SEEING MY DREAMS BETTER

Welcome to the Retro Future (Close-up) 2015 / Mixed media collage on wood / Russell C. Smith

I wear my glasses to bed so I can see my dreams better. Recently, in one dream, I visited the Mayo Clinic, and joined a long line outside. It felt a lot like standing in line at the county fair, only much longer. I finally walked into the entrance, and began looking around for the menu board. At the information desk, I asked, “Where do I order the food?” “What food?” was his puzzled reply. The food I can order with the mayo spread all over it, or do we just eat mayo out of the jar with our finger?” His face, mouth, mustache elongated like faces in funhouse mirrors while he laughed as if I’d said the funniest thing ever. I knew deep inside dreamworld, I’d find my version of Mayo Clinic where I’d pack chicken and cheese sandwiches, bring a recyclable knife and hold the mayo. Dreams are time machines, to take us backwards to our reimagined past, or forward into multiple futures. Alternate lives go on inside dreams, and sometimes you’ll join a story already in progress. Another dream was the one with nothing but fragments of conversations I was having, talking with people at the beach, on stairs, in backyards, going up elevators – the only one I remember is me saying to a tall sleepy-eyed woman, “People used to call me patient, but I was just oblivious.” She responded, “I used to be called Irresponsible, but now they call me Doreen.” The Dreamworld has its own rules, regions, and roadways. Time is suspended. Events can run backwards or forwards. It’s impossible to know which room or point of view you’ll wind up inside. In dreams, people wonder things like, “Would world history turn out differently if the earth had spun in the reverse direction all this time?” Dream logic lets you revisit events and alter them to your liking. I have episodic dreams taking place on imaginary movie sets, where stars are relatively unknown. Up-and-comers. In backrooms and vestibules, those in or out of the movie trade ask the person next to them, “Should I know you?”