I’ve been dreaming about owning a house lately. Not as in thinking about occasionally, but in the dead of the night when I’m unconscious sort of way. It’s a small house, this nonexistent place, two floors, with a bedroom upstairs that has a skylight over the bed and a golden wood floor, and solid, as the details, once discovered, do not change. Every time I have the dream, I discover new particulars. I learn them like running my fingers over the pattern of a patchwork blanket. The washroom is a blinding white, as are the french doors that lead to the back yard. We sing in the shower, there, loud enough to be heard from the kitchen. There are trees in the flower fenced back yard and a swing and books by the stairs, and sunlight, sunlight everywhere.
Is it a symptom of getting older? The reaching shadow of thirty stretching out backward in time to tease out a genetic desire to finally settle down? I feel threatened by these dreams, by how comfortable they are, how completely satisfied, when I’ve never been anywhere in reality I’ve wanted to permanantly live. They unsettle me. I wake feeling rattled, as if somewhere in my past I missed a crucial step that would have saved me, would have placed me, grounded me, given me a life I’d like to live, as if my repeated dreams are a glimpse into some trite, polished could-have-been. I refuse to give in to such quirks of fantasy. Instead I am annoyed at the notion. Why not images of a Jan Chipchase fantastic career? Or travel or amazing adventure? Why something so banal as a sweet, tiny hypothetical house? Where’s my flying car? My deregulated smart drugs? My endless supply of ferrets or fluffy kitten love?
The moment I knew I was lost, however, that this dream was doomed to repeat, is when I gave in to the myth, and lent it credence, and tried to slueth in my sleep, peering out the phantasmic windows, attempting to guess the location of this perfect fictional place.