Topic: Dreams

Dream Geography – Jill Jackson

I realized that I had already been to the bar long before I’d ever set foot in it in real life. Except, in the dream, it was a bar and grill that served hipster hotdogs and overpriced bourbon.

But the layout was the same:

A large, square, central bar surrounded by tables, and the bathrooms down a short hallway to the back. The dream bar was also unfinished, with the vintage bathrooms under construction.

Despite those minor differences, it was the same place, down to the hipster clientele and bearded bartenders.

I had an odd sense of, not déjà vu, but familiarity with the place that actually made me uncomfortable. As if I had constructed the place myself, out of dream stuff, and it had gotten away from me.

This is not the first time that I have dreamt of places that exist, but it’s the first time that I have done so before ever seeing it.

Usually I dream of places I’ve been. And although they are often skewed in size, location, and purpose, they are still recognizable as Fountain Square, or my grandmother’s old house in Avon View.

In my dreams, Tower Place Mall is completely abandoned and boarded up, but it still used as a throughway for people travelling to the other side of Carew Tower. Sometimes there’s a guerilla food stand, usually a shawarma cart, trying valiantly to maintain business as usual amongst the decay.

My grandmother’s house is almost always the way it was in real life, but it’s full of boxes and drawers full of knick knacks that have to be packed and sorted before we put the house on the market.

Although, one time, it was the scene of a semi-illegal, beer-tasting house party filled with underworld types and revolutionaries.

There’s the theater downtown, that could be the Aronoff or the Taft, that’s part amphitheater and part traditional theater. That place also has concession stands where you make your own cookies during intermission. Benedict Cumberbatch performed in a play there while his wife acted as stage manager.

 For a while, I used to visit this diner in Over-the-Rhine. It was set into the side of a hill and was all glass and chrome. I would always find myself going there in the wee hours of the morning, when the sun was still a promise on the horizon. Sometimes I’d order food, and sometimes I would stage clandestine meetings with shadowy figures.

I haven’t been back there in some time.

The weirdest dreams are the ones where I get lost trying to travel from one place to another. I’m always downtown, and I always end up way on the other side of town from where I need to be. I have to find my way back through winding alleys, flanked by decaying buildings. I can always see my destination in the distance, but I can never seem to get there.

There are also the ones where I am driving and I somehow end up crossing the river, or driving right into the river, even though I try very carefully to choose the correct route to my destination.

Conversely, somewhere, in the hills of Kentucky, there is a house that I would drive to several times a week. During the drive I would always feel uneasy, like I was on the verge of getting lost, but I would always find my way there. All the possible roads would stretch out before me, but I somehow always managed to choose the right one.

I haven’t been there in a long time either, and I’m not even sure what that house symbolized.

The first couple of years in this house I would dream that the doors wouldn’t stay closed and the cats were always in danger of getting out. I would also dream about walking through north side and down side streets that ran through office buildings.

Lately my dreams have been of a college campus with a huge arts building. I’m usually walking through the building to the cafeteria to get something to eat before one of my classes.

The cafeteria is vast and made up of multiple large rooms with steam tables set up everywhere. There are also vending machines that you can program to dispense any imaginable beverage, cold food stations, kiosks with premade sandwiches, a salad bar the size of a football field that starts off cold, and ends with a Chinese buffet. This cafeteria has everything.

But sometimes it has almost nothing at all. During those times it’s the cafeteria at Antioch. One large room with a food line in the back. The food line usually has weird things that no one in their right mind would eat, or premade box lunches filled with nutrient paste and flavorless food cubes.

I still haven’t figured out why there is such a stark contrast between the two places, or what my subconscious is trying to tell me.

But I have been spending a lot of dream time at school, taking math, and science, and language classes – of all things. Usually I’m either acing the classes, without having studied a thing, or I’m in danger of failing and need a Hail Mary to pull myself out of the wringer.

Often I find that it’s the middle of the semester, and that I haven’t attended class once, and there’s an exam due. Sometimes I’m trying to find the registrar’s office so I can drop a class before it starts counting against me.

During those dreams I’m either at Antioch, and living on campus, or I’m at Walnut Hills.

Maybe my dreams are telling me that I need to go back to school. Or maybe they are telling me that I have embarked on an educational journey.

Or maybe I just never outgrew my formative years.

Who knows?