Entrapment & the Waiting Place

In dreams, there are likely scenarios - loss of teeth, flying, falling, showing up to work naked. But in many of my dreams, there are also likely places. These places that I visit are sometimes real life places given a totally different context in the dream state. And sometimes, they are places I have never been except in my subconscious, but I know them. As soon as I see where I am, I have an automatic cue about the tone of the dream and what complexity my mind is trying to unravel.

Hotel Entrapment: In my dreams - like the one I had last night - I find myself in a hotel. It is an upscale hotel. The facade is a pale blond brick, stately and historic, and the interior is very modern with chrome and glass. It is a total contradiction, I know, but so it is. I have never been to this hotel or any hotel like it; its features are some strange combination of places and things I have seen without really categorizing them. Or perhaps it is entirely conjured during my sleep. I am a guest at the hotel, sometimes willing and sometimes seemingly forced there by an unknown incident. Whichever the case, once I find myself there, I wish to leave.

I am usually pursued by someone during my dream. Not in a classic thriller-film-chase, but in an anxiety-inducing lurking-in-the-shadows way. Although I may never see who is pursuing me, I know their whereabouts, and even though I take steps to divert myself from where they are, I still find myself in the same corridor. Passing the door as quietly as possible, heart hammering. I do not want to make a misstep here. Sometimes I wake up at this moment. Sometimes I escape into another corridor and begin avoiding a new location. But often, I find myself face to face with the one I want to see the least, a hand curled around my wrist, all paths to an exit blocked.

The Pit Stop: Late last fall, I took a trip to a sort-of nearby town for a day of team-building exercises with my chamber group. On the way there, we stopped at a gas station. It was a nondescript gas station, the kind that dots the two-lane country highways across the state of Georgia. In addition to the usual array of fountain drinks and cappuccino machines, they had a little counter that served up breakfast biscuits and the like. Perhaps it was because we were there for 10 or 15 minutes milling around, and I remember feeling a little listless and ready to get on with the show. Perhaps because it was a time in my life marked with a ubiquitous sense of limbo. Whatever the case, this little gas station has become the waiting place.

In my dreams, I am there and usually wearing a coat (it was bitingly cold that day). All sorts of different people come in and out - sometimes very familiar people and sometimes those acquaintances who lurk on the fringes of your memory. At times, I dream that I am driving down the road and, no matter which direction I'm going, I must stop. Even though I could have a full tank of gas and just eaten, I am always compelled to stop at the waiting place. I never quite know why I'm there, so the dream is fraught with a restless energy, a sense of looking for a sign to tell me what to do next. And at times, I reluctantly give in to the idea that maybe, all I'm there to do is wait.