Yesterday we strolled around Asbury Park. It rained heavily in the morning and when it lifted, the sun burned off the clouds and the boardwalk stretched like a splintered tongue towards packing crates-turned-crepe stands and slightly edgy, talkative surfers. The water (Florida hurricane coming?) was rip tide-churning and seemed to slap anyone who came too close.
Everything was fairly empty because of the earlier rain. I liked seeing the tourists from afar, dotted under the peeling Casino sign like roadside flowers.
My mother in law bought a silk tunic/sari thing for her daughter's
wedding from a sassy lady selling penis shaped bottle openers. I was in a pleasant fog all day.
I was disappointed to see that Madame Marie of the Bruce Springsteen song had died and supposedly her daughter works there instead. No one in my party seemed overly interested in getting a reading anyway.
But that purple hut and its third eye pyramid gifted me a wild dream. I was in a sort of nightclub, decorated like a garish carnival-- wheezing carousel, sing song-y men in purple tuxedos with tails, women in feathered leotards doing contortions, fire-eating girls and all the Hollywood hallmarks of a Great Depression traveling sideshow mish-mashed with me and my high school friends, dancing and talking about an upcoming blizzard.
My high school friend Dustin was there, who frequently appears in my dreams and has for years, despite the fact I haven't seen him in at least five years and we weren't especially close. He's become a symbol, maybe, synthesized energy of youth and maybe longing. There he was: drinking a beer on the side of the dance floor, watching me and my friends dance; it was all vaguely sexual and outside of time, like dreams always are. I'm me as an adult, but he's himself at nineteen, and some of the players on that dance floor are people I've met at various times of my life (one friend, Megan, is there, with green hair, inexplicably). The squeezebox music is out of time, like Dustin is. Or maybe I'm out of time, stepping into the alternate world, the portal where Dustin and these people live, dancing and drinking outside boundaries of space. (I'm sure you've had a dream so vivid you had to wonder if the dream was real and the sleeping person you are is the illusion-- you know, those conversations you've had in college when you thought you were insanely deep).
But there's a blizzard coming, I told everyone, including Dustin, who can't hear me, because of the music. He disappears, and I suddenly can't find anyone I know. Everyone is going home, and I don't have a ride. I am now crying and alone and can't find a coat. The coat check girl is screwing a guy right in front of me: she's probably on top of my coat.
I felt so alive in my desperation. This is the part of the dream that seems so real: the frantic need to say, a blizzard is coming everyone! I need to find Dustin! I don't have my coat! And the carnival churns on around me as if I'm not there.
When I woke up a few minutes ago, it felt like this dream was a burning prophecy from Madame Marie's shack. It felt that important.
Now that I typed it all out, it looks just like any dream I might have before the new school year starts up again. Pretty prosaic. You can break it down so easily, especially if you know me.
circus= life/summer/fun/anxiety to start school
Dustin= youth/longing/sexuality/the past
Dustin's disappearance= typical abandonment issues/fear of getting old
lack of coat= insecurity/exposure
slutty coat check girl= everyone is having fun but me
blizzard= baby/pregnancy procrastination
I'll set up a shack on that boardwalk: dream interpretation. And cheese fries.
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