Dream a little dream of me...

I understand in advance that blog entries about people's dreams are usually not as interesting as the dreamer thinks they are. That said, Lileks and Harrell entertain me with quick accounts of their dreams, which are usually much more vivid and memorable than mine.

Usually.

So last night I dreamed I was helping out with some maintenance at my old church, except I kept getting distracted by the Cowboys game. A.C. Green was doing an amazing job returning punts, which is pretty cool considering he's gotta be like eighty-two by now and played for the NBA. Anyway, we finished up whatever it was and I got in the car with Mrs. Seedub to drive home.

In this dream that was a drive down miles and miles of back roads across prairie and blackjack forests in late afternoon. We made a couple of stops; the first place was closed, but the second was some sort of museum of marble we'd been meaning to stop at for a long time. It was this little white frame farmhouse a couple of hundred yards off the main road; at the house the driveway split went to the left and right of the house into the woods. But we stopped and went into the farmhouse.

Inside was this weird, if innocuous sort of old country-lady place with fake flowers, and a strong potpourri smell, and odd pieces of white marble—which actually looked like porcelain—exhibited for sale. There were obelisks and bowls and such—couldn't see what the fuss was about this place, and there was no one around. There was a door in the back, and I started to knock or call out...but I got nervous. Wasn't quite sure what was back there.

Instead we got in the car and drove down the muddy left fork of the driveway into the woods and it ended in a big dirt cul-de-sac with a sort of raised pond inside an earthen bank in the middle of it. Nearby were some old wooden buildings that looked like a cross between tenements and chicken coops stretching away for quite some distance, and suddenly I recognized this place from a previous "reel" of another dream earlier in the night. Looking at the trough or pond, I realized, and said to Mrs. See-Dub in my annoying know-it-all-way: This was where the executions happened during the Revolution.

Whichever Revolution that was. Judging by the countryside, it would have been that horrible political violence that wracked Kansas or Oklahoma in the 1950s.

We drove around the trough, back past the house, and down the right fork and I soon realized that this must be the real marble museum. There were slabs of marble leaning up beside the road, many of them having been shaped into headstones already. It was getting dusk and kind of creepy, so I put my headlights on and we drove on back to the farmhouse.

By the time we got there—even though the distance wasn't great—it was dark. A lot of rural homes like this would have a county-supplied streetlight near the house, but not this one. As we drove by the house the front door opened up and golden light spilled out. Not some little old lady, but the Stonecutter himself was coming out onto the porch and I got out to say hello.

Striking man—very tall, say six four, work-shirt, brown hair and moustache, nondescript features. He welcomed me and started talking about the museum and offered to walk me back to the main road. Why I thought this would be a good idea, I'm not sure—obviously I was going to drive back to the main road and I had just gotten out of my car right there. But it made sense at the time and we walked into the scrub oaks headed toward the blacktop, his dogs following behind. There was no moon, and no flashlight.

In the darkness there was this Proustian moment of recognition—the exact sounds, temperature, and smells of an Oklahoma oak forest at night in October. If I had to assign a mental footnote I would cite that particular recollection as "Church hayride through so-and-so's land, out near the Lake, October 31st, 1989". Now I began to wonder why I had walked into these woods when Mrs. Seedub was back there in the car. And then the Stonecutter's voice became harsh and mocking.

He was asking me rude, demanding questions and with his last question to me—I can't remember what it was now—his voiced changed and became inhuman and I knew that if I could see him in the darkness he would be monstrous to behold. The dogs behind him likewise changed from barks to wolflike snarls that drew closer. I reached for a certain bois d'arc walking stick that I thought for some reason I ought to have had with me, and failing that I reached for my pocketknife but the dogs were on me in the dark, and with the Stonecutter's mocking laughter still in my ears I woke up; not in terror, but filled with bitterness and despair that I had ever trusted this man.

___

Anyway, just thought I should write that down before I forget it. Won't make a habit of it—writing them down, that is. Hopefully the dreams won't become a habit either.