Musings
an Online Journal of Sorts

By Alyce Wilson

I often have interesting dreams, but I don't always remember them, in part because, on days when The Gryphon has stayed over and has to get up for work, the alarm clock goes off, which rips all the dreams right out of my head.

But this dream took place on Saturday morning, and I remembered enough of it to write it down.

We ended up taking a room in another large apartment whose owners were not there. There was one subletter, a geeky girl, staying there in a former storage area in the back. It was larger than my entire apartment in the waking world. Hers was an unfinished room with only a few pieces of furniture. The walls were unpainted wood and the floor was particle board and dusty. In the middle of the floor were two hinged doors that would open up so her bed could be pulled out of the floor. But she had so many blankets on her bed they wouldn't close properly.

The Paper and The Cheshire Cat were there and were pushing the trap doors down, smiling at how ridiculous it was to have a bed in the floor.

Then for some reason, I was at a trade show. People were setting up their wares for the day. I followed a guy in military fatigues who had some signs with him. They said, "No" and "Bad Monster." I knew he was expecting a monster to come to the trade show and he felt the signs would help.

We arrived at his table, which was like several old utilitarian dining tables shoved together into a rectangle. On one half he had all sorts of pamphlets and flyers about the military. On the other side, he had all sorts of information and handouts about different animals, including a black bear. This was why I suspected he was expecting a werewolf, which seemed to make sense.

Not far behind us, Leechboy arrived. He had long curly hair like he did when I first met him, and he was thinner and wearing a khaki jacket he used to like, along with his sunglasses. He sort of nodded at me in acknowledgment.

I went around to the far side of the table, the one away from the pedestrian traffic, and sat down. That's when Leechboy introduced me to the guy in fatigues. "This is Richard," he said. Richard shook my hand, looking stern. I suppose he looked a lot like The Luser's friend in State College, whose name I no longer remember: pale and pudgy with short red hair.

Richard started to give me flack about breaking up with Leechboy. Leechboy just sort of shook his head in disapproval of Richard's outburst, and I said, "That's all water under the bridge."

We all took places around the table as Richard started setting up a board game. It was a game where you played for domination, sort of like Carcassone, but it involved dominoes. A bunch of other guys joined us, also wearing fatigues. They set it up and then waited for me to go first. I didn't know what I was doing and asked for the rules, but they said I should be able to figure it out. As soon as they said this, it became very obvious to me how to play.

Then Ayman al-Zawahiri, the No. 2 man in al Qaeda, joined the game. I don't think anyone really wanted him to play, but there wasn't a good way to ask him to leave. He ended up winning the game, and since we'd been playing for a prize, I gave him an orange cake. It looks like glycerine soap, but it was sweet, tasting like oranges. He ate it.

A bunch of us drew to the side and talked in hushed voices. We wondered aloud whether he would try to kidnap any of us and behead us or something. And we figured Osama bin Laden must be somewhere near, but we didn't know where he was. We decided that he wouldn't try anything because some military guys were there and the authorities knew where we were.

For some reason, none of us thought about notifying the authorities that he was in our midst.

Then instead of the trade show, we were in the apartment again, and al-Zawahiri was in the front room. I was taking a shower in the bathroom and realized I'd left my clothes in my room. I didn't want to walk naked in front of al-Zawahiri (because I knew that was frowned upon in his religion), so I grabbed a dark blue evening gown that was hanging in there and draped it around me to sneak to the other room.

After I was properly clothed, I went back to the original suite that The Gryphon and I had vacated. My sister had been living there alone, and she'd had some stray animals in with her that were not trained. They had spilled food all over the floor and generally made a mess.

I walked into the kitchen to discover that every single available plate was dirty and cluttering up the sink, the counter, the stove. I thought, "Oh, no. We have to clean this place before we leave here."

What does this all mean? I can't figure out much about the part of the dream that had to do with staying in an apartment of hotel suite with my sister. All I can say is I've had similar dreams in the past, of having an apartment in a building with other people, and questions about which space belonged to which person, cleaning issues, and things like that.

About the only thing I suppose that could relate to is the fact that The Gryphon and I will be looking for a place together this spring. So perhaps it's apartment related worries about finding a space of our own. I've been told that you should consider that anyone in a dream is an aspect of yourself, so maybe the geeky girl with the strange apartment is another version of me. I do, after all, sleep on a mattress on the floor! The Paper and The Cheshire Cat, a married couple, could represent domesticity.

The trade show part of the dream was interesting. The military aspect of it, I believe, was influenced by the fact that The Gryphon and I have been watching the fourth season of Buffy, and there is a military underpinning for that entire season. So that could relate to the fact that a guy in fatigues had the signs relating to monsters.

I found it interesting that he was expecting a monster, and then the first person to show up is Leechboy! Ordinarily, I'd say that Leechboy must be the monster, except that then somebody even worse shows up, Ayman al-Zawahiri. So between that and the fact that clearly I was no longer involved with Leechboy in this dream, I take these as signs that I'm finally coming to terms with what happened with him and putting the ugliness behind me.

Those who have been reading Musings for awhile know that I have been plagued for years with dreams about Leechboy worming his way back into my life, but that recently, I've managed to tell him to go away several times.

I take the dream as, in part, my acknowledgement that regardless of the emotional pain he put me through, there are people in the world who are worse, and that part of my life is over.

The werewolf analogy is interesting, because of course, a werewolf is a human who becomes a monster. This is especially fascinating because the version of Leechboy who showed up was the version of him when I first met him, before I'd seen his darker side, before I'd fallen into that deep pit of emotional despair, courtesy of his controlling behaviors.

Come to think of it, al-Zawahiri sat next to Leechboy at the table, the same table with the pamphlets that I thought, even in the dream, might indicate the monster was a werewolf. This might sound strange, but when I think about it, I realize that the sort of deep dread instilled in me by Leechboy is similar to that inspired in all peace loving peoples by terrorist leaders such as al-Zawahiri.

So maybe, in a sense, the monster was Leechboy, and al-Zawahiri represented his most vicious half.

I'm not sure about the dominos game of domination, except that it might have something to do with the fact that many of us feel as if al Qaeda is right under the military's noses, playing some sort of game.

This seems like a highly symbolic dream, but I'm at a loss for further ways to interpret it. The shower dream and being naked in front of others is a pretty standard anxiety dream, although in this case, I managed to avoid humiliation.

I do find it somewhat interesting that, despite the fact that other males were in the apartment, the one I was worried about offending was al-Zawahiri.

Altogether, a fascinating dream, but I don't know whether it's a symbolic dream or simply a tour of my nightly anxieties.

Copyright 2005 by Alyce Wilson

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