Dreams 3

Dreams. So strange lately. I was walking to an honorarium for my buddy, who was going to read from his soon-to-be published volume of poetry. He and I were in a college program in the fine arts, and I was writing a novel. But I was in the depths of a writer’s block and felt really guilty about it. With me was a tall young lady, quite pregnant. Pregnant not by me but by some absent dream character. She asked me what I thought of my buddy’s poetry and I told her I thought some of it was too lightweight. Then I quoted a tiny one I remembered, called “Golf with Hemingway” : Me . . . You . . . Away. I told her I was still not sure how I felt about free verse, and I quoted Frost’s statement, aimed at Sandberg, “Writing free verse is like playing tennis without a net.” We enter the room and sit at a table, interrupting an Asian group of four people who were presenting a dramatic bit. They were angry and asked us why we were late. We said it wasn’t supposed to begin until 9:30, not 9:00. Then there was one of those dream shifts in time. I was standing in front of four women, the one on the right my buddy’s girlfriend, the two in the middle older women but beautiful, and the one on the left the pregnant girl, no longer pregnant. I said to them, “You ladies look mah-velous” and gave the two older women kisses. Then I bent to the non-pregnant girl and asked her if she was all right. She smiled and swept both hands down her body to show how slim she was. And I felt the oddest sense of love for her. She kept protesting that she was a mess after the baby, sagging boobs and stretch marks, but I didn’t care. End of dream. Lately, such strange dreams.