Archive for February, 2010

….to detect something meaningful about reality.

Imagine for a moment that your dreams are views into parallel universes. Perhaps this is why we don’t always appear to be ourselves in our dreams and why sometimes the environments have outlandish characteristics. I recently dreamt that I noticed a new nightclub on my way to the subway after work, late one afternoon. It was at Sixth Avenue near 25th street.  It had been opened in a defunct MET supermarket.
The interior was a former movie theater. Two distinct locations in the same place and the same time. There was a waitress passing crab Rangoon hors d’oeuvres. I took one and ate it at the bar near the door. It was dark inside, but for the light from the late afternoon, summer sun reflecting off the western facing buildings opposite the open doors.  I proceeded to walk down an aisle of movie theater seats, and sit to watch some trailers being projected for the patrons. There were a series of previews for old Indian films, and I didn’t recognize them, but started to catch on, when I saw the same logo appearing at the beginning of each new piece. I may have sat down or I may have been standing or both. I was greeted by my friend Sarita, whom I haven’t seen in several years. She happens to be Indian. She said, “It’s a good thing that we’re in New York, because no one else would be interested in these films.” The funny thing is, she’s not in New York – she lives in New Mexico and I knew she was referring to New Mexicans when she said “no one else.” When the next trailer started, we decided to leave. We’d taken off our shoes at some unnoticed point in time and needed to put them back on. I was inclined to do it where we were, but when she started to walk out, shoes in hand, I found mine – the same black shoes I am wearing tonight, which I have taken to the cobbler numerous times to have patched. In the dream, the shoes are far more worn, the tongue of the right shoe, has completely fallen out. I gather the pieces, thinking that I will need to take these to the cobbler, perhaps again, perhaps for the first time, and I head out to look for my friend. I head toward the door, where the yellowing sun still streams in. But I don’t see her and I guess that she is outside. When I arrive, the landscape has changed. It is still Sixth Avenue and 25th Street in New York City, and it is still nearly sundown, but the Avenue is much wider and the buildings are different than when I entered the nightclub, and the golden glow of the setting sun makes it seem as though we are in southern California or perhaps New Mexico. Sarita is no where to be seen. I sit on a bench and put on two pairs of socks, one set of ankle socks and a pair of yellow dress socks with holes throughout. I see my supervisor walking up the Avenue, as if toward the office, but she uncharacteristically smokes a cigarette, and walks with or perhaps has her arm around a lesbian prostitute. My friend Alison, rides a bike up the opposite side of the avenue, to a parking lot which is backed up against her garden apartment. As she heads toward the gate, I call out her name, but she is too far away to hear me. In fact, she lives in Boston.

Across the street from an abandon movie theater in Los Angeles.