Like I’m always saying I hardly ever remember my dreams, but when I do I seem to write about them here. Lucky you reading about them. (I think dreams are fascinating to the people having them, but otherwise are generally boring as shit to everyone else. read on, or not, your call – but you’ve been warned.)

Everyone wonders where dreams come from. And what they mean, or if they mean anything, and if it matters what they mean, or if they do. I don’t know, but I tend to believe there is some sense in the reason why we dream, and that in the mysteries presented to us there might be something worth knowing. Problem is finding that, and understanding it. So in the meantime I write my dreams hoping one day I’ll look back and know exactly what was meant. Too late, no doubt.

So last night I dreamt about Amy. Like many dreams there seemed no real beginning, like walking into a play in the middle of the first act. We were together talking, having met again somewhere in the portion of the dream I had missed. She was happy to see me, which surprised me. There was almost a sense of why didn’t you come to me sooner? The surprise was present in me, the viewer of the dream, and also in me the player. I went along with it then tentatively, happy, and somewhat relieved to discover I wasn’t quite Toad of Toad Hall, listening as Amy spoke half a dozen words for every one of mine. She seemed relieved too, like a burden had been taken from her. I looked at her in the dream wondering what it meant. Then as I listened and watched I began to see the differences in her from the Amy I had known and loved. Somehow she seemed a paler version of the whip smart girl I remembered. There was not that sizzle and wit, and but a fraction of that confidence that had me smiling or laughing or even quietly admiring her back in the day. There seemed something drawn about her, even desperate, as if she had endured hard times that had left her feeling wan.

I knew hard times too. Perhaps she could see it in me. In me it was a form of weariness I bottled up and hid from view. It was there, but I refused to bow to it. In her now, the relief she felt took the form of words. In my turn I smiled back and replied, but in me it was in the form of silent acceptance. Sometime after that the dream ended.

No, I don’t know.