And the Universe smiled…sort of…

Today I managed to scribble messages of love on two specially purchased Christmas cards. I made a great start – instead of writing ‘Hello’ I wrote ‘Hellow’. My head cold has been doing weird things to my head (weirder than normal). Instead of going back to bed I trudged into town to post my two letters feeling like that guy who ran the first marathon to deliver a message. On the way I snapped a few pictures. In the town I got some stares as if they’d never seen anyone point a camera at seemingly nothing at dusk before. After posting my letters I stopped off at the charity shop and there on the floor, almost hidden from view, was a book I knew had to exist, but I’d never seen…the King John volume. (It’s a series of the Kings and Queens of England). I had to get on my knees to pick it up. Opening it I found lots of pictures of medieval knights in hauberks and new images of King John…and all this happiness for .99 pence! I’d have paid more, but I wasn’t going to tell them that. I paid, stuck the book in my ‘I Love King John’ bag and slowly made my way up main street feeling like the Universe had smiled on me. The smile only lasted until I reached my house. There in the drive was a van from one of the utilities. I’d noticed the strange yellow marks on the sidewalk coming around the corner. Apparently there was a gas leak…just fifteen feet our house. Great! The guy checked the house and found no leakage. That was a relief. Being exploded in this house doesn’t appeal to me. If I have a traumatic end I don’t want to end up haunting this place. Especially as it wouldn’t even be a place, it’d be an pile of Victorian bricks. If our house exploded from a gas leak that would probably set off the large sewer conduit nearby…not good! Our corpses would probably end up labeled public health hazards. There’s no romance in that.

Feeling shattered I forced myself to stay awake to make sure I’d sleep through the night (fat chance – awake at 3), but about eight they started on the road with a jackhammer. I went to bed anyway and miraculously fell asleep. Unfortunately, I woke in the middle of an unpleasant dream. I’ve been reading this book on interpreting our own dreams by Ann Faraday called The Dream Game. Written in the early 70’s, she believes (or believed if she’s gone to the great dream in the sky) that first we have to look at our dream and ask ourselves if it’s literal…ie did I really walk into a medieval church turned into a house and find three people stabbed to death and one half dead (The surviving one grabbing my ankle as I stepped over her creeping me out)? No, this has never happened to me before (thank goodness). Faraday theorizes that if a dream isn’t literal then it’s probably our brain trying to tell us something important we don’t consciously know. So what is my brain trying to tell me? I don’t know. The Goblin was going to leave me at the door (we were on foot), but something about the entrance creeped me out so I asked him to come with me so he did. My creepy intuition was right. All three victims were female, the mother and two youngest daughters. The survivor was the eldest daughter. The Goblin must have called the police as they soon arrived and I was trying to prepare them for what they’d find, but they were really dumb and weren’t listening. Maybe I’m trying to tell myself something, but I’m not listening. Faraday believes that dreams use a lot of symbolism (that only we the dreamer can interpret), but our brains also use images as puns. Weird! (My dream not dreaming in puns). I’ll have to spend some time thinking about my creepy dream and see if I can figure out what’s going on in my brain…or maybe I’ll try to forget about it and focus on filling my brain with lovely pictures like these…