Dreams are such peculiar things. They come in a few different varieties. There are ones that are the flotsam and jetsam of the mind, free-associating snippets that are the tired chaff of the day’s (or week’s) events. Then there are the Big Dreams, the ones that haunt you years afterward, that were pregnant with meaning; some even may have been life-changing.
Then there are those in the middle. I think of them as the Rorschach blots of the brain. The images we see
may be caused by the random firing of neurons, but our minds crave order, so they recognize them as little surrealistic movies, strange landscapes that we strive to make sense of. Movies which, if we remember them in the morning, we chew on and try to find some deeper meaning from.
Last night’s movie was a trilogy. In the first, I lived in a futuristic high-rise apartment building with a curved balcony that was so close to a neighbor’s balcony that one could easily step from one to the other. My neighbor—played, in this particular dream, by actress/comedienne/activist/political commentator Janeane Garofolo (bizarre, but that’s the nature of dreams)—is a lesbian whose relationship had just broken up, and she is packing up and moving out. Apparently I’m friends with both her and her partner, but she’s obviously distressed and her partner is nowhere in sight, so I’m trying to comfort her. She doesn’t want to talk about it, but we leave the door open for her to call on me if and when she’s ready for a shoulder to cry on.
Cut to movie #2. More lesbians, an older couple, a tall skinny one and a short fat one. The short one is diabetic and rather ill, and the tall one is able to pick her up and carry her around easily, as if she’s extremely light despite her girth. What I remember most is the tall one’s attitude of protectiveness: the short one’s illness had made her rather childlike and vulnerable. I see them in the kitchen of their house, but I don’t recall anything more than that.
In the last segment, I’m performing on stage with a bunch of adults (mostly parents, I think) at a children’s school. Almost all of us are zombies, though I’m a bit more animated than most you see in the movies; I growl and moan and make menacing faces, my fingers curled into claws. There are children on stage, our pretend victims, screaming happily, and the audience is pleased.
That’s it: four lesbians, a zombie (me), and Janeane Garofalo. Have at it—I invite your interpretive insights! Remember, it’s a Rorschach blot; there are no right or wrong answers.
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