Oh, the mind plays tricks, when you’re recovering from surgery, having uncomfortable, sleepless, or at least wakeful nights, constantly aware whenever you move or turn over of the catheter and the tube going down into the bucket that holds the night bag…
And in the moments of sleep, the dreams that come are dreams of strange anxieties, harping back to things that used to be major parts of your life, but now: well, not so much…
I dreamed I was taking a Holy Communion service for the nuns. In my pyjamas. Just when it was time to begin, I noticed that my catheter leg bag was full almost to bursting. With some difficulty I found the toilet at the far end of the dark cloister, but just as I was doing the business a family of about 27 tourists (including a dozen children) burst in…
Then I was half-awake for the longest time, reconstructing old proverbs. “If you rob one end of a person’s grave, you’re gonna have to rob the other.” OK, if you don’t like that one, let’s make it a party game or exam question: Complete this sentence: If you rob one end of a person’s grave…
Just the same last night. My anxiety dream was about conducting a wedding in a church I didn’t know, for a couple I’d never met. I arrived late and unprepared, just as all the other massed robed clergy (and why wasn’t one of them taking the service, anyway?) were already processing into church, and saying, “Come on, hurry up!” And when we got inside, I found myself in the AGM of something like the Esperanto Association of Britain, which went on and on, and I’m saying, “But what about the wedding? They won’t want to be waiting all this time, and anyway, I still don’t know who or even where the bride and groom are.”
Still, I must be getting a bit better. There weren’t any ghoulish proverbs last night.
Godspelled 