A DREAM...

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By this title I don’t mean dream in its figurative sense of desire for the future. I mean the literal dream, that fragment of imagination that goes through our mind in that blessed unconscious state which is sleep.

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I don’t usually write down my dreams. However, many years ago, I had a dream which was so clear and vivid and yet so tranquil and serene that I did indeed record it on paper because I didn’t want to forget those sensations.

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And although this is a space for literary creation, it seems to me that that dream, by its nature, can be seen as a small fiction, constructed by my sleeping mind.

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Naturally, the text that I will post here will not accurately reproduce each word of the text then written, which was not intended to be published. I will, nevertheless, try to be true to the spirit (and age) with which I wrote it at the time, even if I feel tempted to reinterpret instead of just correcting. However, if I do feel it is imperious to add something, I will do so in italics, so it is distinguishable from the original text.

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THE DREAM

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Less than a month ago, I had a strange but very, very beautiful dream. That dream had an impression on me that no other has had so far (and which no other had after that, I add now, almost twenty years later). A wonderful impression that made me feel intense happiness and restored to me a kind of peace of mind that I had long tried to rediscover.

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At the time, I thought about writing a story inspired by the image that the dream had left on my memory, but I feared the benefic effect of that image would fade away and I couldn’t finish the tale.

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I had dreams before, but they were normal, ordinary dreams, which did not arouse in me the same intense sensations. Dreams that you dream at night and forget about the next day and so are not worthy of being recorded.

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A dream almost never has a beginning, middle and end. And this one too was made up of images without any introduction or continuity.

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The first thing I remember is that I was a girl two or three years older then I really am. From poise and clothes, I seemed to have come from an England somewhere between the 19^th century and the 1940’s. And I had just arrived somewhere (I know this because there was a suitcase in my hand) that could only exist in a dream. It was a tiny waiting room, where besides some long benches where five or six people from another ethnic group – possibly Indians from the way they were dressed and the colour of their skin, all dressed in white and with white turbans – were sitting, the only other thing was a set of about four doors (although they felt limitless) of dark red and very old metal. One of those doors opened for me by the hand of one of the Indians and I went through it to find myself in a wonderful world. It was a community of people from that same ethnic group, and that world was small but filled with natural beauty, peace and all things beautiful.

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I recall that in my dream, I was there to be some kind of mentor to those people and I remember that I truly loved them as if they were my children and they too cherished and respected me like a mother, although they were all older than me.

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But what moved me the most was the natural beauty of that world. In my dream, there were no houses, there were no cities; only vast fields where green was the dominant colour. There was a kind of garden with a blooming rosebush and whose roses were of a pink that wasn’t very pale but it wasn’t dark either. It was a kind of pink that felt more like light than colour. And after the rosebush, you entered in a kind of an indoor lake, although there were only walls on the sides, and not on the front and back. There was a kind of cement ceiling, and the edges too were cement walkways. I distinctly remember the image of me walking slowly on those edges in the company of one of the members of the community whom I felt was some kind of right hand in my job as a mentor. I don’t know what we were talking about, but I know we both did it in an honest and simple way.

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Although the edges of the lake were so narrow that two people could hardly pass side by side, you felt incredibly safe as you were walking there, an absolutely certainty that you would never fall in. The lake was the most wonderful part of that fantastic world. As we talked, our words echoed throughout the cement walls and there was a feeling of magnificent freshness. And it wasn’t only our words that echoed, but also our steps, which caused a certain loneliness. Not that negative loneliness that eats away at your soul but a loneliness that was synonymous with peace and calm.

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The water in the lake didn’t reflect us because it was green. Not the green from pollution that unfortunately we now see so often, but a natural green, maybe the result of a bed colonized by plants or algae over hundreds or even thousands of years.

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I imagine that if someone was to read this, they might ask «how does it end?» Well, this was a dream, and I have already said all that I remember. As I said, there is no introduction or continuity. The reasons why it caused the sensations I talked about are unknown to me, but I will never forget these images.

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I’m no psychoanalyst to know what this dream meant. And I would see that kind of interpretation as mere theory anyway...

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I know that what I thought then – that it been so vivid and striking that I would never forget it – proved to be true. Even if I hadn’t recorded it on paper for fear of forgetting something that had given me such pleasurable sensations, those images are still perfectly clear in my head, particularly the image of the lake and the absolute certainty that I wouldn’t fall in it.

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Generally speaking, my dreams of water are always dreams of a profound sense of safety. I remember one time when I dreamt I was in a beach that became isolated when the tide came in. To get out, you had to swim to another beach. And although my swimming skills are limited, in the dream, I passed with the greatest ease and without any fear. And there was another time when I dreamt I was in a small domed cave, filled with deep water. There was no noticeable exit. However, I stood there calmly afloat, without any panic or claustrophobia. In fact, I think that even the awareness that there was no exit was only in the back of my mind and only became more conscious when I woke up.

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In the case of the dream I described, the safety that I felt as I walked on the edges of the lake, with the full certainty that I would not fall in, was more complete than I ever felt in my awaking moments. I had other dreams which came close in vividness and intensity of sensations, but never again had I one that remained in my memory for so long with the same strength of the night in which I dreamt it.