I have several recurring dreams. One of them is about a city. It's not a real city. It's a dream city, but it has buildings and streets like any other city. Sort of. Sometimes the streets are narrow and sometimes they're wide. It depends on whether I'm walking or driving in the city.
The buildings are like other buildings in other cities. Almost. There are subtle differences. The building I visit most in these dreams is a movie theater. It's old and shabby, sort of like a second-run theater from the '70s. I pass by it in nearly every dream of the city, and sometimes I stop and look it over. I've even been to a movie or two inside it.
There are several used bookstores in the city, and I spend a lot of time looking for them. I've been to all of them at least once, but usually I have trouble finding them. When I do find them, they might have only one or two books, or there will be a lot of books but nothing of interest to me. One of the stores has two floors of books but only few books on each floor. When I do find a lot of books, I find that I can't read the titles on the spines.
I've dreamed of this city for years now. Some of the buildings are as familiar to me as the real buildings I see every day. Especially the movie theater.
I have no idea what any of this means, if anything. It's just a dream, after all.
8 comments:
Very cool. I have recurring dreams too, but mine tend to be more recurring in theme and feel than the exact same location as in yours.
Most of my recurring dreams are transportation dreams - cars, buses, trains, but usually subways. Those are always NYC subway trains but...not the actual subways we ride. For instance, there are stops (on various lines) in Manhattan at 14th Street at 8th Avenue, 7th Avenue, 6th Avenue, Union Square, 3rd Avenue and 1st Avenue. In my dream I'm at another 14th Street on a different (yes, non-existent) line, and when I get on the train and look at the map, all of the stops are different.
I've also had many Bouchercon dreams (and you and Judy have been in some of them!) as well as (as previously mentioned) used bookstore dreams. In mine, I stumble on a new (to me) store with rooms and rooms of books, including shelves of old paperbacks (British and American), some real ones and others new to me. I stand them and pick them off the shelves as quickly as I can - old Popular Library and Dell mapbacks, but also old Penguins and Collins Crime Club White Circle (think the cover of Martin Edwards' THE GOLDEN AGE OF MURDER).
I always wake up from those dreams feeling really good.
There are several used bookstores that I've dreamed about off and on for years. As far as I know, they don't exist and never did. I even dreamed that one of them moved and I went and found the new location. But they always have great stock and I've bought hundreds of old paperbacks and pulps in them. One in particular I can see so vividly, along with its surroundings, that if I ever do run across it, I'll know it right away. I don't expect that to happen, though.
There's an issue of Neil Gaiman's Sandman comic where a character wonders into a dream city. Or rather into the dreams of the city itself. He moves to the middle of nowhere because he's afraid of what happens when the city wakes up.
I had a recurring dream about visiting a bookstore in a nearby town. It was basically someones house, but you could go in and buy books in different rooms. The dreams were consistent enough in the bookstores appearence that I think I forgot it did not exist.
I frequently dream about my childhood home which was at the end of a cul-de-sac. In reality, the house (in fact, the entire subdivision) was razed in the seventies to make way for bigger houses and by that time I hadn't lived in the house for years. But I often dream I'm back there--although the house looks different (bigger, smaller, more rooms, different furniture), I always "know" it's my house. I seem to be looking for something in these dreams, but I can't say I've ever found it.
My recurring dream is I'm driving a car backwards real fast and it is out of control and the brakes do not work. I am afraid to have that one analyzed.
I like your recurring dream better than mine. I have variations of what I call the "you can't get there from here" dream, in which I am going somewhere, but it is impossible to get there from where I am. The specifics vary...I might be trying to find the entrance to a hotel, or a meeting room in a hotel, or someone's house...but I can't get there from here...
I have two recurring dreams. In the first dream someone is chasing me (but, they never catch me!). In the second dream, I'm a student again and I can't find the class I signed up for (it's the First Day of College). I always wake up before I find the class. Like you, I have no idea what these dreams mean but I get them about once a month.
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