It was no Wonderland. . .

I had a rather disturbing dream last night.  Lately, I seem to be having them most nights, one right after the other.  This one woke me quite abruptly and I found myself deeply enmeshed in a grief-stricken panic attack.  I may have been shouting out loud, I don’t know.  The cat merely glared at me and didn’t say.   In the dream, it was night time and I was aboard one of two school buses that were getting ready to pull away from the front of a school in a neighboring town; which in this case, was an exact replica of HCS.  (It was Walton, specifically, although I can’t fathom why or how I know this since there were no other landmarks in my dream.)  The time period was the present.  The bus was full of people but I presume their presence was unrelated to my dream since they were silent and motionless and their identities were blotted into obscurity by the darkness.  I, on the other hand, was a ranting, raving, screaming lunatic!  (Why does that remind me of a Billy Joel song?  “…it just may be a lunatic you’re lookin’ for…”   No matter!  Billy Joel was not in my dream.)  Without warning, the bus revved its motor and began pulling away from the school.  “Wait!” I said to the driver.  “I have to get my things!”  He just kept driving.  “Please!” I pleaded, but there was still no response.  I began to panic.  I could see my personal items on the outside front steps…my purse, my music, my open violin case…and it was beginning to rain!  I could feel my heart filling with anguish as I sobbed and, once again, I begged the driver to stop.  His featureless, robotic response was, “Once the bus is moving, I’m not allowed to stop,” and he drove on.   My ‘poor spell’ escalated to a magnitude of new height……and that’s when I woke up.

Dreams, and the (debatable) significance they hold, have always captivated me.  Even more so due to the fact that I seem to remember mine more often than not and carry them with me for a time.  I used to simply enjoy the challenge of making the obvious connections between their nonsensical surface and reality.  For instance:  school bus = school is starting; Walton = I’ve recently been to the Fair; purse = I walked out of church without it on Sunday and had to go back to retrieve it; and, of course, violin = heart, which has been broken.  Now, although I do not claim to understand the process, I’ve come to appreciate the infinite depth of dreams and their considerably significant role in the well being of our emotional mentality.

From a bit of a more pragmatic side:  Why did I leave my most precious possessions unattended…outside…on a set of stone steps…at night…in the rain?  Why was my violin case open? Where had I been?  Why was I on the bus without them?  What the heck was I thinking?!    

It was no Wonderland, there was no Cheshire Cat (just Clementi), and I am not Alice.  However, I do  admire Alice's assertive "POOH!" when she let those cards have it with a good swift kick.