One was a Woolf scholar who had transgendered from male to female. I said "I know who you were." S/he was dressed like Sally Bowles in "Cabaret"--a top hat, tuxedo collar & fishnets--and had glossy auburn hair. I ran into a few other people, somehow related to this strange drama--there was a script we were following.

The strange, morbid lassitude of the dream never quite dissipated--the same kind of feeling I had when I sat through "Titanic" and the ship was sinking slowly, slowly . . . We had survived the singeing, but all was not quite right . . .




I usually like to present my dreams without comment, but I believe that my unconscious wants to make it clear I need to finish my sodding dissertation SOON!!

the Commitments?

I was travelling in an orange VW bus with an Irish band I sang with (though I wan't Irish). We were pulled over by the police, who took us into the television station where we'd been slated to play a gig. A man and a woman with a frizzled bun told us we wouldn't be playing after all (due to some unclear violation on our part). As we, the band, were sitting and fuming in the well-appointed sitting room of the TV station, one of the other band members leaned over and gave me the loveliest long kiss. MMMM. I spent the rest of the dream trying to get kissed again.

Thinly Veiled Symbolism

My brother murdered and eviscerated his twin and left him on the roof. My father refused to call the police, even though we begged him to. I got into my plane and flew over the house, trying to see what was going on (with that wonderful feeling of dreamflying). Our street in the dream was somewhat like the real one and somewhat transformed, and all the neighbors knew what was going on, but nothing was happening. Finally, a neighbor said she called a nurse, who called a doctor and came and got the body.


Right away my brother went to jail for life. That was it. I remember thinking, as if the dream were contiguous to life, "Wow, my brother really IS going to prison forever."