Dreams from Monday, 2022–07–11
Dinner theater game. Motel of the mysteries.
First dream. The Fort Bragg (CA) Denny’s has its south section traded for the north part and there are no windows except across the street side. Juanita and I are in a back corner booth. The waitress is playing a theater game where she brings imaginary things and pretends to put them down in front of us. She asks if there’ll be anything else. Juanita says something funny that I don’t understand, something food-sounding but not food. The waitress pretends to write this on her imaginary pad, turns to me, says, “And what can I bring you?”
I say in a rush exactly this: “Either a fearsome disaster of flood and fire where everyone’s running and screaming and burning and drowning, or a giant fat rocketship full of people, that’s so big everyone thinks it’s the entire world.” (For the second part of that I have in mind the colony ship in /Universe/ by Robert Heinlein, whose first line is, “Look out! There’s a mutie!”) I pretend to close an imaginary menu. The waitress says, “Right away,” and goes away as if to get that.
Next dream. I’m on my back, my eyes closed, with a blanket or a coat on me. I hear Juanita and one of her friends from the Ren Faire or the Dickens Faire chatting cryptically. I’m not sure where we are, so I imagine I’m who I was years ago and I’ve just woken up in the present day, here in the future (of 2000? 2010?), and try to figure out from clues where I am and how I got here and evaluate this future I’m in. (I do this sometimes when I wake up in real life.)
Open my eyes. The ceiling is white bumpy sprayed acoustic paint. Turn my head left. This is a motel room. There’s a teevee in a big wooden cabinet, on but with the sound off: in it, a man and a woman take turns talking to the camera from behind a desk. (So far the future is not much of an improvement over, say, 1975.) Turn my head right. Juanita is next to me in bed, young, in her twenties. (I don’t see the other girl.) So it’s, what, 1985?
I get up, find pants and put them on, look out the window. We’re on the second floor of a motel. Because of the walkway and solid slat rail I can’t see cars on this side of the parking lot, but there’s a white van and a white ’90s Toyota Camry on the far side.
Part of the situation becomes available: we’re someplace in Central California — Bakersfield or Fresno; I’ve put my name and bank card on the register for the room, we’ve already been here for at least a day, and I feel that Juanita’s dragging her feet about accomplishing what we’re in town for. I interrupt her conversation with her friend (who is where?), to say, “I only have like 200 in my account.” Juanita looks at me like, /That’s plenty. Don’t worry about it./ I look at her like, /It’s not. We have to be out before noon./ I wonder, /how/ are we here? Which of the cars either of us has ever had (in real life or dream-familiar life) did we come here in? Keys? No keys, so I’m looking forward to the surprise of it being one of my favorites, like maybe the aqua 1964 Rambler — or the gray ’77 Toyota Corolla I got for a dollar from Sandra when she died of cancer. I just have to go out… look over the rail… No cars on this side. Hmm.
I woke up with the song /Brother Louie/ playing in my head. Here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C6yLdrkP-Bk
