Dream Log: December 11, 2001

We've been thinking about finding a new apartment for a while, and one of my friends (currently a temporary roommate) just found a really nice 3-bedroom that she's planning on sharing with two lucky friends, so apartment hunting's been on my mind.
So in the dream, we're at a barbeque / outdoor banquet (lots of food and about 10 people), when one of our friends mentions that she's leaving the complex, and wants to give us first dibs on her really sweet digs. So I walk over to her place to check it out. (Conveniently, the furniture is already gone.) It was a really nice three-bedroom, two bath (full baths) and then some. I stepped into the master bath, and found that they'd converted the garden-tub (which was made of wood) into a jacuzzi by running garden hoses into the bottom. Duct tape can do anything.
Despite this, I felt that this was THE apartment. The ultimate domicile, the end-all-be-all of residences. So I went back to the party and asked how much it was.

$4,000 a month.

Then I woke up.

(For $4,000 a month, it had better come with two gorgeous blondes and an ever-flowing wetbar.)

This is what I dreamed.

The prince is screaming. He looks like Jude Law, that high-cheekboned, blonde-haired, perfect-skinned arrogance that seems otherwordly, unquestionable. Maybe this is why royal families were sometimes thought to derive their authority and their bloodline directly from God - he seems so perfectly evil and destructive, but immune to ordinary criticism, as if the normal accountability of human beings to their fellows just does not apply to him. He's the prince.

He's screaming at his wife, his mother, a witch with flaming orange hair and gaudy, heavy makeup, dressed all in black and dark veils. Their relationship is rich and ambiguous, the result of dozens of lifetimes spent in various configurations - mother-son, father-daughter, lovers, friends, enemies, killers of each other through time and space. The woman with the orange hair is grinning like a pantomime villainess, her eyebrows nothing but charcoal smudges on her forehead. Her spirit has been killed and her brain is full of demons.

I think of Tom Ripley, how he slammed the edge of the oar into his friend's head. How the wound was a thin line at first, like a slice in a steak, and then filled with blood, while the realization hits him - there's no going back now - and nothing left to do but let the demons rage until it's over. The body drifting slowly into the clear darkness hundreds of metres from the mediterranean coast. The usurping prince left alone, lost in his labyrinth, running from the minotaur in his own mind.

transition

Lying on my stomach on the diving board, I can see to the bottom of the deep blue chamber. I've been swimming through the catacombs of a drowned city for hours, maybe even days, but I'm not sure why. I think I'm just trying to get out. The water is iron-cold and dark because we are at the bottom of the ocean, and the city is lit by vast underwater floodlights which fade away slowly into the endless black. At the bottom of the chamber is a drowned woman's naked body. I am filled with horror and shock, and I feel myself fall towards her, through the cold water.

I wake up with a shock like electrocution.

I couldn't stay asleep last night. I woke up at 2 am, 4 am and then 7 am to go to school.

At 4, I woke up, got out of bed and went downstairs to the bathroom, where I looked at myself in the mirror and sang a little song to myself, passing time until I felt sleepy again. Looking out the door of the bathroom, somebody gave me a what-the-hell-are-you-doing look. I wasn't quite sure who he was, although I remember seeing him earlier that day. His presence didn't really freak me out. I just turned off the light and went back upstairs to go to bed.

I woke up tired at 7. Shaking my head, I realized - I'd just dreamt about not being able to sleep. Shaking off the remnants of the dream, I thought, "It's gonna be a looong day."

It's like the Calvin and Hobbes where Calvin dreams of waking up, changing, and starting to eat breakfast, only to wake up and realize it was all a dream. Maybe life really is just a dream, sweetheart.