I slept fitfully which is unusual. I think I am still dumping some anxiety. My apartment is nearly back to normal except I still haven’t managed blinds or curtains. I awoke with a headache. Funny the pain, the headache doesn’t get into your dreams. How does the subconscious mind ignore the pain?

I was in a church. Everybody was dressed up. It was a funeral. I didn’t know the church, it was out of context. You had the feeling that if you could walk out the door, you would walk onto a blank page. Places in dreams are only sets. I didn’t know any of the people either. What was I doing there? Who were these people?

When I taught in Korea I became best friends with M. We were inseparable for 6 months. He took much pleasure in showing me his country and his parents adored me. It remains, perhaps, my most beautiful friendship. We were from such different places and yet our paths crossed and it was as if we had been each other’s best friend forever. And when I came back to the west he came with me for a few months. We have since lost touch. It is the tragedy of living and distance. It is also, perhaps, the result of moving repeatedly. I still try to find him.

In my dream, he was dead. It was a closed casket. In my dream I hadn’t seen him since I saw him in real life, since we said goodbye altogether too awkwardly in a subway station trying to work out a handshake, a smile, a hug, at last, that said enough. In the dream I was remarkably not sad. I was confused. Confused by nearly everything. The funeral was very ritualized. Mourners in queue in front of me walked over to a hanging pane of glass, suspended by wire and scratched at it. And then, walked over to something that looked like a blackboard and with capable fingernails scratched out 34 little lines. 4 fingers, 4 scratches; 4 fingers, 4 fingers, 8 times, making 32 and then with the fingers that make the peace sign, 2 more, making 34 lines. “I thought he was 33,” I said, understanding, or nearly understanding. I was rejoined, “It is his 34th year.”

It was nearly my turn in queue. “But I’m not Catholic,” I explained. “He was,” the boy in front of me says. If he was right, the mourner explained, if he believed right, it will do him good. And if he was wrong it will do no harm. Thus, when it came my turn, I performed the ritual as I had seen.

M. wasn’t Catholic in real life. In the dream, I wasn’t sad at all. But when I woke up I was horrified. And I haven’t been able to shake off my sadness all day. It was certainly no prophecy. My dreams are not nearly prophetic. Perhaps my brain just misses him. I wish I could find him.

SS