Old Friends in Dreams
While asleep, what little spare capacity seems to be left in my head decided it was time to crank out something worth watching – and created an entire play for me at the theater. I don't remember all of the story, but I do remember that one of the actresses was a girl I used to work with. I think about her often – which perhaps explains why she arrives in my dreams from time to time.
Sometimes in crowds I will see the side of a face and a ponytail, and look twice – of course it is never her.
I wonder how she is, what she's doing now, if she's okay. I've tried to find her several times, but never got very far. I worry that putting too much effort into finding her will be seen as something else by others. She was perhaps the closest friend I had for several years – as Forrest might have said we “was like carrots and peas”.
Dreams are strange. Somebody can be gone from your thought for months, and then a cog turns somewhere in your head, and a living, breathing, laughing, crying simulcra is brought into existence to act out a story that you will not remember after a few fleeting waking moments – and yet the impact the dream has on you will remain for hours.
I am reminded of a passage from the wonderful poem “A Martian Sends a Postcard Home”;
At night when all the colours die,they hide in pairsand read about themselves -in colour, with their eyelids shut.