What does this mean?

Yes, comments are enabled again. You don’t have to be a registered user, or whatever, and I’m not sure how that even happened. I blame gremlins.

***

Carmela, my woulda-been* college girlfriend, once told me she had a running dream of ancient Rome or Greece, wherein her former self married at an early age, lost her husband to some foreign war, and spent her spinsterly existence working a loom, looking out upon the fields beyond her window. As Carmela matured, her dream self matured, too. The two moved forward together in time’s river. Sometimes I wonder what they’re both up to.

I’ve written before about my recurring dream: a sandstone landscape to the northwest, a narrow passage through steep-sided rocky hillsides. There was a time when this region would draw me in, but the last time I saw it, I drove past, thinking wistful thoughts about a time when I would have stopped and had myself a little hike. See, there was always someplace “in there” I never quite reached. Once, I made it as far as a cave among cliffs where other pilgrims had gathered, but I didn’t get to see inside the cave.

Last night, I was back. As before, I viewed the region from a distance, and I was surprised to see my cave — it’s been 20 years or more since that dream. It had changed, somehow, and it took me a while to recognize the difference.

Someone had built a hotel at the top of the cliff face.

I thought: For a price, I could stay there tonight.

But I moved on.

D.

*Woulda been, if her longshoreman father hadn’t vowed to execute any non-Catholic who dared court his daughter.

3 Comments

  1. Maureen says:

    My ongoing and familiar dream (though not as ongoing as your wouldabeen’s) involves a sheer cliff face with many openings that I’m pretty sure are monks’ cells. One of my university pals went to Turkey a few years ago, and told me about a place that I think might have been it.

  2. Dean says:

    The important thing to remember about dreams is that they’re all about sex. Hills = breasts. Sandstone hills? Not sure about that. Hiking through the hills? Sexual escapades, clearly.

    But a hotel… a hotel, now, on the sandstone hills. I’m not sure about that one.

  3. Walnut says:

    And here’s a first: I dreamed about it again last night. This one was far more reminiscent of the old times: a steady stream of pilgrims beginning the hike down into the valley that leads to the sandstone cliffs. It’s nightfall, but many of them have flashlights to keep them on the trail, and I do, too.