ONE

Some Dreams

"I've got to tell you this dream I had last night. You're going to scream. It was so obvious. You won't believe this. Get your tea and come here and I'll tell you. I usually don't understand my dreams, but this one. . . you're going to howl. Here it is. I went over to my boyfriend's house and I went in. Interrupted him with his new girlfriend. He jumped up, all flustered, and trying to explain, and I said - get this - 'relax, it's okay. I just came over to get my marked copy of Tom Sawyer."

The dreamer and her girlfriend giggle loudly, then burst into laughter. "Isn't that obvious? Can you even believe it?" The other patrons of this crowded coffeehouse [1] take the outburst in stride, even though many are quietly studying. I'm at a table a few feet away, probably the only person here who isn't a University of Colorado student. I'm trying to read A portrait of the artist as a young man.[2] What makes it hard, at this juncture, is not the noise of conversation, or the periodic hiss of milk being foamed behind the espresso counter [3], nor is it the cold drafts from the door when it opens to envelop or disgorge another body to or from Pearl St. outside, just a few yards from my seat. What makes it hard is this woman's insistence on the transparency of her dream.

I'm an eavesdropper by nature, and a Jungian [4] by upbringing, and if there's one thing I've learned sitting through years of my mother's seminars, it's that dreams are always devious. I'm tempted to abandon Joyce to interrogate this woman. "Excuse me," I'd say, "your dream is not as clear to me as it evidently is to you. Granted, finding your boyfriend in flagrante seems clear, you having apparently just broken up with him, but what about the book? Why a book, first of all? Why Tom Sawyer [5] in particular, and why a marked copy, for god's sake?" But you're guilty too, I remind myself, and chagrined, I have to admit that I made the same mistake, three months ago, at the beginning of this journey [6].

In the dream, an old Chinese man took away my part in a play, giving it to Rachel. Handing me a rake, he sent me out in the field to till onions. At the time, I too said "what an obvious dream."

In actuality, I was going away, leaving Rachel to take care of my business. And instead of my usual role, I was out "in the field," digging up gigs, digging up connections, sifting through all the possible roads and towns and coffeehouses and theaters to find my own niche in a music scene already cramped with guitar players. Now, I scold myself. Why an old Chinese man? Why onions? Dreams are never obvious, the less so the more they seem.[7]

[1] The Trident Coffeehouse and Bookstore in Boulder, Colorado. The bookstore and cafe are separate, but accessible to each other through an open double door[8].

[2] By James Joyce. This is an account of the early life of Stephen Dedalus, a character that appears also in Ulysses. At the time, I found many parallels between Stephen's experiences and my own[9].

[3] Coming from Western Washington [10], I expect to find Espresso Bars everywhere. However, here they are amateurs[11].

[4] Viennese Psychologist Carl Jung was one of the students of Freud. His psychology takes as one of its axioms that the human psyche is autonomous, and has its own individual growth process that may conflict with conscious attitudes. Jung saw dreams as concrete symbols that did not stand for anything in particular, but that had their own meaning. Basically put, a dream means what it means, nothing more, nothing less[12]. Every image and action in a dream is precisely what it is for a reason. If one does not take every detail into consideration, one misses essential elements of the dream[13].

[5] I can make a stab at an interpretation here. Tom Sawyer is the paradigm of the mischievous young man, and could speak to the relationship between the dreamer and her boyfriend. Note that, in the dream, the boyfriend does not necessarily represent himself in reality. More likely, he is an image of whatever part he played in the life of the dreamer. I would be curious to inquire about the new girlfriend in the dream: is this an actual real-world new girlfriend, or someone else that the dreamer knows, or is it a complete stranger?[14]

[6] I left on this tour[15] on September 19th, 1991, and returned on December 9th. I made the same trip (in reverse order) again in February/March 1992, taking approximately one month to make the same trip[16].

[7] (See footnote 4) The old Chinese man may have to do with the Senex, the archetype of the wise old man. A fitting figure to be making me do the dirty work necessary to find myself and my maturity[17].

Onions, like dreams, like this narrative, have many layers and can be seen as a symbol for any sort of psychological work[18]. No matter how deep I go into this dream, there is always one more layer to be peeled away. Onions also remind me of my father, his love for raw onions in salads and sandwiches[19]. Why am I being handed a rake?[20]