One Weird Dream

I assign no significance whatsoever to dreams. They have no meaning, that is the point.  If they had meaning, then I would be back in high school perpetually, would have all my teeth crumbled out of my mouth and would either have long, thick, shiny black hair or long gorgeous curly brown tresses, some of the more reoccurring themes. But they do serve the purpose of cleaning out the files in the mind. I find it interesting to wake up, remember last night's dream and try to figure out what events contributed to the craziness. I think last night's started with the beer I had at our neighbor's house and went downhill from there. Here is a synopsis, there are more details, but this is a blog, not a novel.

In my dream, I drove to the KH to meet up with the Romanians, but there were only English speakers, lots and lots, the parking lot was full of people from all times in my life. I ended up with my neighbor and her niece (who happens to share the name of a friend who's project I was working on last night, a personalized book cover). Again, in the dream, the little girl's mom had just had breast surgery, either adding or taking away, and couldn't hold her baby, so I was helping out. We drove around with my neighbor Carmen driving and me holding the baby, no car seats were available or even deemed necessary. (I visited and held Elliot that afternoon, plus have been thinking about our friends' babies in Germany.)

We drove up to a house and some Romanian speaking people came out. I could barely mumble Good Morning in Romanian, and even then I was mispronouncing it. Usually I can speak great Romanian in my dreams, or at least it seems that way. (I had three phone conversations that day with Moldovans who don't speak English, plus dropped off some clothes and had a conversation in Romanian about pear jam.) They invited us to sit at a long table, more people kept coming, the table got even longer, Carmen and the baby kept getting further away, and I still could only mispronounce Good Morning. It became apparent from some literature that was brought out that they wanted to talk about why there is human suffering, specifically why God allowed the Holocaust and acts of human genocide and ethnic cleansing. (Ernst was reading to me from a book about the Holocaust the other night.) I knew that Good Morning would not be enough, but my brain was paralyzed.

I had Carmen text Ernst to say I needed help: he came and she left with the baby. Right then, two American people drove up in bright red horse buggies, and the shift was off genocide and on to horses. The main hosts hopped on horses, they were now dressed in period clothes, like from a Jane Austen novel. Then the mood changed, it was evident something bad was about to happen. The host and hostess were racing their horses on cobblestone streets (never good) and of course, the husband's horse took a spill and he died. The husband, that is, I don't know what happened to the horse.

It became the next day, we were still at the long table with the now widowed hostess, and she was telling us about life in Romania. She was saying once they were all sick with some kind of dysentery, and in order not to hurt the soil, they would take their human waste and boil it in large kettles in the kitchen before they disposed of it. (I had a conversation that day with Myra about Elliot's bowel habits, but I had also just read a new book about composting and acceptable fertilizer, so who really knows?) In the dream, I thought, wow these people are so wonderful, they care about the earth so much they boil their own feces in order not to harm the soil.

A bit anticlimactically, that is how the dream ended. So what are the files of my mind mulling over? Neighbors, babies, Ernst being better with language, learning Romanian, the Holocaust, horses and compost. There will be more cleaning out of files of my mind tonight, but I promise that will be the only post about a dream I will share. Anymore would be a nightmare.