Dreams

I had dreams of old homes last night.

First I was home in Davis, Calif. The home I grew up in. It felt so natural to be back there. My mom was there and my friend’s 17 year old daughter. My friend had called me to tell me she finished her book and she was going to send the draft for a read. I was asking her how she felt about it, moving around to the dining room, to the kitchen. We talked comfortably all of us together: her daughter, me, my mom, her. Even though we weren’t all together in the same place we started talking about what was for dinner (some sort of pasta). My friend was a link somehow to some other place. Some sort of triangle or circle. From me to her to me to my mom to me to her daughter and back again.

…

The other dream was about my father’s house. He was renovating the entire thing and I was on my way to help. I traveled down a country road to get there, it was dusk. I was speeding a bit, but trying not to. I passed a cop who pulled out behind me and I thought I was done, so I pulled over past a driveway. But instead of coming up behind me the cop and another one pulled into the driveway I had just passed. I looked behind me to see a woman standing on top of her roof, stabbing herself in the chest and falling forward, a ring of cops below her trying to coax her down. But it was too late. And terrified I drove off and away from the end of this woman’s life.

I arrived at my dad’s house and was now on a bike. I knew exactly where to park the bike (like finding your light switches in the dark) it was all so familiar. In front of me was a path. Green and dark and sunlight. It was covered in a canopy of trees. The path itself was muddy as hell as if people had tried to drive through it before and couldn’t. It was waves of wet, muddy earth. But I looked down the path to a gate on the left. The gate was lit by sunlight and protected by a brass turkey or pheasant, some sort of large bird.

I knew behind that gate was my dad’s house and they were renovating the garage and the concrete and everything about it. I don’t remember walking through the path, only that I knew the way.