Landscape of Dream
Last evening, first rain in weeks. Then last night, a dream about grasses. Hundreds and hundreds of them, ten thousand maybe, glowing in clarity, growing on the front lawn. Growing, growing, growing!
I wake up from the dream in a dewy sweat. Probably an “anxiety dream.” After all, a few weeks ago I had the lawn tractor taken in for service and it’s not back yet. The grass doesn’t care. It keeps growing. I share this dream—and my interpretation—with my imaginary therapist.
All these years, telling my dreams to him and him interpreting them for me—teaching me his methods that I might interpret them for myself, along his lines—all in the hope of figuring out what each of these nightly figments means so that, in the end, the meaning of life might be gleaned. Or at least why I do the things I do in waking life.
But there’s no end to it. The dreams keep coming. Just when we get one figured out, along comes another, more inscrutable than the last. I tell my imaginary therapist this dream of the grass. “What does it mean?” I ask, “What is the grass?” He just shrugs. I leave his consultation parlor in the same dewy sweat I entered with. No help.
But just now, the mower repair guy pulls up with his truck and delivers the freshly-serviced lawn tractor. The collie for some reason doesn’t bark at the visitor. Instead, he sits politely and raises his paw in greeting. Fragrance of lilac fills the air. The cool wind in the wake of last night’s passage of a cold front feels soothing on my dewy brow. Suddenly I’m not sure that all of this isn’t still a dream—or maybe a dream within a dream—but I don’t care. I’m going to fire up that old tractor and take care of the grass.
