I had a series of bizarre dreams last night. In one, my friend who bought my old pickup from me came to visit. In the dream, I lived in an old mid-century bungalow in a sad state of disrepair. In front of the place, an old concrete pad, much wider than a driveway, took up most of the front yard. My friend drove up in the old pickup, it’s fenders dented, a door missing, and it’s two left tires shredded and burned. He asked if he could park it there while it was being repaired. I asked what happened; he replied that a tractor mowing a burning field had swerved in front of him. “It wasn’t my fault, but they’re trying to arrest me for it,” he said.
Somehow, that dream morphed into a dream in which my sister-in-law welcomed me home with a big hug, telling me with some excitement that she had bought a tractor for me while I was away. I looked in the direction she pointed and saw an old, smoke-stained tractor that had a piece of green fender, like a piece of the old truck, jammed between its front wheel and its mid-section. Then I kissed her; but when I pulled back, it was not her; in her place was a co-worker from my years in Chicago.
The next part of the dream, or maybe it was earlier, I listened to a young couple explain their investments in bankrupt commercial properties. I asked whether I could invest with them and they just rolled their eyes and began laughing in snorts, like donkeys.
This tangled assortment of dreams ended with my sister-in-law meeting me at an Amtrak station in Nebraska; I don’t know how I knew it was Nebraska, nor why I was there. She met me there with a stack of newspapers and said, I collected these for you while we were away.”
“While ‘we’ were away?”
“Yes, I was away, too,” she said.
And then I was awake, feeling the arthritis in my hands.
I showered, shaved, and got dressed. After my wife got up, we went downstairs, where we had a nice breakfast. I had espresso, soft-boiled eggs, cheese, and a slice of rolled ham, with a croissant. I could live in Arles, even if it meant having that tangled dream over and over.
