Report from Dreamland 2008

 I was so tired one afternoon in 2008 that before lunch I lay down and slept for an hour.   It was not easy falling asleep in the middle of the day, but when I did I had one of those incredibly realistic and vivid dreams...

I could have drawn you a map of the place I visited and picked out the photographs of the people I met from any rogue's gallery you showed me.  Everything was as bright and real as watching it on a cinema screen.

The building I visited was a rambling old structure that seemed to be owned by the nearby Roman Catholic cathedral, because there were priests and nuns going in and out of one of the offices on the ground floor.   The rest of the building was leased to a very eclectic collection of businesses and groups.  

You went up the sweeping stone staircase from a lobby that would have done justice to Grand Central station.     There was a theater where a school group was rehearsing an elaborate and remarkably risque musical Einstein's Things based on a comic strip.  The bits I saw would have got them thrown out of the building if the landlord had seen them.

Along from there was a big room where I was doing a course of some sort.   But after it was over it was always interesting to wander in next door, where some sort of advertising agency or publisher had offices.   You could just stroll in without anybody asking you who you were or what you were doing.   It was that sort of freewheeling set-up.

The various rooms of the business were each given over to people working on different projects.    In one of them, a weary woman photographer had covered an entire wall in lurid covers from tabloid magazines and was taking pictures of the resulting montage of images.  

In other rooms people were working on equally outlandish but completely different projects.  

I stopped in at a waiting room or staff room which was full of comfortable couches and strewn with expensive glossy magazines, most of them still in the unopened plastic mailing envelopes.   There were a couple of issues of The New Yorker that I was tempted to put in my bag, since it was obvious they'd never be missed.

One of the magazines carried that comic strip that had inspired the musical they were rehearsing in the big hall.    

I sat back on one of the big couches and drowsed for a few minutes.    The feel of the room reminded me of the bedroom I'd had as a child.   (This is the first time I remember wanting to sleep in a dream.)   Then I got up and started tidying up some of the piles of magazines before I left.  

For the first time, someone who seemed to be in charge came sweeping into the room trailed by some assistants.   He was talking rapidly, finishing by exclaiming that everyone was invited to lunch.  Then he glanced at me, assuming that I worked there, and diplomatically remarked that he wouldn't disturb me from what I was doing.    I nodded and made some inane remark that someone had to keep the cars running that the clowns would get out of.   

They swept off and I had the feeling that maybe I should be on my way instead of making myself at home in a place I had no business in.    

I made my way down the big staircase and across the foyer filled with strangers, then down the stone steps at the start of the building.   There was a stall selling second-hand books and my eye was drawn to them.  

One of the office workers coming down the steps with me saw me glance in his direction and offered me a cigarette from the pack he was opening.   I felt foolish having to explain that I was actually trying to read the cover of a book on the stall behind him.  

He shrugged and was lost in the crowd of people hurrying off to catch buses or trains.   Not being in such a hurry, I stopped to look at some of the books on display.    There was a whole section devoted to Naval warfare and I paused to look at one about fleet operations near Iceland in World War II.  I noticed to my surprise that the book next to it had been inscribed to Don Tuck, an old friend and bibliographer.   I was tempted to buy it but the $35 price sticker was a deterrent.   

That sequence, the last before I awoke, was notable because I remember somebody saying on television that he could not actually read in dreams -- that maybe it used a different part of the brain.   This was the first time I remember actually reading anything while I was dreaming.  

I found myself in bed, feeling refreshed.   Obviously I was not just short of sleep, but short of the REM stage of sleep where dreams take place.   Catching up on my quota of dreams had made all the difference to how I felt.     

Straightaway I sat down at the keyboard for 20 minutes and captured what I remembered of the dream before all those bright and realistic images faded from my consciousness.  ##