I do realize this is not a diary about anything earth shattering or of political importance. It is a way to ease back into diary writing after a hiatus of sorts. And I am always interested in the subject of dreamscapes so feel free to share your experiences in the comments. I'd love to hear them.
I have always had vivid dreams that I can remember when I wake up. And although they fade quickly, I find that if I write them down, at least partially, or talk to someone about them, I tend to remember them much better. They are in colour when I remember them and there is a lot of complicated geography as I have walked through them.
There are cityscapes I recognize now. There is a Philadelphia that only exists in my mind and bears no resemblance to the real place, although when I find myself in it I know it is Philly. There is an Athens that has the most marvelous craft shops, and a Cairo that is almost all high up in upper floors above never-ending parking garages, but I know how to navigate it because I have spent so much time there. There is a Toronto for which I know the shopping malls and what subway stops to take, and where exactly the train yards are and how the train tracks bisect the city, and there are a series of hilly roads on some island that is a cross between the Isle of Man and the north shore of Kauai (it doesn't have to make sense, as it is a dream) where there is a most marvelous grocery serving ready-made food about a mile and a half from where I always stay, and it is sometimes Asian and sometimes a deli and bakery. There is a place in my town in northern Missouri that is actually a remarkably good restaurant (again, this is a dream) but you had to know to go right around a certain curve rather than straight and very few people think about doing that. In my dreams London is set up in a particularly rigid grid of right-angled streets. None of these places reflect reality in any sense, I am afraid.
I used to think these places were all made up and I just assigned names to them, but I am not so sure. When I was 15 my parents took us back to a city (Amsterdam) that I had been taken to first when I was 5, but had never returned. I knew my way through a maze of shops and took my parents to a store with large plate-glass windows that sold ceramic sculptures. It may be where they got the large owl that sits on their mantlepiece, even. That purchase would have been back in the mid 1950s. But the point of the anecdote is that the pathway had stamped itself on my neurons in a form that seemed to be indelible, even though I was not aware of the identity of the city I had been dreaming of for so many years. Perhaps the Athens or Philly are really interpretations of those cities.
This sense of dream geography is repeated in the interior of buildings, almost exclusively in houses I know very very well. The houses are beyond the orange brick road of dreams.
My brother's godparents lived in a beautiful 100-year old stone farmhouse on the north side of town, originally surrounded by woods that are now cut down, leaving a view of the powerplant across the fields. It was a marvelous house with a butler's pantry filled with beautiful antique glassware and dishes and a secret staircase that went from the kitchen to the second floor, a feature that was terribly exciting to young children as you can well imagine. I think it was this mysterious magical passage that leads this house in my memory to have such a strong calling in my imagination. So strong that a passing mention of the house set up a dream wherein I visited it again.
In the dream it was combined with another place I have been in dreamland, a bungalow with a very wide porch that runs across the full facade of the house. That place is usually the house I buy for a permanent home, but I am trying to straddle living there and an apartment at the same time. In the dream world things seem very logical and money only matters when it is relevant to the direction of the narrative so it was not a surprise that I could afford to live in such a spectacular house. Although in my dream there was a pyramidal roof rather than the 19th century gabled one the building has in reality, and it was much much larger, I knew it was that place. The distinguishing characteristic of the house is that you went from the back of the house (you entered from the back, where the family door was) to the front and to the left of the front door was an entrance to a sweeping staircase painted in dark brown, which led to a cavernous space between the outside wall and the inner space that everyone else would see. You wouldn't see the secret attic if you came in from the front. I cannot to this day remember what is actually to the left of the door, but I could find my way up those rickety stairs and tell you which ones you shouldn't step on because the wood is a bit rotten in places and might splinter. As I said, I have very vivid dreams, and repeated visits to the same place, visits that are often enough I recognize the details.
The one that really confuses and amuses me is the door to a room I know is there off the west wall of the storage hallway in my parents' basement. I grew up in the house in which I am sitting typing this, and I know in my head that there is no doorway there. It is a solid concrete wall and on the other side of it is my Dad's study with its built-in bookshelves all along the eastern side of the room. So there is no place for such a door, and no space for the room into which it opens. But still, even now, I find myself walking along that hallway and expecting to see the door. I know that I have in the past gotten up from my dreaming and gone downstairs to find that doorway. I just had to check what was behind it. But there is no room, no door, just a blank wall that seems to laugh at me. Interestingly, I have no memory of what it opens up into. Whereas with the old stone house, I know the room but I am not sure completely what the door looks like, here in this house, I know the wooden door and its white-painted molding, and I am surprised that it isn't there.
I have lived here for more than fifty years when I am not elsewhere, and I know every inch of this building, every crack in the walls, every water stain and cobweb. And I know there is a door there. Even tonight, were I to walk down the thirteen stairs to the basement and turn right past the screen with old stamps on it, the hundreds of wire hangers waiting for the ironing my mother never did even when she was here to do it, and the large pan for cooking turkey that is only brought out one day a year, when I walk past those things that are so familiar, that blank wall will surprise and confuse me yet again, because I am sure there is a door there.
Did I grow up reading too much C.S. Lewis? It isn't at the back of a closet past old fur coats, or into a picture, or anything. It is a very plain blank wall that must have a door in it, if I look hard enough.
Do you have these dreams?