Opiate Dreams

It is my second day post-surgery. For the most part I sleep. The painkillers are strong. I only wake when the need to pee is beyond urgent. When I wake, the pillow is damp with drool – a purple smudge on the lilac pillowcase.

I have been told that morphine gives vivid dreams. For the most part it just seems to make me feel like puking.

But then, after I have slept, woke, peed, slept, woke, taken more drugs, and slept again, I have a dream.

It is the same old dream.

I am at my college again. It’s not like it was, of course – it never is. In this dream, I am living in a dank Germanic house, like something you might find in a European hilltop village built in the 1600s.

And, I am failing my classes.

In this dream I am always back at college because I missed a class or a credit, and I need to retake it. Without it, I understand, my university degree is invalid. And my professional degree, which feeds my family, is contingent upon my university degree.

This is a classic stress dream – I know this. American professionals, when we are anxious about our work life, are gifted by our subconscious with a trip back to college (or high school) to fail there while we sleep.

And I’m out of work for the surgery, so of course I’m stressed. So, of course, this dream.

And this afternoon, as I sleep, I am failing a drama course. I am failing it by never managing to attend any one of the lectures. In fact, after a semester back at school, I am realizing that I do not know when most of the exams are scheduled, and that in several cases I have never attended a single scheduled seminar.

The imagery is dark. I am in a black hallway learning about the exam I am missing. I am searching for a classroom for an unknown class in a fog of charcoal and grey. Students I speak with to solicit information are dressed in black. I cannot find what I am looking for. I cannot even begin to determine how to find it. Kafka could have written this place.

And then I am back in the apartment. It is collegiate, which is to say that it is run down and raw. And I am panicked. I know now that I will have to take the semester over yet again. It will be another six months before I can return to my regular job practicing law and provide support for my kids.

I have several roommates – although until this moment, they are non-descript. I turn to one of them. It is Laura, an old friend from high school and middle school. We did not attend college together.

I say to Laura “You passed all these classes – yet you had the same schedule, the same parties, the same responsibilities as me. How did you do it?”

She smiles and motions for me to follow.

The dream is vivid now. Burned into my memory as no normal dream would linger.

We walk up a flight of old wooden stairs. The walls are a rough crumbling plaster. The roof is timber framed and low.

She gestures to a small hallway off to the right – tucked under an eave.

I follow her in. I see shelves built into the wall. On them are simple wooden trays. Each looks about the size and shape to hold a folded medium sized umbrella. There are two boards on the top of each tray, with a slot in the middle. They might be teak.

Each tray contains a mixture of two or three colors of pastel (chalk) dust. The dust isn’t blended, the way pastels get when you smudge them. Instead, it looks as if the chalk has been ground and layered together. The effect is stunning, and the colors are vivid.