SITTING IN AN AUDIENCE, AWAITING the speaker, when a woman comes out to introduce the guest lecturer, I hear the name but get up and leave.

Hearing of my move, my therapist shouts his approval.

 

AT A CONTRADANCE BEING HELD IN A HOME … a place with multiple rooms … everyone knows me as a friend, at least the regulars. I hear that she’s also there, in another room. But this time, she’s trying to catch up with me as I circulate – and she never succeeds. A role reversal.

 

SHE COMES TO ME TO RECONCILE, but when we’re naked abed, I put my head into her loose essence – and push her away with such force it awakens me at 5 a.m.

Head? Not hand?

 

BECAUSE OF SOME ACCIDENT, has a porcelain face but her own lips. We must swim to the cove to get my car (somehow, the vital papers in my wallet do not get wet).

 

A SHADOW BRUNETTE IN HER DWELLING – very sexy, serious, freckled, long hair and a white peasant blouse – fleets through. She informs me the goddess had a ride lined up to Dallas (presumably her regular lover) but backed out when she heard I was coming, would be there … cancelled because she wanted to “square things off with you.”

Facing each other again, her kisses are conflicted, broken off as if she might want to return. Even so, a distance and brooding.

Of course, I was the one who was driving to her place.

 

A FIGURE – LONG FLAXEN HAIR – walks past the clump of people I’m hanging out with.

“Who was that?” a young woman says to me.

“Oh, just somebody I used to love. Used to love very much.”

STAYING IN A VERY POSH HOTEL in Washington, D.C., where one exterior was angled so the rooms opened out on a large waterslide! I’m torn in making a decision between going to the National Gallery, a block down the street, or playing in the water instead.

The deal also includes a helicopter ride over downtown Dayton, just a few blocks away.

Obligations/seriousness versus fun/irresponsibility.

 

IN COASTAL FRANCE, RIDING IN a horse-drawn carriage, our guide leaves and I’m expected to pay the driver but I haven’t converted my currency. At last, I say MO-NAY and point to the dollars in my wallet. He laughs and points to a shoreside bank. We enter together, take an elevator down from street level, toward the water, I presume.

 

DRIVING WITH JAMES DOBSON THROUGH rich, plowed farmland – gently rolling, like southern Indiana – but also about to be turned into housing tracts.

We need to take a leak, so we park and climb a small green rise, and at the fence line while taking our pee, I gaze out on a sunny morning pond and see what I think’s an otter. “Look!” As we focus, we realize it’s a brown bear and its companion.

 

THIS TIME, WITH BLONDIE, BEGINS roadside Bucks Co. PA scene from an earlier HODGSON roots quest dream. Soon, however, we are interior, getting intimate – walls, ceiling painted black. We’re interrupted by “Annie,” who has me tied up, ready to be shipped out with burlap bags (of pot?) and recipes for its use. My head is against strange paperback drawings of couples with bizarre tats and piercings. At last Blondie senses Annie, having spaced off somewhere else, has forgotten, for now, unties me. “You’ve got to go, now,” coins falling from my pockets all over the dark place. Me, in overalls! No time to chase the coins. “You’ve got to go. NOW!” Expelling me out onto a downtown, then my high school, Watervliet, daylight, all from other recent nights. She cannot come along. Held hostage, by her kids.

There had been endless dreams of chasing after her and trying to catch up but failing. Curiously little from the time we were actually together. But, then, one night, I have one where she’s trying to catch up with me but can’t, unlike all the other times when I had been trying to catch her. And at that moment, I was free.

And then?

TRAVELING, BACKPACKING, with a female companion. We stop for the night, a small hilltop lodge. Next morning, she cannot be found. Has taken a walk. Later, down the pathway, a cabin has burned. Something the hostess says about an old hermit who lived there. And the host, “You won’t want to look there,” a warning. She had insisted on going off on the walk alone. Finally, I realize I must move on, alone.

 

I’M RIDING A BICYCLE, MAYBE even in Ohio. Beside me, on my right, is a blonde, short athletic hair (blue eyed?), mid-20s runner. We share an attraction, but light, playful, not sticky.

From behind my left side, then, up comes running another figure – as she catches up, more or less, it’s the golden goddess of my past! Shortly afterward, the roadway begins heading stiffly uphill.

My attention – and desire – shifts to her, despite the fact the other is clearly healthier for me. But I determine to ride on and redouble my effort. Fading as I lurch uphill.

Significant I was going somewhere – on my way – this time I wasn’t being blindsided, either, yet she wasn’t ahead. Her darkness or danger became apparent as I retold the dream.

 

NOW AS A VAMPIRE, AN INSOMNIAC GHOST. Her unimaginably long hair’s cut short, a different nose, too. Leading me out of my way: Dayton, Wayne Avenue, and Seventh Street area – not that I’m in love with her or anything but rather holding her accountable. Not taking any shit from her, but firm.

And then dismembering her, for a change. Not that a dream offers details of the carnage, or that I would ever possibly be able to do such a thing in reality. But in this sense, I could detach myself from her piece by piece, and that has remained very terrifying.

 

SHE APPROACHES ME, REBUFFED. The golden goddess has aged, grown flabby, lost her girlish charm, even the edge of her serious demeanor. In their place, a stupor.

She falls behind, cannot catch up. I’ve gained strength and move on. There are no words that bridge us.

SWIMMING IN AN ALKALI, ROCKY, heavy current river with Princess Di, a dead seal or otter on a sunny rock turns out to be Prince Charles.

Later, swimming downstream with her, toward a dam, a cry to get out of the current, come ashore on a sandy beach.

Snapping turtle sitting at the water sluice where the beaver had been in eerie, inviting, green river.

 

WHAT STARTS IN A 19^TH CENTURY asylum atop Amoskeag Falls as part of an open house, except they’re trying to retain us, turns into escape as I go DOWN to the rushing water and somehow step out around the powerful whirlpool and cascades.

Aha! The unconscious: emotions!

 

EVERYTHING CRYSTALLINE. shoreline flowers in many shades and the greenest grass, the only clouds distant and low hugging the inland horizon.

Two halves of a partly open mussel rattle enclosing a pebble.

 

CLIMBING IN TROPICAL MOUNTAINS. Much water in pools and cascades. Other people. Flowers, too. An old mill or two. Quarries? Very beautiful, youthful – cool and sunny.

 

SWIMMING IN DEEP BLUE WATER, I suddenly panic before resigning myself. A strange kind of calm. Accepting survival as a gift, something inevitable for those who keep their wits first and let the shark decide.

 

I MOVE, LEAVE NO FORWARDING ADDRESS. There’s much water imagery.

 

I OVERFILL THE BATHTUB on Oakdale, 2 inches of water on the floor and Dad keeps getting in the way, trying to help … for some reason, he’s not angry. Hmm.

 

SWIMMING IN MOUNTAIN PONDS, looking down, even spying on other swimmers in ponds below surrounded by green forest, then, walking up from or even to those same pools and looking further up to where we had been which no longer appeared so lofty, again leaving me with a very warm feeling.

STILL IN COLLEGE, Hoosier central, but return to the farm at Phillipsburg to stay over during a snowstorm. Dad had picked me up at college but dropped me off for elsewhere.

Next morning, everything’s fine and I awaken hearing voices. Aunt Edna and maybe Orpha are around.

Soon I’m downtown, walking from the hilltop with a friend through a mist or rainfall. The neighborhood’s like Fairview – nice but older. We pass one house that has a shiny chrome fat-tire bicycle on the driveway, close to the sidewalk. A few blocks further on, I leave my companion and go back and steal the bicycle. Just gotta have it. I’ll get back to the farm that way.

Riding it is exhilarating! But I decide to return the bike. My companion’s bewildered, so we part again.

As I’m putting it back in the driveway (the house has changed, it’s a bungalow on a small hill surrounded by a lot of rock and patches of grass), I’m greeted by name. Someone I’ve corresponded with about genealogy. My Rasor line, which would connect me with the farm and Aunt Edna.

I’m introduced to a husband, big family, the more ramshackle neighbors.

 

RETURNING TO MY CHILDHOOD HOME, I can see – perhaps from a kitchen window – the roof of a church down the street – the house must be slightly higher, on a small hill.

The church was something like the fundamentalist one built on Smithville Road, late ’50s, yellow brick, but it’s the roof I notice, caving in from the middle.

I walk down the street to explore.

But then I’m with, well, doesn’t matter, their Volvo got covered in some kind of ash, a paste. I test it and begin washing it off. We’re laughing as we clean the car but I’m interrupted by someone from that church. Did he beckon us? Me?

I follow, perhaps. Unclear.

There’s a small group inside, early 20s, mulling about, sad to be losing the place. But they’re rehearsing something, and two start to dance, something fast, great choreography with lifts and twirls and then music. Soon I’m in the midst of many of them, the sanctuary opens out into an airy social space.

I’m supposed to be with the kids and you for a day trip. Back on the street, I realize you have to take off without me. What can I do? The new crowd sweeps me off.

It’s a contemporary Christian group gathered and led by a young Cuban who’s watching his dream crumble. He has followers or fellow travelers but not the financial resources to sustain it. I try to meet up with him in the crowd, but he keeps slipping away, drawn by others.

They pull him across a dark inner-city street. Traffic intervenes.

So we’re on the street anyway, big-city downtown, now full of light as we’re joyously singing and dancing. Back Bay Boston or Times Square pre-Disney, perhaps Cincy more than my hometown in its prime. Many yellow taxis, for one thing. And many smiles. We know the strangers around us would tell us our faith is unreal. We don’t care.

Then I realize I have to go, maybe I’ve seen a clock overhead, but don’t have my phone. It’s in the Volvo, wherever. Can’t call you, either. At least I have my credit card for a bus ticket, though I’m uncertain how I’ll get from the depot to the house.

You somehow appear, fully understanding. It’s not the first time I’ve left you in the lurch, but you’ve had a good time anyway.

Even so, as I awaken, I feel free, renewed, refreshed, happy, in a state of wonder and amazement.

Is dance and song and improvisation within some structure (think of that elaborate couples’ dance) what’s been missing? Plus, there’s some zesty food in the background.

 

SUNDAY A.M., THE TERRORIST while I hide in the little room.

A parade passes, then the Mercedes.

Two houses: furnace spewing water, boiling water in one.

I can’t find the key to the other house, where I would turn it off  – am I naked? See, I’m barefoot.

At a Confederate officers’ banquet, toasting and dancing, cheek to cheek, a broken leg.

Now I’m painting – vault.

“Surrender!”

Scratched up concrete and brick patterns of floor and walls, ceilings, then the people – children at play, etc. – a public space, now viewed from above.

Am getting ready to serve the Daily Student as executive sports editor – or my dorm room, where I arrived early – no room for my roomies.

A lost hymnal with a hot concert pianist (but he’s not religious!). Kitchen table.

My sister, flowers or a meal.

 

DEER JOSTLING IN THE NIGHT WOODS as I gather stones in a pool of street light to pot bulbs to force open in mid-winter.

 

THE PANIC WHEN I SAY it’s never going to happen – the Children. Then marriage.

(In the gut, when I whisper.)

Just what the hell is Self-Realization, Swami Jnana?

While attempting to clasp objects, I am annoyed to find there are long thin strands of hair in the way. They’re growing from my palm and tangling in the object. It’s more a sensation of something awry, actually.

 

I HEAD AN ARMY UNIT AND have a young spoiled recruit or draftee who won’t accept discipline or follow orders. He soon has his attorney accompanying him everywhere. “Shut up!” and he keeps talking.

 

AT THE SCENE OF A PLANE CRASH – helping with the body bags (curiously like valet bags).

 

A CORNER OF THE CHIMNEY IS GONE, chomped away by a flying creature. The house itself is a huge flaking gray monster with two heads and forty paws. From the compound eye of its center stare forty children, each in some awe, while seventy-five toddlers weave in and out of the mouth.

I’m caught without a future and the past she has retracted. So this is the present?

 

I RECEIVE AN OFFER FOR A MASSAGE … from a male therapist. I hedge, but he promises it will be the best I’ve ever received. He uses both hands simultaneously, the thumbs like motorized screwdrivers. Incredible!

 

DOORBELL RINGING. I wake, realize it’s not the sound of my doorbell here.

IN A SUIT AT A POSH GATHERING. Subdued lighting, fine carpet and porcelain, upholstery and dark polished furniture. I’m being considered for a position with a prestigious law firm. One of the wait staff, in a gray or beige uniform, comes up from behind and I step aside, gesturing for her to pass with the used dishes she’s taking to the kitchen. There’s a universal gasp and chuckling. I’ve made a faux pas. Then I notice the men’s striped silk ties, all immaculate. I’m wearing none. A sign of my Quaker practice, I sense, along with my instinctive respect for all people. The message I get is that when you’re in a position of power, you have to command it. (Stay by his side while he snubs others. The trick, also, is to tip well when finished.) Rather than taking pride in my values and sticking with them, I want to be part of the elite. (Disturbing truth.)

 

OFF TO ATTEND a Quaker gathering somewhere. Shortly after arrival, I’m directed to the Jacuzzi, and after repeated invitations, I step in. Quite comforting. After a while, I find myself being driven on a tour of metropolitan suburbia (Connecticut? New Jersey? Chicagoland?), into a neighborhood of failed, boarded up malls and related big-box structures, all in a gray concrete architecture, including a drive-in parking lot under the main edifice. We pass on through what had been neighborhoods but are now missing half of the houses. There are scattered trees and even some tents or small trailers, but also some hideous McMansions. I’m instructed (more than invited) to enter one, which is owned by oil sheiks. I gathered the woman of the house is interested in me, but much of the activity is veiled. Still, I’m their overnight guest and given a bedroom. In the middle of deep sleep, I feel my thumb pinched and held, to prevent my escape, as the four corners of my sheets are lifted by runners, who are soon speeding through the house, or at least in large circles. I feel exhilarated.

And then, you enter the room. I tell you about the sheets and the feeling of lightness. What I’ll never know, of course, is whether I was being summoned by the woman of the house – or her jealous husband.

 

BACK “ON THE ROAD.” The recurring core has me in a hotel and trying to check out, only I’ve flown in for an extended stay (a conference or sales meeting) and brought a lot of stuff I intended to sort and discard. Since there’s so much, I apparently brought it by company car, taken off, and returned without it. The problem is that all of that happened months ago, I really need to leave – either eviction or some approaching tyrannical force I desire to leave – and nothing’s been sorted. I keep finding more, can’t figure out how to pack up and get out. Plus there’s the added realization I owe thousands for the room.

In this version, I arrive by hiking with a group along railroad tracks. Something, at some point, clandestine. And later there are neighbors on the other side of a hurricane fence that may mark the (communist) side from our Free Market side.

AT AN OPERA IN A LARGE SHED, Aida without costumes. Then a student orchestra rehearsing Beethoven in a smaller hall across a field. We rush to our seats on the second tier but wall-pillars block our view, except for a small hole like an airplane window. Turns out there’s a 7 p.m. movie before the opera. We snuggle a bit and speak in Spanish using questions rather than exclamation marks. Bueno? Bravo? Etc.

 

AM SURPRISED TO SEE THERE are nearly as many theaters/concert halls around as meetinghouses and steeplehouses. Or is it the other way around?

 

WE’RE USHERING AT MUSIC HALL, which is more like a sports arena. Is our Third Wheel there, too? A late dash to our seats, which are on the other side of the hall, a remote part of the gallery. Good seats, we were promised, if we can get there before the next piece, a long symphony, can begin.

The first stairway’s closed, for safety reasons. By this time, we’re carrying 18-speed bicycles. Curiously, we now need to go DOWN, having somehow gone up one flight too many.

I’m cast in the role of “organizer” or “enforcer” – the one responsible for getting everyone in gear, and guilty if they don’t make it on time.

But she keeps stopping to talk, tie a shoe, whatever. By myself, I would have made it on time.

The “hurry up” enforcer being the only one stressed out!

Other Music Hall dreams included one of seats with great acoustics but no view of the orchestra.

 

THE GRANDMOTHER HAD A DREAM I was singing a Schubert leider, text by Goethe – said my voice was quite lovely and my diction, flawless. Highest praise, even if a dream. My German is still atrocious.

 

WE’RE STANDING IN A CROWDED downtown when the kid notices a uniformed band making its way up the street (which is downhill from us). It turns and marches into a vacated 5’n’dime store, which has folding chairs set up in four quadrants (angled toward a center). A group of teens, supporters of the band or maybe members out of uniform, are jumping up and down, hugging each other, etc., obviously quite elated by some battle of the bands contest that’s about to start, once the others show up. These kids are also huddling, a group prayer seeking blessing.

The band now plays “Jerusalem, Jerusalem, my happy home,” very nice tune and lyrics; I somehow remember both, and in totality.

 

MAKING MUSIC WITH MY BOSS and his sidekick kind of just off downtown Dayton, lower Salem Avenue or just before First Street or Memorial Bridge.

They bring their guitars to my apartment (yellow/amber) and are ready to tune up.

Sidekick’s impressed when I hum a perfect 440 A but then my violin strings won’t hold, keep coming undone.

Outside again, I go into a shady alley to take a pee, maybe.