So (in real life) I go to see Swans. I've caught 3/4s of their Vancouver reunion shows. I had intended it to be a show I took Erika to - that was kind of the point - but she wasn't feeling up to it. And their music is so intense, so potent, it might not have been her thing anyhow.
I ended up giving away her ticket and going alone. I'm glad I did. It made the Descendents the other night look like greasy kidstuff (though it was really fun to sing along with "Silly Girl," a song I had no idea I remembered so much of). There was even one song that got me dancing, the extreme volume of the music facilitating a very intense physical engagement. I wore no earplugs. My hearing seems fine (or no more damaged than is its usual state).
Anyhow, I come home, and Erika and I watch a Walking Dead; I have a hot lemon relief for my sore throat; and - around 2 am - we go to bed. Somewhere in the night I wake up to pee, then return to bed. And there have a vivid dream.
The first part of the dream isn't so interesting; it had something to do with names, a discussion around names and conventions shortening them (from David to Dave? I don't really remember. Call me Al if you like).
But the strange dream, the one that has me writing was quite vivid: because I woke from that first dream to find myself in my childhood home in Richmond Court, in Maple Ridge. In my old bedroom. In my old bed.
I woke up to (once again) go pee, but I was now walking down the hall where I grew up. Nothing about the dream felt like a dream, no more than any other walk down a hallway in the place where you live: except I knew I was in a dream, was - a very rare thing in my adult life, though it once was my norm - entirely lucid. I was my present age - not returned to my childhood - and knew everything that had happened since; I wasn't travelling back to my childhood self - I was myself, Adult Al, and knew I was myself, and knew exactly where I was.
And, thus lucid, I realized that my parents would still be alive.
So I went into their room. Mom was in bed, bundled in her dark blue comforter. I said something to her - "hi Mom, I love you," or something like that.
She stirred. Woke up. She hadn't had her stroke yet. She was sleepy, but she came to and looked at me, asked me sleepily, in her normal voice, her voice untainted by stroke aphasia, if everything was all right.
I said it was fine, that I just wanted to tell her I loved her.
"I love you too!" A bit sleepy and surprised to have been wakened.
So I let her go back to sleep. I didn't really have anything else to say, anyhow.
Dad was there too - not in the bed, but maybe watching TV downstairs. I think I interacted with him a bit, too; I woke from this dream feeling like I had - but I don't remember it as clearly.
Soon enough, I woke back up into the real place where I was sleeping, and began to make notes in my head about the dream I had had, until, yep, I had to go pee once again (That hot lemon relief really makes you need to go!).
I think I've caught a cold - my throat is sore and my head feels a bit stuffy.
Think I'll take it easy today...
Went back to bed and dreamed that I was hanging out with Gerry Hannah. We'd met someone who was functionally illiterate and I was expressing my amazement that someone could have no visual association for a sound - that it was impossible for me to say the word "war" and not see it as W-A-R, for instance. He had something else he wanted to talk about, though, involving roadwork going on, and a trip we had to take; he was driving his truck, me in it, over a bumpy road, going up and down huge dips. (I don't understand why but for some reason the steering wheel of his truck was on the wrong side. Maybe it was a Japanese truck?) Then he was showing me how to pick up a log and tip it into a river, instructing me to do it. I did it, sending the log end over end down the bank we were standing on. I kept hoping we could return the conversation back to literacy, but he was talking about something much more practical. I completely forget what it was.
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