In the dream I was to ascend to my title, the 112th earl of something or other. There was some confusion. Was I the 111th? There was a little box that had the numbers on it, written out in numerals.
The ceremony started and I knew I had to get out for a moment and find a restroom. The room was packed with people and there was no convenient exit. There were odd little colorful liquor bottles standing against the doors and the windows and I had to ask someone to remove them to allow me to leave.
In dreams I know I need to get up and use the toilet when a sequence of seeking a restroom starts, almost always in the deepest levels of dreams and sleep. I always want to return to the dream. Only sometimes is it possible.
When I returned to the dream the situation had changed. I questioned the numbers of my earl ancestors in my waking reflection. Twelve generations of aristocracy seemed more plausible than more than one hundred. My math skills were lacking. The dream changed.
I was asked to offer myself in marriage to a young woman from another family who was coming to visit the clan I was visiting. This was part of a ritual. They instructed me in my role. My good friend was a member of the family. I had come to visit him and now they wanted me to play this role. I was confused again.
If the woman chose me, was I expected to marry her? I had never met her. She was undoubtedly much younger. I started to imagine this and thought how awkward it would be.
Meeting someone for the first time and after a few days of rituals and ceremonial meals with a bunch of people, some close family, others perhaps friends but also many strangers, and then marrying a stranger, with whom to spend the rest of one’s life, seemed a very bad idea.
This was not some ancient place. It was happening in modern times. The young people, and all the people, might practice the old rituals and continue the traditions, but that was now merely an overlay on top of the regular lifestyles of the modern world. There was no way such a marriage would last if it could even happen, even ritualistically.
I brought this up to my friend and to the other members of my guest family. They listened and seemed amused and teased me, especially the older women, the women closer to my age and older. I felt in the men’s responses, although similar amusement, something risky was also at play. I could refuse to participate but it seemed I would be letting them, and my friend, down. There might be an honor element and I would dishonor the men by not doing my part.
I had to learn these little acts, slicing up little pieces of meat or cake to offer at specific times. I had to memorize set pieces of speech. There was also ad lib and spontaneous response. At some point I realized I was not the actual intended groom. I was just one of several shills to stand up in contrast to the actual guy, a young man she had met before and knew. I was relieved and started to enjoy myself. I was participating and was suddenly very charming.
At the initial introductory ceremony, I saw the young woman for the first time. She had a bright face with slightly plump cheeks, still a bit of baby fat as they say. I had to go first, and we did our bit with the little slices of cake or sausage or whatever it was. She did not accept or reject me, and then she moved on.
The guy she was intended to accept was less than stellar. I began to have a change of heart for the woman. I was hoping this was not actually the guy and there were other options. Even in the introduction, this guy’s groomsman, the young man who played the same role as my friend for me, remarked, “He’ll likely lose the weight and become the man you want, but then he’ll also lose the only chin he has!”
It was true. The young man had a small head. His face was mostly fat. He had ill-defined features and did not seem very charismatic or even particularly kind. He seemed less engaged in the ceremony or even with the woman than I was! Regardless of their feelings for each other till now and their relationship, I did not see how this guy and this young woman could ever make a go of it together.
The other candidates were mostly appropriate in terms of age. There was at least one other ringer thrown in for comedic effect or contrast, as I was. Because she declined everyone on the first round, the party would continue over several days with contests and other opportunities for the suitors to show their worthiness.
I remember talking often to the women running things. I needed a lot of guidance. At one point one of these women had a problem with her skirt and was having trouble adjusting it. I told her after she managed to get it fixed, next time I could help her with it. Just then several other women walked up, including the intended bride. She was somewhat behind the others. They jeered and laughed at what I said, as if it had been intended sexually. “Fix her skirt, will you now? Oh, that’s kind of you, now!”
After they had finished their sexual insinuations, I replied, laughing, quite to the contrary. I have no interest in any of that. I’m old, after all. I said it in a succinct way but indicating that when little things like that need to be done for anyone, like buttoning someone’s shirt for him, or adjusting a child’s hair, there was nothing sexual going on. I was domesticated and trustworthy, perhaps even boring because of it.
This had the effect of turning all the women to think of me again as suddenly very attractive. The dream took two turns from that point, because I began in the dream to see all the other women as potential partners more appropriate for me, which had not occurred to me earlier. I had been focused on the plight of the young bride.
The other change was suddenly also now the young woman started to see me as a contrast to her young guy, not so much as an alternative husband but as an example of something to be desired in a future life.
There were contests, including a weird archery tournament using bows that were fixed to a rack and held in an awkward manner by those who knew how to use them. They fired two kinds of projectiles at targets of foam only a short distance away. I went last and dominated this silly display, but I cannot be sure that actual success was the point. Only now do I realize something else was going on, and the awkward manner of using the bow was part of the game.
Then shortly after that, when I was again thinking about the young woman and how this marriage was not going to work out well for her, she found me alone somewhere and was going to talk with me, and I woke up.
I knew I had to get up, but I was not fully awake. I wanted to remain in the dream. I thought of Sinbad the Porter and Sinbad the Sailor. I got up and moved as quickly as I could in my half woke state, emptying the dishwasher, taking my pills, drinking water with fiber, getting tea ready, shaving. I had to go on a walk.
I managed to get dressed and out for a walk early, still not awake. I was still thinking of the dream, wondering why I had such dreams. It was because of the soccer game between England and Italy. I had been thinking about England.
I was confused on my walk, because I was still in the dream in my head and not fully in the waking world. Should I go this way, walk to the gym, or take a shorter loop? I was still asleep also because I needed to use the restroom eventually. It would be a walk of poop and circumstance I needed to plan for, a marriage of movements, so to speak.
I headed in the opposite direction of my usual walk and immediately saw well down the sidewalk a man in red shorts walking my way the way someone walks when out for a walk. I did not look at him, looking down and away instead, and walked his way.
Well before we reached a social distance, he deviated into the street. When we finally passed each other, he was in the street on the other side of parked cars. I saw he was bald and had earbuds in his ears.
I continued still only half awake. I was still in the dream, asking questions and looking for clues in the dream, only half on my walk. I could only go so far. Time was running out. How far could I go before having to go? Where was the nearest option?
I could hear the birds in the waking world. They alerted me to the fact this was a place of nature, even though urban. Nature still was at work here, functioning as a factor. This, as any jungle, was filled with dangerous animals. What were the dangerous animals here? Humans. The place is full of humans, very dangerous animals. I realized I was one of them.
Here was as good an articulation point, this turn, as any.
As I headed down the street one less street from my usual turn going in the opposite direction, I saw at a distance one of the twilight people, or rather I saw a shopping cart laden with bags in the street on the opposite side two blocks down in the direction I was going. The twilight people were still about.
The twilight people are humans and therefore dangerous, but most are less dangerous than the waking world people or others. Then I saw him. He was collecting containers for redemption. His cart and the sacks he carried were heavily laden with redemption value.
He was in the street. I was on the sidewalk. But as I approached him to a social distance plus one or two for the difference in twilight and daylight, I could see he saw me. I waved and he nodded, almost like full-body genuflection. He could see me, and I could see him. In the dream I was still in the twilight spectrum. In redemption collection he was understandable to the waking world.
I occupied space adjacent to his and saw the world in part through his eyes. A plastic bottle there. A White Claw can atop that telephone box. How did he miss that? A woman with a dog was walking on the other side of the street ahead of me and I stopped to photograph the White Claw can.
Immediately I wondered if I should bring the can and other redemption values he had missed to him, the twilight man already laden with so much redemption value. I turned around as much because there were people walking the way people out for a walk do coming from both directions. The woman with the dog had also done an abrupt about face.
Something had changed. These reversals indicate a change in The Matrix. I had to get back. Time was running out in several ways. No, I could not deviate and gather redemption for the twilight man. I was exiting the overlapping space. I was moving faster back the way I had come. The dream was lost now.
I turned back onto my street and headed back up the opposite side, the side I usually used opposite my building, and I was surprised to see coming my way a familiar figure from a few days earlier, the frumpy guy dressed in the same sweat shirt unzipped, T-shirt and jeans, walking the way someone walks when out for a walk.
It was the guy with the glasses walking again. “Good morning,” I said this time first. “Good morning, how are you?” he responded without pausing for a response. “Thanks,” I said walking by fast.
Then I was back in the waking world. The fate of my guest family and the young bride, her suitors, and myself in the fabric of this part of my subconscious perhaps lost forever. I was the porter laden without redemption value.
I Dwell In Possibility 