Pleasant Dreams!

I’m a good little dreamer.

Where do they come from? The dreams that some of us, the lucky ones, are so effortlessly entertained by every night? What must our remote progenitors have thought of this gift?

On a horse, through a series of neighborhoods that I have seen numerous times over the years in dreams, places meant to be on the way from College Point to Flushing, I traveled, with a guitar slung over my shoulder, my guitar, my Gretsch.

I know these neighborhoods well. I know people who live there, I’ve visited them, hung out, I know where the good pizza is, know about some of the stores, like Hungarian meat markets and like that.

Last night, earlier, in an unrelated dream, I discussed with someone a mutual friend who lived there, I remembered his apartment well, the subjects we talked about there were very . . . serious. I remembered, and related in the new dream conversation, the events of a dream that must have been dreamed five to ten years ago. Clearly.

In Flushing, dream Flushing, not the real thing but consistently the Dream Flushing, I unslung the guitar and did a song, “Bo Diddley,” by Bo Diddley, from the saddle. Then, like that had been the only reason I’d gone there, I turned for home, College Point, threw my left leg around the saddle horn, dropped the reins and let the horse drive me home, softly strumming chords in the key of “G,” G, G7, C, D.

At some point we had to travel through an underground subway station. That’s not redundant in New York, lots of the subway is above, way above ground, elevated in fact. The horse seemed tired, and I wished that I had remembered to bring an apple for him. Then, I was standing next to him and he took off to our left, through a subterranean world of stores and middle-class neighborhoods. I knew where he was going, I’ve been there too, another part of Dream Flushing. His previous owners lived there and he thought he might get a carrot if he could find them.

I went to look for him. One store had a water feature that was bubbling dangerously; I wondered if the horse had drunk from the dark water. I thought I needed help, so I called to my son Oliver, aged about ten. He said, “what?” I asked him to come over, and he answered, “why,” which made me angry, I’m not going to scream long explanations to a child far away. I said nothing, he came anyway. Before long they were both lost, him and the horse.

I had other help, and we found them as the dream wound down.

I was in my most frequently repeating space last night too. A big house, more than four stories, all the same, only the first floor and the top floor are in use, the ones in between are identical: a kitchen and many bedrooms and corridors, all empty and windowless. The top floor is a big room, last night there were some people there and it was finished, sometimes it is incomplete and more or less exposed to the elements, in those instances it is usually raining. The room is full of musical equipment, mostly guitars and amps, always the same amps. Two half stacks, a fifty watt and a hundred watt Marshall; a forty five watt Marshall “Bluesbreaker” two-twelve combo; a Bugner, I think it’s a Bugner, I remember knowing the brand but now I’m not so sure, it was a super-premium fifty watt, pure class “A” two-twelve combo. Last night I was looking for it, it was lost, I told Ann that I thought it was missing, the next thing I knew the room had been rearranged and when I looked again it was there. I was trying to play a Telecaster, a stock butterscotch Telecaster through the Bluesbreaker but it wouldn’t tune, the pegs were screwed up. I remember the dream fifteen years ago in which I first got this equipment, the strangest dream that I’ve ever had, the music store at the top of the Empire State Building.