I dreamt of change. I dreamt of houses with cathedral ceilings in their basements that echoed my footsteps. I dreamt of cavernous halls and doors that dwarfed me; walking into a room and declaring, “Honey, honey, over here: this can be our work out room?” How ridiculous. I dreamt of the house we are planning to buy, and how it turned into a much greater treasure than we had anticipated.
I dreamt of teachers and chemistry, somehow the purchasing a new home and returning to school dovetailing together. I dreamt of a life that ran sideways to this one and split off into directions that held a bit more hope for myself, a little less darkness. I dreamt of talking to wayward urban youth who all lived like a tribe on the fringe of war in and around a loft owned by an African American couple. Upward and refined with little or no time for nonsense. And these were good kids, who when I first thought of buying that loft, I developed a keen interest in their affairs, I think in the dream becoming a kid myself, a teenager again, wiser I hoped, and there were problems with school and relationships and rivalries with other tribes in the neighborhood. But I had left them for the home in the suburbs, the one with the cathedral basement, and they went from surviving to pillaging, from artists to war mongers. In fighting and jealousies, while the world mocked and scorned them from the outside. When I returned I had pointed this out to them, almost costing my own life. I might have made an impact, if I had stayed.
And lastly, dreaming of school, returning to school, again a teenager and discovering new interests. The kids of this chemistry class for some reason were all suddenly leaving or were being moved, displaced, I’m not sure, but I do know that it had something to do with our move, and both MZ and I were sitting in class, and while she was being supportive of my wrong answers and the chiding I received from the rest of the class (they saw through it all, they knew exactly how old we were), it was the fact that the professor, no the teacher, came over and signed my work, that encouraged me, that opened a new possibility despite it all.