Night Vision

I am in what looks to be some kind of large home improvement store, having travelled here to meet up with some people. It is a very large store: towards the back, the aisles actually turn into streets, which is where I need to go. I’ve been this way enough times to where I’ve got the route memorized, and when I reach the signpost with a number of street signs, I take a left onto Montaigne Street.

Montaigne street has a rather sleazy vibe, with a sort of over-the-top neon-over-historic-district aesthetic. But it seems completely confined to this particular street, and then it’s back into plain downtown area. However, something is strange: the street I’m looking for doesn’t seem to be here. This is an area full of little winding streets, so I look around for a bit to make sure I haven’t missed it, then head back out to where the store begins and go along Montaigne Street all over again. But the street really seems to have gone now.

I go back to the store area and browse the stationary near the front as I consider what to do next. Maybe I forgot to check something, and the meet-ups aren’t happening right now. It’s going to be a few hours before I head back, and I need to figure out what I’m going to do for dinner at some point. I also decide, in a moment of latent lucidity, that I’m going to change the name of Montaigne Street to Montero Street, as that seems to fit it better. In the end, I just decide to look around the store for a while longer.

Towards one corner, I find a series of furnished rooms. They’re a bit like display rooms you might actually find in a home improvement store showing off appliances or furnishings, only these ones seem to be set up as miniature haunted houses. I enter the room on the far end first, one that’s almost completely dark. This one seems to have a “pet ghost” theme. As I explore the various furniture and parts of the room, certain things happen, triggered by my presence, such as noises or motion, and even the visible ghosts of cats. But I don’t find the place scary at all. It’s actually rather relaxing. I lie on the bed in the corner for a while listening to things rustle and thinking about dead pets from times gone by.

After a while, I move on, going into a couple more rooms I can no longer remember before heading into what’s clearly set up as a haunted nursery. This room has a lot more light coming in, so it’s easy to see the furnishings, most prominently, a young child’s bed – not actually a crib, but something that seems made for children about that age, maybe from an earlier era. The bed is dishevelled, and there are several piles of feces either on it or on the floor nearby, hinting towards neglect. It doesn’t really look real and definitely doesn’t smell real.

As I examine a chest on the side of the room facing the store, I suddenly see a large group of ghosts standing together, looking in my direction. One of them, an older gentleman in a suit, gestures that I should come over to them. I do, and they lead me to a long table set up for a meal. It seems that the store has staffed their haunted rooms with real ghosts, and now that they’re off-duty, they’re closing up the rooms and inviting me to eat with them.

It’s only once were seated and the meal begins – tea and pastries – that they begin talking, or possibly that’s just when I become able to understand them. The older gentleman is seated on my left, and we have a conversation in which I distinctly remember telling him about my cat, Thomas, who died 12 years ago.

At some point, the scene changes – the implication seems to be that time has passed, and I’m travelling somewhere with three or four of them. One opens the back door of a black car, and another climbs in. I realize I’m supposed to get in as well. I notice I’m wearing a smooth black coat coming down somewhere between my knees and waist and a pair of black leather gloves.

The scene changes further after that to a completely new setting – and while the store, at least, was almost certainly located in the U.S., this place has more the vibe of a developing country, possibly in the Caribbean. The man showing me around takes me past an area where many small boats are docked. He seems to feel this is a touristy area, not really representative of the place itself.

At a clothing market, somebody comes up to him. It seems he’s needed somewhere immediately, so it looks like I’m going to be on my own for the next couple hours. We agree to meet back up here in that general timeframe – this doesn’t seem to be a place where people make appointments more precise than that.

15.7.21

I am in Dream-Prague with Saimi, showing her some parts of the city I like. She and I have both just recently arrived there, although it seems as if we’re here for entirely different reasons, and the visits just happened to coincide. We seem to be in the northwest region of the city.

The place I’m showing her now is one that not many people know about, a neighborhood of winding streets on a hill, neat rows of houses on either side of the streets – a quiet, peaceful place. The houses are covered with what look like enormous cobwebs, large enough to completely cover most of the roofs. I tell Saimi that in the early morning, when it’s misty, they shine like silver.

We then head down to the tram stop together. This, unlike the webbed streets, is a location that’s familiar to me from a previous iteration of Dream-Prague, although it doesn’t correspond to any waking-life location. On that occasion, the whole area had a much rougher vibe and was also undergoing construction. Perhaps with this in mind, I pull out my cell phone to show Saimi a couple pictures of how it used to look.

I input the password first, which isn’t my waking-life password. This one is also six digits long, and the numbers signify a personally important date – there’s a charged quality to the memories the date pulls along with it. The date is December 22, I think (although I can’t remember the year now, or precisely what the date’s significance was). When I find the pictures, I notice strings of triangular orange flags in some of them, which tells me that I must have taken them during the protests.

The wait at the tram stop is rather long (justified in-dream, I think, by it being a weekend). There’s a whole little scene here with a man who’s decided to teach his dog another song (it already knows two). It’s a large dog, but friendly: it puts its paws on me, almost knocking me over. The song he’s chosen is one of those old, popular ones most people know: it has kind of a jazz standard feel to it, lots of seventh chords and a melancholy tone. The lyrics are in German. I don’t remember what all of them are, though, and nobody there seems to know them all offhand, so I get my phone back out to look them up. While I do, a man in a red shirt sings a version of them in English – although I have the impression he only remembers about half of them and is making the rest up as he goes, and he also starts at the chorus for some reason.

Once the tram arrives, I get my ticket punched – I just have a one-use one since I haven’t been here long. The tram heads straight east, neither turning or changing height so that, as the ground level falls, we’re positioned high enough to see most of the city from above. I look out over it. I’m glad to be back here, and I’m already looking forward to walking around all these places again.

Eventually, the landscape changes. We now seem to be going through a park, which is also familiar to me. I’m puzzled at first – I don’t remember the tram going here. But I do remember seeing the tracks back when I worked in this place, and so it does make sense that it would go here.

The plot seems to have changed now, with the dream partly drawing on memories of the old wildlife hospital, a different time and place. I still used to work here, although in the dream, it seems to be mostly a long-time crew instead of short-term volunteers. It seems as if this iteration also suffers from financial issues and is staffed at about half the level it should be to run it properly. This is currently relevant since the people on the tram are now coming to work here as well, which brings it about to where it should be – in fact, it seems as if I’m taking them here for that purpose.

As we walk through the park, I lead the way. I find everybody together out back behind a building, where they're seated in rows on the ground. As I walk between the rows, I happen to glance down at my own legs and notice I’m wearing brown leather sandals and khaki pants that are cut off at the knee. Not far off is the man who’s in charge of this place, who’s grateful to have so many people coming. There’s a sense that there was once some kind of past tension between us that was wrapped up in why I left, and he’d since come to recognize was his fault. But that all seems to be over now.

There’s conversation now, and something about a ceremony that’s going to take place soon, where Rae, NC and KD’s daughter, will break a staff in two and then remake it.

3.7.21