Bizarre Cross-Town Ride
Robert E. Lewis
Tuesday-Wednesday, January 16-17, 2007
I arrive in Houston at the home of my friend, R. He is at work and it's
early, so I decide to go o something on the other side of town, and
because I have plenty of time and it's a nice day, I decide to ride my
bike (though in RL the distance I'd be travelling is probably 25 miles).
Scene shift: I am riding through Memorial Park and then into River Oaks
(a very wealthy neighborhood). I ride past the River Oaks Country Club
and see the high school across the street (used to be a joke about
country clubs across the street, because the school was so nice). I
find myself on the grounds of the school, beautiful park-like area with
brick paths and ponds; I reach the gates leading out and it's got
revolving gates, not sure how I'll get my bike through, but then I see
someone else take a bike through a gate especially designed to allow
them. I carry my bike through the gate.
I travel on to the Allen Parkway area, just west of downtown. I am
thirsty and I stop at a supermarket to buy a soda, but I can't find any
bottled or canned soda in the store. As I'm leaving I find my way
blocked by an elderly black man who is talking to a black woman shopper;
they've stopped and her cart is blocking my path, so I have to squeeze
past. In the entryway of the store I again find my path blocked, this
time by a group of hispanic children who are hanging around the gum
machines. As I'm making my way past the kids I see a sign for Coca Cola
in a little deli area back in a corner of the store through a separate
door off the entry, and I go in to get a soda, but I'm disappointed that
all they have are fountain drinks, too ifficult to drink while I'm
riding my bike. I leave.
Scene shift: I'm leaving the supermarket parking lot onto Allen Parkway
toward downtown -- now I am driving a car, but I am sitting in the front
passenger and reaching across and steering with my left hand (not sure
how I'm managing the accelerator or brake pedals, mabe it's like a
drivers'-ed car with a spare set of pedals). I am drinking a fountain
soda from a paper cup, put the straw in and the straw breaks, irritating
me and making it difficult to drink. I have a cat with me in the car,
seems to be my cat, but younger. She keeps trying to climb oto my chest
or onto the dashboard, obstructing my view and I have to move her off to
the seat beside me -- this feels very unsafe, as I'm trying to merge
onto the parkway steering with my left hand and handling the cat and the
soda.
Scene shift: I'm back on my bike, stopped at a some sort of
antique/junk shop, lots of stuf on low tables with narrow paths between
them. I see my friend, R -- seems to be an agreed-upon rendezvous. I
call out a hello and he tells me to follow and walks off out of sight
down a side path. I call out for him to slow down, I have stepped on a
splinter or sliver of glass (I'm now barefoot) and need to get it out,
but he keeps going. I wind my ay through the shop and am stopped by a
tiny dog that I understand belongs to R, a block miniature poodle who
grabs hold of my trouser leg and won't let go; I pick it up and it tries
to bite me as I put it down on a countr and continue on my way.
I follow into a garden, can't find R. I climb up on a corrugated-tin
shed with some kind of flowering vine grown over it, the vine is dead,
pale brown and dry. The shed seems flimsy as I climb over and I am
worried it will break as I climb down on the far side, into a back yard
of another house.
It's a very nice house, and I go inside the back door, looking for R.
I walk through a den area into a galley-shape kitchen and find R there,
eating some fruit from a bowl on the counter. I tell him we shouldn't
be in the house, must get out right away because we are trespassing, but
he seems unconcerned. I try to lead him to the back door, but when I
reach the doorway back to the den I hear sounds at the back door -- the
owners have returned. I panic, we have to get out. R casualy walks out
the far end of the kitchen and around a corner, again out of my sight.
I look for him, but can hear the back door being unlocked. I run
through the living room to the front door but it's locked; I race back
toward the kitchen, looking for a place to hide; I see a woman,
presumably a homeowner, in a short hallway parallel to the kitchen, and
she goes up stairs. I duck into the kitchen hoping to hide there while
the homeowners go upstairs and then I can sneak out the back door, but a
man, presumably the other owner, apears at the far end of the kitchen
and sees me. He looks startled, but seems to assume I'm supposed to be
there, that his wife knows me. After an awkward pause, he asks if I'd
care for a slice of pie, motioning to a pie on the counter next to the
bowl of fruit R was eating. I say no, thanks, and he wanders off the
way he came.
I realize I can probably unlock the front door, if it doesn't require a
key, and start back into the living room, but this time I run into the
wife, who has come back downstairs. Again, she's startled, but again
she seems to assume her husband let me in. She walks into the kitchen
as I walk into the living room, and as we pass each other, she says,
"It's cold, isn't it?" and I reply, "Is it? It seems very hot to me!"
I reach the door and frantically look for the deadbolt, hoping to escape
before the husband and wife speak to each other and discover neither has
let me in.
=END OF DREAM=
Notes: The incident of being blocked did ocur the last time I was
shopping at the supermarket -- an elderly black man talking animatedly
to a white woman, her cart blocking the aisle, and a little later he
stopped her again to continue their conversation in the corridor leading
to the exit. I think I was probably thirsty in the night, explaining the
seach for a soda.
Two scenes of being annoyed by animals -- both seemed in the dream to
belong to R, though the cat was clearly based on my own cat, and R does
not have a dog of any sort, and certainly not an irritating little
poodle.
Two scenes in the dream in which I was trespassing and unsure how to get
out -- first on the school grounds, which seemed very minor, and then in
the house, which was very panicking.
The bike I was riding in the dream was actually R's bike -- I left my
bike in his back yard about a year ago and it was stolen. The bike ride
itelf was very pleasant. I was aware at one point that I was riding a
very long way and worried a little about whether I'd be able to ride
back to R's house, especially before dark; looked at my watch and saw it
was 2:14 p.m. and decided I had plenty of time -- this was just before I
stopped at the supermarket.
Comments and interpretations welcome.
--
Robert
O'Hush
> I wind my ay through the shop and am stopped by a
> tiny dog that I understand belongs to R, a block miniature poodle who
> grabs hold of my trouser leg and won't let go; I pick it up and it tries
> to bite me as I put it down on a countr and continue on my way.
A dream of yours a while back featured a little black dog. At the time
I remember thinking it might have something to do with settling your
mom's estate. I hope you don't think it's too creepy that I remember
that, but the dream itself was kind of creepy and memorable. This is
it:
http://groups.google.com/group/alt.dreams/msg/4afd5e74e969eaad?dmode=source&hl=en
Robert E. Lewis
"O'Hush" <oh...@triad.rr.com> wrote in message
news:1169069090....@q2g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
I had forgotten that dream - it was creepy ("revolting" is the word I
use describing it in the post, I notice). That dream did seem likely to
be about settling my mother's estate, given the date of the dream, the
apartment and the presence of my siblings. I could certainly be
dreaming symbolically about my father's estate -- have spent much of my
spare time the past week just sorting through his old files, shredding
and throwing things away. The cluttered antique shop could relate to
his bedroom, packed full of stuff I'm having to sort and dispose of.
I remember a friend of mine, when I had that dream, reminding me that
Winston Churchill described his periodic depression as his "black dog".
At least the black dog in last night's dream was just a minor little
ankle-biting annoyance. <G>
Thanks.
--
Robert