dozing

Dreams are seriously weird shit, last night’s more than most.

My good woman often asks if I dreamed last night. A psychologist would do, wouldn’t she? Mostly the answer is no, occasionally yes, but I don’t remember anything, and on blue-moon occasions I remember them vividly.

I don’t see dreams as windows into the soul or anything else, not prophesies or premonitions. Sometimes they give pause for thought.

The new cat wakes me at 5:59, ploughing my armpit with his tongue, bashing his cat skull into my nose, purring like a diesel. He’s reliable, punctual: I’m sure he reads the clock. We all rise and piss, then I climb back up to the loft-bed to try for more sleep. And in the fitful dozing comes this surreal mélange of image and emotion.

I’m in a strange city, known to the dreaming me but not the real me. I have to park a car and visit a building for some purpose. I return and catch a bus, destination undetermined. The bus morphs into a mobile veterinary unit. The cat is being examined by a nice vet. He sticks a finger up the cat’s arse.

Suddenly my son is with me, aged maybe four, the blond hair, the child’s pure smile. I feel I haven’t seen him for 29 years because he’s just turned 33. I don’t retain vivid memories of my kids as kids, so I rejoice just to see him again, my gorgeous boy. I delight to think that I will have the opportunity to bring him up again, this time using the wisdom I have at 60, not 31.

The brief intensity of the emotions is beyond words. I hug him to me, and almost as I do, he is gone.

Again I’m with the cat, in a national park where no cat is allowed. A ranger is coming. What to do? Pretend the cat is under voice command. The cat climbs a cliff, won’t respond to my calls. The ranger smiles, at the cat’s antics or at the prospect of a hefty fine? I can’t tell.

I wake again, the cat beside me on the doona, the JRT jelly-beaning on the floor. My son is 40 kilometres away, but I hugged him last night, and feel much better for it.

Rock on.