HUMAN WRECKAGE

35-millimetre Dreams

One of my three recurring dreams decided to rerun itself last night. I’ve made an effort through the years to remember my dreams, attempting to train my mind to take sloppy notes. From time to time my nocturnal transmissions have suggested solutions to woke dilemmas. More often than not they just take me on a wild ride. Once in a while I scale the REM wall and become aware I’m inside my dream, that I am living a dream.

My favourite recurring dream involves flight. Taking off is always tricky because there are usually high tension wires in my path and I have to learn to duck, dive and swoop in a hurry. Aloft, I remind myself not to look down; I must concentrate on what lies ahead in my field of vision. My second recurring dream revolves around work. It’s a hassle to walk through the North Saskatchewan River’s valley to the Edmonton International Airport to be on time for a five-hour evening shift at the A&P grocery store on Montreal’s rue Ste-Catherine. I don’t know why the principals to the two Alberta ad agencies I worked for keep putting me on the schedule; I told everybody I was done. Fortunately, I’ve been savvy enough to keep a clean red A&P apron hanging in the Crooked 9’s kitchen pantry.

My third dream concerns higher education. I’m a week or two away from graduation, receiving my degree. But there are a couple of hitches, complications. I don’t know where I live and I’m a few credits short. Mom and Dad will be very upset with me even though I’ve paid my own way, and they haven’t seen nor spoken to one another in decades. Buckle up or hang on to your chair’s armrests, I’m going to careen, carom and bounce you through my night sweats, my midnight funhouse.

I have skipped a course for an entire semester. I’m unclear about a few crucial details. I don’t know if I’m the age I am now or if I’m the age I was when I attended university. I must write an essay. My paper is already weeks late because I don’t know the topic. If the subject is literature, the syllabus is vague; if it’s high school hangover French or Religion, oh God, they’ll take some glib finessing. I can make it all up although I’ll have to pull an all-nighter to meet the extended deadline but I don’t know where my desk and Smith-Corona typewriter are.

I’m not homeless but I don’t know my address. In real life I’d signed leases for four different apartments in Montreal. I rented a high-rise unit in Edmonton and a two-bedroom walk-up in Calgary. My dream apartment has a dozen rooms, and somehow my childhood and teenage bedrooms are just down the hall, but mind the slope. These crooked corridors constitute a maze and I’m hopelessly turned around. I can’t find my desk; it’s not in a kitchen. 

My unwritten paper is only worth half my grade. Oh, man, I realize that I have to sit for the course’s formal exam in the morning too. But, but, where? I’ve got four campuses to choose from, and it would help if I knew the room number. Dawson, my CEGEP (junior college in Quebec), had two main campuses when I was a student there. One was on rue Viger, steps away from Old Montreal. The other was in Lower Westmount, on Selby Street, south of the train tracks, and shaded by the strange shadows cast by the boiled spaghetti network of the nearby elevated expressway. Selby was a converted pharmaceutical factory and weirdly proximate to a cigarette factory which still emitted the stench of wet butts in a wet ashtray in warm weather. 

Concordia, Montreal’s university for students not quite bright enough to be accepted at McGill, and therefore my alma mater, remains equally divided to this day. The Loyola campus is located in Montreal’s west end. My Jesuit high school is also situated on its grounds; I know its classrooms, their paint colours, their right-handed desks. Concordia’s downtown campus, Sir George Williams, is a Brutalist cube on de Maisonneuve near the Guy Metro station. Satellite buildings prickle the neighbouring inner-city streets.

I am beyond fucked. But maybe I can fudge my resume? Suggest I’ve graduated with a degree while I make up the missing course at night school. Phantom human resources departments and my parents need never know. But in that nanosecond before my dream head detonates, the spirit of the night shoots right through me: I’ve graduated high school, college and university; my Concordia diploma dates from 1982. I’ve been there; I’ve done all that; I don’t even apply for jobs anymore.

It’s always a relief to emerge from the depths. I don’t have the bends, but my hair and t-shirt are damp. Another narrow escape, whew! Awake now in the dark sometime between the witching hour and the dawn, my bladder issues a urination proclamation. As I’ll soon be vertical, a shuffle into the kitchen to graze on leftovers or make a sandwich seems like a good idea. I’ll enjoy a snack before the second feature.                    

meGeoff has been your most unreliable, unbalanced and inaccurate alternative source of anxiety and cracking up since 2013. My novella Of Course You Did is coming in 2021. Sign up for e-mail alerts from the Crooked 9, use that thingy on the right.