Paris

Last night dreamed I was in Paris.  I left the hotel and went to a grocery store for breakfast.  On the way I crossed the Seine, but instead of the urban river that runs through real Paris, this dream version stretched out far into a rural distance, bounded by rough chalky cliffs and under a clear blue sky.  At the edge of my vision I could just see a group of young boys jumping off the cliffs and into the water.  Luminous air.  It was another in the series of Mystic Landscape dreams.  I was so moved that I began weeping at its beauty or impossible perfection.  But returning from the store I realized that I had forgotten the name of my hotel and had no memory of the street it was on.  I was completely lost and disoriented.  I don't know that I've ever felt that quite so strongly in dreams or in waking life. 

I climbed into a passing car, whose occupants didn't seem to notice me, and I rode with them through the city.  One scene was glimpsed as we went through a cavernous tunnel:  a parallel tunnel where sheep lived on a dirt floor.  We drove up a mountainous road to the top of a rocky outcrop where houses were clustered.  The driver couldn't help me find my hotel.  I walked to a nearby house.  An old, skinny, dark-skinned grandmother opened the door.  She fanned a fistful of dollars and said I could sub for her as a teacher if I wanted--she was blind.  Somehow she covered me with black and white kittens (I know, I know).  I woke up.

Entering a large rectangular room, giant hearth on one side, assorted sofas and chairs in the middle.  At one end is a massive credenza stretching to cover the whole wall.  Where a mirror might be there reaches to the ceiling a profusion of carved animals and birds interspersed now and then with mirrors and paintings.  The credenza and all the carvings are made of very dark wood, so dark that details are murky.  One of the paintings near the top, near the ceiling, is just large letters that almost seem to spell out a word but I couldn't read it.  JUNG, maybe?  I recently bought a book about him.  It is hung upside down.
One of the other walls is festooned with musical instruments, especially stringed instruments.  Many of them are unfamiliar to me.  One of these is a harp, but made of dark wires.  It is hanging from the ceiling and the bottom, also wire, is curved upwards like a rocking horse base. 
A crowd of people have entered the room, moving randomly about.  I pick up the harp and find that I can play it reasonably well.  Partly because I can see lighter areas on the wire strings where other people have put their fingers.  I play some arpeggios and scales.  A policeman of some sort strides purposefully through the crowd, ignoring everyone.  With some apprehension I play more loudly, thinking that he will assume I'm innocent.  Because see?  I can play the harp.

I'm touring a university campus unfamiliar to me.  I'm with a few other people I don't really know, and the tour guide is a professor at the university who is new to me, but I know he has a reputation for brilliance and being difficult.  He's showing us around and he and I are getting on quite well.  We finish the tour and he walks us to a large car parked outside on a field.  The sunlight is very bright and suffuses the field.  All around us there are other people walking on their business but there also are many small children running happily about.

The tour guide gets us into the car and leans into to the window to speak to me.
"Do you enjoy having all the children around," he asks.
"Yes," I reply honestly.  "I don't get to see many little kids any more and it's fun to see them, especially so happy.  (Or something very like that.)
"You know," he says  "the man who plays the violin for the university is retiring."
"He's Ray Bradbury," one of my companions says.
I look at the tour guide, who is walking away.  I realize he is suggesting I take the position of violinist for the university.
I call after him:  "I don't play the violin!"
He turns just enough to say, quietly:  "I think you can do it."
I turn away from the window, instantly tormented by this.  My chest is convulsed with sorrow and physically knotted up inside.
"Go ahead," I cry  "Stab my heart with an ice pick!"
And I fall into the lap of one of my companions and weep harsh painful tears.
I wake with my heart pounding and chest heavy with distress and sadness.

Missed chances in life?  Very intense dream.

Long dream culminating in this scene:  I'm in a large, dimly lit room where many people mingle (I attended a poetry reading last night, which is probably the resource for this).  Standing against one wall, her back to the room is my mother.  She's dismally unhappy.  A young girl stands beside her, also with back to the room.  Both have very long strait hair, unlike my mother in life.  I approach and put my arms around my mother's back, trying to say calming and reassuring words.  Finally, I say "I love you, mom."  Immediately her body pops like a soap bubble, leaving me holding her empty skin for just a second.  But I understand that my declaration of love has freed her, and ended her suffering.  Now she can go on to some other place. 

Very positive dream.  I really felt like I was making some kind of astral plane communication of something that needed to be said.  

Sometimes A Great Notion?

Dreamed I wandered into a banjo workshop taught by Ken Kesey and Paul Newman.  Kesey seemed irritated about something, but Newman was gracious and charming.  They were parents? custodians? guardians? of a miniature adult, an old man about a foot tall.