One Must Imagine Sisyphus Happy

A bedroom

I wake lying on my side, which is uncommon. I am greeted by three zombies scratching toward me. Ugh, not this. With a gesture I push them away. The room is lit by one long window opposite me, so the zombies are only in silhouette. They obey my command, turn and walk at an orderly pace toward the window. There is a shelf below the window and the zombies climb on it and sit, like a row dolls. Further away, I command. They crawl out the window and out of sight.

There's not much else to tell about the room. The window is covered by a sheer white curtain that lets in filtered light. I compel the sun to rise outside and the window gets brighter but it doesn't improve the ambient lighting in the room much. How about some better company? A woman appears on that same shelf in front of the window, again in silhouette. I notice her long legs most prominently. She begins to walk toward me, but she looks like just a shadow. A bit uncertain, The Dreaming shudders. My lucidity slips and time skips.

Another bedroom

Now I am in a different bedroom, but still lying on my side. The light is a bit better here. I make out some furniture. It seems like a child's bedroom. The window has moved to the wall at my feet and there is a door to at the head behind me. Through the door I hear my mother and sister. I groan. I should have stuck with the zombies. I roll out of bed and through the door, which opens to a dining area and kitchen.

A kitchen

There are my mother and sister. My sister is panicking and arguing, as she always does. My mother is making excuses and casting blame, as she always does. I have trod this corner of my psyche much too often. And while I don't like it, I've learned not to fight it. My sister is my Self-Righteousness. My mother is my Cowardice. It does nothing to fight them, as it only fuels their insidiousness. Instead I have learned to counter them by cultivating their opposite positive forces: Empathy and Courage. But I am no saint, so often the best I can muster is Apathy.

Their bickering is briefly interrupted by a woman who seems to be the owner of this home. We are guests visiting from out of town. The woman is middle-aged and has two kids. She explains that it is time for their family to go, but we three should stay and look after the house. They will be gone a few days. I intuit that the reason we are visiting is so that we will all attend a big party, like a reunion. The woman and her kids leave. Mother and sister resume bickering.

Time skips ahead another day. My sister brings in the mail, which includes some thank you cards with photos from an event.

"Look at the times on the photos!" My sister gripes. "This was yesterday. They went to the event without us!"

"No! We didn't know!" The mother retorts. "The WiFi was off and we couldn't see the date."

"Maybe they don't like us and they ditched us." I offer, partly with sarcasm, but also an invitation to look inward for the reason. "Or maybe it's our fault that we didn't know to drive separate yesterday." Not wanting to say or hear more, I return to the bedroom and lay down.

A bedroom

The family returns. There is commotion in the next room, but I don't catch all of it. More about the WiFi is all I hear. My sister enters and hands me my wallet and Social Security card. "We need to get ready to leave," she orders. I put them in my pocket but maybe they get lost in the bed sheets. I find it odd that I would be carrying around my Social Security card.

Then the two kids enter. A girl and a boy. This must be their room. The girl looks at me through the headboard, which is a metal frame with narrow vertical bars. "Is this your bed?" The girl asks. Before I can say anything, she teases, "If it is, AT&T must not like you because you've only got three bars!"

I look at the bars of the bedframe. Indeed, many of them are broken or gone. I look to my sister and ask "Wasn't this your bed a long time ago?" trying to move the conversation to something light. The bed reminds me of her old daybed and I suppose it to be a hand-me-down we have given to this other family.

"Yes" my sister replies and she goes on talking with the kids about who-knows-what.

I roll out of the bed, careful to refind my wallet and Social Security card which fits in a little sleeve. I wonder about what the girl said. I get bars but why AT&T? They don't make beds. Beds. Bars. Oh, bars like signal strength bars. I turn to her: "I just got that. Three bars."

She gives me a goofy face, as if to say "Duh" and turns back away. What a brat. It was a mildly coherent joke and occasionally dream characters surprise me with their wit so I do try to acknowledge them when they do. I could do without this girl's sass though. Oh well. Nothing to get bothered about.

I turn to the boy, who is the younger sibling and sits of the floor playing with a toy. He is quiet. I form no other opinion about him, but can say that "quiet" is a good trait for a child.

The dream is fading. My sister gives me a look like "It's time to go." I double check my wallet and Social Security card. I still wonder, Why am I carrying that around?

---

I always qualify that I am not really a Freudian but I think it's interesting to look at it from that point of view. The symbolism of my mother and sister is nothing new, nor is my detached reaction to it. The stuff about Self-Righteousness and Cowardice come from years of introspection, not spontaneous to this dream. The idea of signal strength and WiFi/network failing is a recurring dreamsign. I'm not sure exactly what to attribute it to. Maybe my level of lucidity? Maybe. The SS card is new. I suggest it might symbolize this near-useless baggage about my family and younger life that I don't need to carry around any more. It is part of my past but it is an identity that I no longer relate to and would prefer to leave it behind.