Dream 2 - Seaweed

Your dreams were melancholy this week.   You’re not sure if the people you met were sad     or just lonely.

Here’s the first one.

You’ve returned     to the place you used to live   as a child. You wander the halls,     under the tall ceilings, rediscovering your bearings.   It hasn’t changed, which is almost more unsettling than having to see it be transformed.     The hallways are still narrow, and lined with narrow doors, the tapestries still hang over the dark wood drawers   which used to hold ancient toys, and family photos, and perhaps still do. Because there are rooms on either side,   the only light is from the window at the end of the corridor. The rooms are all connected on the inside by tiny bathrooms    of green tile. This is one of the things you remember most strongly: sharing an old-timey sink with a family member you don’t understand.

You get the sense   that each of the bedrooms    has been taken over for one overwhelming   and specific activity, for which they were never meant to be used.  They are locked, and as much as one can tell what goes on behind a door    without opening it, you can sense it is vastly different from one to the next.

The new owner of the house    catches you at the end of the hallway.   She’s an old crone,  superbly dressed, whose entire body   seems to have slumped around her toothless smile.    No eyes on the woman either, but two flamingos stand to either side of her    such that their yellow eyes perpetually serve her as glasses and allow her to see.

Your presence doesn’t bother her.   In fact, she’s delighted to have someone here    to hire for her witchy deeds. She takes you into the kitchen,     with its turn-of-the-century white stove, ceramic jugs and brass scale weights.   Seaweed hangs over every open space, which you understand she grows in bathtubs in the bedrooms.   The kitchen windows open onto a square patio overgrown with coral and enclosed in walls of sleek black stone. The air is damp    like a wet towel.

Your job in the kitchen    is to finalize the seaweed   before it can be sold. It’s an easy job:   standing at the large wooden table, you lay out a batch of seaweed.  You grab herbs from a cupboard and sprinkle it over the seaweed, according to a sheet of instructions.   Then, you carve the image of a queen holding a dagger against her chest into the top layer of seaweed,    and stuff it all into a labelled jar along with a photograph of the client. This is mischievous magic, steeped in inconspicuous self-interest.    

The women who come to buy the jars    are all tall, prim suburban women. They sit in the house’s antique chairs   like in a doctor’s waiting room, holding their hands on their laps, spilling into the hallways,    over the thresholds of doors. One of them asks you a question that sounds like she is concerned for herself,   when really she is concerned for you. You reassure her that there is nothing to be worried about.

At sundown,    when all the women have left,    the witch takes you into her own bedroom,    which has been kept tidy, and humble. You settle down on the bed    and the witch sits by the door. She releases the flamingos, which have turned into two white snakes,    and watches them trace a message onto the black wood floor. She explains this is how she talks to her wife.    You understand. That’s all you remember.

This next dream     happens in an open office space.    All the desks face a long panoramic window on either side of the building,    looking out onto a misty landscape that makes you unsure how high up you are.    You’re investigating a case that involves a muddy tropical river, running by a highway.   You see the rain-drowned scene as if filmed from a helicopter, similar to what you would see on a broadcast about a flood,    or an alarming monsoon, that distant camera that prevents anything from feeling like a home.

You get up from your desk,   and no one is around. Your work is important,    but it’s made feel you sad and heavy, and you need someone to talk to.   A co-worker walking by reminds you of the office party happening downstairs,   and you decide to go but only at your own pace. First you want to wander into the offices you don’t usually get to enter    and see what you can find there while the others are away.

The office of your higher up     is in the corner of the building.     He’s a cheery man, but in a way you’ve never really understood.   You like him, but you don’t entirely trust him. The office is darker than you would have expected,    stacked with filing cabinets and multiple computers. You get the sense that whatever your higher-up does here,    he doesn’t really want to be found out doing it, even if it isn’t necessarily a bad thing.

This is what you find: he’s has been stashing things for his wife and child here:   giant black jewelry that looks like it’s been made from polished charred wood for her,    and video game cartridges, children’s educational videos for the kid. You also find a number of things relating to the story you’re working on,    as well as stories you know your co-workers have been working on for weeks: articles, evidence, artefacts… was he ever going to show them to you?  It’s unclear. You grab the documents relevant to your story and go place them on your desk.

By then you want to leave--    one of your friends is outside,    ready to go when you make it out,  but the way out seems to have changed.    You travel down stairs and escalators, through halls of tall glass and potted plants,   like an empty airport terminal, still looking out onto the misty nothing, but you find no exit.   You push past the ground floor, thinking you’ll be able to leave from the underground parking.

This part of the building dives like a well into the earth,   then spreads into a humongous garage with the occasional meeting room.   Across from the open parking ramp, you see the office party going on behind yellow windows.    This relieves you greatly, until you notice what’s been constructed behind it: a makeshift dam,    holding back the same flood water from your story. It’s a vengeance plot, constructed by someone who works here.  He’s milling around somewhere close, and you know that if he finds you, he will try to enlist you to his cause. He thinks of you as one of his own,    and you will have to dissuade him, without exacerbating his loneliness.

The last dream you remember     happens in a dusty clearing, surrounded by pine trees.  You’re in a tall makeshift cabin that looks like a treehouse built on the forest ground. An old man    is busy at work in the kitchen. He is tired, too old for this, but determined not to let that stop him.   Things, however, are getting to be a bit much for him. The kitchen is overflowing with dirty dishes, and you can see   that he sleeps in the living room out front, instead of in his bed upstairs, so that he can be ready to work the instant he gets up.

This place is a shelter      for a bunch of lost children,      and the old man is the only one taking care of them. The kids run around outside,     unstoppably rowdy, but the house keeps them polite. Even they can respect the amount of work    the old man puts in for them. His quiet exhaustion can be seen on the house itself: it’s covered    in billowing cloth paintings, made by the man when he still had free time, and only very rarely now. They’re elaborate friezes,      painted onto the rough orange cloth of an astronaut’s suit which has been cut into large ribbons. You think that before all this, the man was an astronaut, and this is where he fell.

The children are intrigued by you,      and come and talk to you on the porch.  They ask you where you are from, why you look the way you do,     whether the old man is doing alright, and you give them answers that are true,      but also meant to reassure them, and preserve their courage. They show you around the playground they’ve created      out of leftover planks of wood, the small houses and the walkways between them, their collection of rainwater, and the secret codes   they carve into the sides of doors to mark who is allowed to enter which parts of the camp. “This one I made up myself,” one of the boys tells you,   pointing to what looks like a drawing of a keypad etched into the wood.

The take you through    a small door in the back    of one of their houses which leads deeper into the forest. At first you aren’t worried,  you’re just carried away by the children’s energy-- you trust them. But soon you lose sight of them,   and only a small girl is left behind with you.

The plants around you become alarmingly lush as you take the girl’s hand and start after the rest of the children.  There’s a magic in the air you know the old man will sense if you come back from it--- he won’t forgive you for having let the children touch it. It’ll turn the children back into dogs,  and you will have ruined this place entirely. The dream ends before you can find them.