Dreams written in my notebooks

"The writer is always tricking the reader into listening to their dream." - Joan Didion.

I had a dream last night and you were in it. You were ten feet tall and breathed bees. I kept running and running but couldn't get anywhere. Everyone was gone and I had the whole place to myself.

We were in some village on these cliffs, in a pub. The weather was horrible; all of our umbrellas were bent. I had two friends there from camp, friends I hadn't seen in almost two decades. We split the bill. Outside, beyond the rain, groups of people stood huddled at the edge of the cliffs and watched as white, winged horses came in for a landing.

Before I was on a lookout at the top of a forest and I spoke Latvian with a woman around some Germans. Went to pharmacy to get some white sugar.

last night i dreamt about you and Anna. you had a child... a little one-year-old child... adorable – light blue eyes. it’s hard to express how much this dream affected me – i was angry that you didn’t tell me earlier, and at the same time happy, of course, that you had this wonderful child. and also sad – i don’t know what for. all sorts of emotions. i thought not long ago, how my life could have been different, and i’m afraid... and still i think how my life will have changed when i have children... maybe i was also thinking about that before falling asleep last night.

I had a dream last night that I was writing "Coraline" three times in Sharpie on a peach-colored piece of blown glass.

(Previously transcribed dreams: Disappearing Childhood; Tove Jansson's Summer House.)

© Zan McQuade. All rights reserved.