The dream

The Dream

I like that state between half awake and also half asleep. My body still unmoving but my mind starting to float and drift. It is as if my thoughts become fluid and take themselves into their own directions. Usually I do not remember my dreams but by letting myself sink into this almost hypnotic state, my thoughts seem to be able to grasp the remnants of whatever dream I had that night. Today, however, there was no need for that. Today the dream stood in front of me, stark and strong with a clarity that demanded attention. 

I could not ignore it. I was back at home, where my parents first lived. The house stood just outside the village surrounded by fields and trees. A fire had started and flared in a circle towards the house. The flames consumed more and more of the fields and meadows and drew closer and closer. I stood there watching but not moving. Suddenly an old man appeared with a heavy wooden yoke across his shoulders. Chains hung down on either side with old metal buckets at the end. I thought he was carrying water in them to put out the fire, but the buckets were empty. How stupid is that. In any case two buckets of water would not have put this fire out. It needed much more. He looked at me how someone looks but not really looks. Our eyes met but there was no expression in his face. He turned his head back into the direction he was going, took off his yoke and threw the lot into the fire. Without another glance at me he continued to walk. His gait however seemed a little more upright. He remained unharmed by the fire.  I still stood there, not moving but wondering where he had come from and where he was going. As he walked out of my peripheral vision I woke up.

Weird…. That is all I could think. I remained in bed letting the dream replay till a glance at my phone told me to get a move on or else I would be late. Getting ready for work offered enough distraction to forget about the dream. However, it did not drift into oblivion as all the others before. On the bus, it came back. Closing my eyes offered up again every detail. The flames burned low and looked like a bubbling lake surrounding me with its shore only a few yards away. It never touched me. Peculiarly enough I did not panic. I have had those dreams when you are stuck, paralysed, and want to run away and can’t and then panic and put all your life into trying to move and then wake up with a racing heart and sweat on your brows. This one was not like that, it was different. I would not say I felt safe but I did not panic either. And that was weird too.

I share the office with Amanda. As I walked in she was already on her desk, rearranging some papers.

“Morning.”

“And a good morning to you! You look a bit gloomy, or should I say pensive. What happened?” Amanda looked up from her desk.

“Oh, nothing. Just a dream,” I replied hanging up my coat and putting my bag into the drawer of my desk.

“Must have been an important dream to make you gloomy.”

“I am not gloomy, and it was not important!” My voice however suggested otherwise.

 “Ok, not gloomy then. Tell me about the dream though. I am intrigued.”

At that moment the door flew open and Bella marched in with her loud clothes of bright colours demanding as much attention as my dream did.  Despite her name and her effort to please the eye with her dress code, she was not even pretty.

“Oh intrigued. I love intrigues. What were you intrigued about?” she asked Amanda while looking at me.

Oh blast. The last thing I want is to share my dream with her. I did not want to talk about the dream in the first place! Amanda might have accepted a no from me, but Bella has the habit of getting what she wants. She does not have the name Busy Buddy Bella for nothing! I tried nevertheless.

“It’s just a dream.”

“Well, dreams are very important. They can tell us something about ourselves or even hold messages,” came the all-knowing reply.

“No, not this one.”

“Let me be the judge of that”, Bella facing me square on. She could trap me even more than that fire!

“Yes, Louise. Maybe there is something in this dream,” Amanda added with a reassuring smile.  “Let’s hear it. After all it is only a dream.”

Reluctantly and with hesitation I started to relate the details about the fire and also the old man. The more I recollected of that dream the more I got back into it and for a brief moment I even forgot Busy Buddy.

“You know what was peculiar?” I asked.

“The whole dream is peculiar, don’t you think?” retorted Amanda.

“No, that is not what I meant. The odd thing was the fire never reached me, and also I never felt afraid. You know in some dreams you panic because you are scared and want to run away. This was not like that.”

Bella had stood there quietly, for once not saying a word and letting me finish.  But then it came!

“This could be a warning about a fire. Do you leave electrical stuff on in your flat?”

I looked at her. “Of course I leave electrical stuff on. I charge my phone. Don’t you?”

“No, something more serious. Like a washing machine or an iron. Have you ever left an iron on and forgot about it?”

Witch! Yes, I had. Once. It was still on when I got home in the evening. It had frightened me, remembering how I had heard about one melting having been on all day and setting the iron board on fire. Fortunately, the fire in that incident did not go any farther.  No way I will tell her that though! 

My lack of response prompted Bella to speculate further.

“The fire could also be about cleansing something in your life, which then allows for a new beginning. It can also show your emotions, being angry about something or someone. “

Amanda and I both stared at her. How does she know this stuff? I did not really want her to be right but it reminded me of what I had seen on television. In Scotland they burn the heather in order to allow for new growth, something to do with Grouse. It said that the new growth gives food for the birds. The irony is that they then get shot. Poor birds.

Busy Buddy’s voice pulled me out of my reflection, “So, is there something in your life that you need to change? Something that you want to get rid of, something that you are angry about?”

Heck yes, YOU! But I did not tell her that either. When I started my job at this firm she befriended me and took me under her wings so to speak. I was grateful that someone showed me where was what. However, it seemed that such support came with the right to tell me also at times what to do. Thankfully I do not share an office with her, but she is only next door and often pops in. Amanda does not seem to mind too much. She just grins that cheeky grin that says, “here she comes” or “here we go again”. For me her busy buddy attitude grates though. And the more I focus on it the worse it gets.

I quickly tried to divert her attention from whatever she thought I needed to cleanse in my life and asked, “What about that old guy? Carrying a yoke is definitely odd.”

“Well, I saw a tv report on China and the folk there still carry their rice in baskets with a yoke type stick across their shoulders.”

Not wanting to stand corrected I quickly retorted, “He definitely looked from a different time, and the yoke was a piece of thick wood and not a stick!”

Amanda had again that grin on her face, but now watching us both and not contributing anything towards the speculations at all.

Bella looked at me, a condescending smile crossing her lips. “Well, is it not obvious?”

I responded with a silent question mark firmly planted across my face, holding her gaze.

“Does the word yoke not tell you the answer?”

Suddenly the fire of the dream jumped places and started to flicker inside me growing in intensity with every passing second. I pressed my lips into sealed bars of silence.

“He threw the yoke into the fire, did he not? A yoke is also a burden, so he freed himself of his burden!”

My lips remained sealed bars while that fire raged inside with even greater fury.

 “Well my dear, think about it. For me the dream seems pretty obvious.” She looked at her watch. “I better get going. You are taking up too much of my precious time. Oh, by the way, where are we going for lunch?”

Both Amanda and I knew that that was a rhetorical question. No pause was offered for us to respond to her suggestion to eat at the café on the corner. And with that decision she sailed out of the door.

I sighed a breath of relief while Amanda still held her grin. She turned to her desk. I did the same trying to direct my thoughts to the tasks ahead. It took some time before I found my focus. I looked up the fire symbol on Google. It said that fire can be a sort of cleansing, a transition and also reflect one's emotions. The annoying thing is Bella had a valid point and her analysis was not that far off either.

That recognition did not make me feel any better. She had touched on some truth. The surge in my solar plexus and the quickening of my heartbeat when thinking about the dream and what she said it could mean confirmed that. But what annoyed me most was that I felt indebted to her.  After all, had it not been for her, my start at this firm could have been that little bit lonelier and maybe also that little bit harder. Bella showed me the ropes but then she kept those ropes as some sort of reins over me.

All morning this churning between guilt and anger continued.

At 1 o’clock the door flung open. “Are you ready ladies, let’s go. You know how busy that café gets!”

Amanda had already left her desk waiting for me to do the same. But I remained seated. Taking my bag out of the drawer I placed it on top, looked at Bella and said, “I am staying. You go ahead but I am not coming!”

The calmness in my voice even astonished me. But there it was. The yoke started to lift.

Bella’s face transformed into a puddle of astonishment mixed with some oily disbelief. 

On Amanda’s face her grin re-appeared, deepened with the addition of one raised eyebrow, followed by, “Actually, I fancy staying too!”