"Tell a Dream, Lose a Reader"
If the Henry James quote above is correct, one of you will abandon me upon reading this post.1
I’ve started getting information on my upcoming first residency, and recently had to turn in poems for my first workshop. Last Sunday morning a nightmare woke me from a sound sleep. In it, I arrived at my residency without my luggage. Not because it had gotten lost in transit—I drove myself there—but because I had somehow failed to bring it. So I was there with only the clothes I stood up in. I also forgot to attend the mandatory dinner for new students on the first night, and I lost my laptop because I left it in a computer lab and couldn’t find my way back.
Do you think I might be anxious?
My dreams frequently crack me up (as this one does) because they are such English major dreams: heavy on symbol and allegory, begging for interpretation, as if my emotional state were interchangeable with “Sailing to Byzantium.”
Farewell, you fainthearted reader, you…
1 Please don’t let it be you, Mom!
At least you didn't dream you were naked.
That is simply the best quote ever, and I must remember to heed it. However, your dream didn't lose me! Now I am trapped in a spiralling logic paradox.