One Hundred and Thirty Two

I find it kind of funny

And I find it kind of sad
That the dreams in which I'm dying 
Are the best I've ever had

I had a vivid dream last night, one Jung would probably have called a great dream. Perhaps my unconscious is compensating me for the emptiness of my waking life.

She and I are visiting some tropical country, and staying at a hotel on the beach. It’s a huge building, virtually a city in itself, surrounding a garden atrium. There are numerous shops on the ground floor.

This building has appeared in many of my dreams. It's the Tower of Babel, and its numerous shops are Vanity Fair.

We wander through the garden together. Then we decide to split up and explore the shops separately, meeting back in our hotel room afterwards. 

I once had a true love
I loved her so well
I loved her far better

Than my tongue can tell 

She stepped away from me
And this she did say
"It will not be long, love
'Til our wedding day". 

She stepped away from me
And moved through the fair
Fondly I watched her
Move here and move there.

I wander from one shop to another. Each one opens into the next, as they always do in these dreams, like a series of connecting showrooms inside one big department store.

All the items for sale in all the rooms are made of glass. They shine and glitter, blinding me, so I go back into the garden to clear my head.

Between huge tropical flowers on thick stems, as tall as trees, I see a blonde wearing glasses. I know it’s not her – she didn’t start wearing glasses until she was old(er), and in my dreams we’re always young - but I follow the woman anyway.

I lose her, so I decide to go up to our hotel room. Surely she’s finished her shopping by now and is there, waiting for me.

I get into the elevator, and the doors slide shut. Their shiny metal surfaces remind me of the glass in the shops. Music is coming from a speaker overhead.

I push the button for the seventeenth floor. The doors slide open again, but no one enters. I must have accidentally pushed the 'open' button, so again I push the button for the seventeenth floor.

It’s a long ride up. Bored, I start to sing along to the elevator music.

Suddenly I become aware that a young (she looks to be about twenty) black woman is standing next to me. She must have gotten into the elevator when the doors opened. How could I not have seen her?

Embarrassed, I apologise for singing. She smiles and says she didn’t mind because my voice is quite good.

A young black man, who I also hadn’t seen before, stands beside her. I assume he’s her boyfriend.

He looks at me as young men used to look at me when I was young myself, and their girlfriends spoke to me; but I know he’s not jealous. I was a good singer when I was young, but I'm old now.

And whether or not I do still have a good singing voice, I wasn’t using it. I was singing along with the elevator music ironically, as I often sing along now when there's some particularly inane song on the radio. When the girl said I had a good voice, she was just being polite to a lonely old man who sings to himself. Her boyfriend is frowning at me because he doesn’t want her talking to weird old men.

The elevator stops at the seventeenth floor, and the doors open. I step out and, as always happens in these dreams, I can’t find my hotel room.

I walk around and around the hall, looking for it. Then I see the blonde again. Again I follow her, and again I lose her.

I’m tired of chasing her, and my eyes still hurt from all the dazzling glass in the shops below. There’s a small table in the hall, with a vase of flowers on it, so I take my glasses off, lay them on the table and rub my eyes.

When I pick the glasses up and put them on, my vision is blurred. Then I see there's another pair of glasses lying on the table, almost hidden behind the vase of flowers. The blonde must have left her glasses on the table, and I’d picked them up by mistake.

I put my own glasses on and walk down the hall. I now know where my room is.

Often in these dreams, if and when I finally find my room, I find I don’t have the key. This time I have it.

I enter the room and look for her, but she isn’t there.

Then I wake up.

In these dreams I always get off at the seventeenth floor. Why the seventeenth floor?

Then I remember the ICU ward was on the seventeenth floor.

O mistress mine, where are you roaming?
Stay and hear! Your true love's coming
That can sing both high and low.

Trip no further, pretty sweeting
Journeys end in lovers' meeting
Every wise man's son doth know.

What is love? 'Tis not hereafter
Present mirth hath present laughter
What's to come is still unsure.

In delay there lies no plenty

Then come kiss me, sweet and twenty
Youth's a stuff will not endure.