9.20.2015

A-hole

I'm walking through a truly enormous house. I think it is meant to be my friend Lesley's new(ish) house, which I have been meaning to visit and tour in real life for months.

There's a lot of work to do in the house, and old, patterned wallpaper covers almost every surface. Still, it's an architecturally impressive space, with giant angled ceilings and beams that I imagine must get caked with cobwebs and dust. I wonder how Lesley and her husband plan to clean the highest of the crevices, or if they will just let them be.

As I'm walking and gazing upward, I realize I'm dreaming. I've been hoping to have more lucid dreams lately, and have begun reading a book on lucid dreaming to try to get my brain primed. So once I realized I was dreaming, I got excited. It hasn't happened in a long time.

Then I hear a phone ring. It's my mobile. I answer, and the voice on the other end sounds just like mine. It's talking to me in a quiet, mumbly tone and I can't make out much. I ask the voice to please speak up, that I'm having trouble hearing. As the voice is talking to me, dream me is thinking about what awake me read in that lucid dreaming book: That if you encounter yourself in a dream, it's OK to ask that self questions about your Self. (At least, I think I read that. I just flipped back through the book and can't find the passage I'm remembering.)

After a few hard-to-understand exchanges with the voice, I ask it, "Are you me?"

The voice — my voice — says to me, clear as day, "Asshole."