The Fourth Factor

I’m in what seems to be a bathhouse—a basic, no-frills rectangular room with a concrete floor, on the large side, with a number of small pools and folding screens that can be moved around. Although the setting also seemed shifty and indefinite in a more basic way—a “I had this dream early in the night” kind of way.

Weird things are constantly happening there, strange figures materializing and disappearing again in a sort of timeless convergence - it almost seems like there's nothing outside of this place, even though in one sense I arrived here at a definite point of time - but nobody else seems aware of it. But this is normal: I hadn’t been able to see them once, but I had been through a long process—all of it, every stage. I go over it in memory: some parts of it had been unpleasant or even frightening, but there’s nothing frightening about it now that I can see the whole of it instead of just pieces. It’s familiar—it even feels like home somehow.

I seem to have come here with two young women, and at some point—it’s very difficult to say what order things happened in in this dream—I say to one that this is a special place, that you can feel it in the atmosphere. I’m curious if she can feel it too, on some level. At some other point, perhaps earlier or perhaps later, one asks me if there’s anyone here I’m interested in romantically. I say that there is one person, but I’ve only spoken to him a couple times. And he hasn’t shown up here for a couple hundred years now—but I feel it’s best not to mention that.

Also, at one point, one of them is arranging stuff around a pool we're going to use. There isn't enough space for two people to do it without getting in each other's way, but I don't want to just sit there, so I clean up some of the central area at the same time.

Later on, towards morning, I have another dream. I’m now in a large house with my bouzouki instructor for a lesson. I have the impression that it’s not his house or mine—that he’s an employee here. There are interruptions to our lesson—we have to temporarily leave the house at one point and go somewhere else in a car.

But we do make it back inside eventually, and he tells me to go get something. He gives me directions to the room and tells me to get #5, indicating approximately where in the room I’ll be able to find it.

It’s only a few rooms away, and I make it there without difficulty. It wouldn’t be an exaggeration to call this house a mansion, but the room I now find myself in wouldn’t be out of place in a palace. It’s richly decorated, 18th-century style, in blue and silver. There’s another doorway on the other end, and one of the longer walls, to my left, is covered with shelves, all of which are lined with ornate silver music boxes. They’re all individually numbered, and #5 is one of the farthest to the left, about mid-way up.

It occurs to me that people who decorate rooms like this usually don’t like other people coming in and messing with them. But, at the same time, this place has the look of an archive. It will probably be OK, then. I take the music box off the shelf. It has its number and what seems to be some notes about it carved onto the top in a rather messy handwriting.

I open it there—but unfortunately, I can’t really remember what happened then, although the dream kept going. Before carrying it back, I notice what looks like a bone flute lying on the floor, the only thing out of place here. Perhaps a child was playing with it and left it there, I think.

(8.11.18)

It seems I’ve gone to a bank to figure out why I can’t get my checking account hooked up with Paypal. They’ve given me a form to fill out—I’m sitting at a large table with a few other customers scattered around it while a female employee stands behind a desk at one end of the room.

But the form is proving quite frustrating. All the questions are so unclear that I keep having to call the woman over to explain what information it’s asking me for. And it seems that a lot of what it’s asking for is other people’s information—relatives, friends, people who would be able to do a particular thing for me.

I call the woman over to explain yet another question—it claims to be questions 4 through 10, although it seems to be a simple yes or no question. What’s this one asking me for? She tells me that one doesn’t actually count for anything, and I can write anything I want there. Well, fine then. I write: “yes?/no!” below it. The woman seems a little dubious. But if it doesn’t matter, then presumably it doesn’t have to make sense. Besides, I say, how often do you get the chance to answer a question like that? And she seems to accept that.

I had hoped to have this matter settled today, but since I’m going to have to get in touch with so many people to get the information I need to fill the form out, it looks like it’s going to drag out for a while longer. But then it dawns on me: this thing is making me think about the ways I’m connected with other people. Could it be that that’s what this was really about?

Later that night, in a different dream, I’m going to a place like a big department store with a group of people. A lot happened in this one, but in the only part I can remember well, we have all met up at a café that's part of some larger space. We sit at a couple small, round tables to one side of the counter. There are some nice-looking pastries on display, but I don’t recall anyone actually ordering food.

I was hoping to sit next to Katya, but she ended up at the other table, and other people sat down there before I could move over. Instead, I seem to be sitting beside an old schoolmate, someone I haven’t seen or even thought about since we were both 10. We talk about life back then. She mentions a particular boy, saying she remembers I had a lot of classes in common with him. I can’t remember whether I did or not. It’s not something I would have taken note of. I say that I remember having a lot of classes in common with another boy, though. She doesn’t remember who he is at first. But then she says, “Oh, the one with the naked fairy dream?” This is referring to the dream records that are displayed here in this café. It seems they were collected by Judge what’s-his-face from some of the students back then as part of some project—maybe like a public display of kids’ artwork, like you see sometimes— and by some massive coincidence, they ended up here, where we are.

I have my bouzouki in my lap, in its case. I’m thinking of taking it out and playing it. It would have nothing whatsoever to do with anything that happened in the past, and that would be nice.

22.4.18