9 Sep 2025
Dream
I was living in my normal apartment, a basement unit, but outside was a humid jungle. I briefly dreamed I went upstairs and outside, I was wearing hiking clothes particularly boots, and it was grey and less humid, and I started to faint or die. It was like I was falling asleep in my own dream. I woke up because the feeling was scary and truly felt like death. When I fell back asleep normally, this jungle environment was connected to a parking lot that I was apparently driving around and circling. It was raining and I was insecure about anyone knowing I was just circling the parking lot, but I kept doing it and was apparently waiting for someone or something. I saw a combination of my classmate Andy and a former co-worker walking towards me out of the bushes, they had just gotten off work and were headed home. They may have been missing arms and they didn’t regard me at all. They were walking urgently to get home.
There were some parts of the dream where I was standing in lines with Ruby, trying different foods and restaurants, trying to afford different foods, and something being $8 and too expensive. This part involved rain too, dealing with insects, and homelessness or sleeping in unknown places, maybe Ruby’s place at one point.
At one point in my jungly apartment I was trying to keep out insects who were scaring me a little but I was still dealing with them. I slept a night inside the dream and found out in the morning my front door had been open about 8 inches all night, just air and whatever drifting in, I was disturbed to think just anybody could walk in and even wondered if they were in my apartment as I spoke. I shut the door resignedly and never saw anyone around my apartment, but it was disturbing to find the door open.
The other part of the dream I was immersed in details about my novel. Noisy my quadroon character who is a bit like me was living at an orphanage and I dreamed of how she got into her position as a housemaid for a white family, and choosing to pass as a white person too. I dreamed she connected with a white woman who worked for a leasing agency for young women, and she worked in a beautiful dark office that was strangely modern so I modified it to look more 1900s as I dreamed. This woman explained Noisy’s assignment and sent her somewhere she knew would accept a mixed race housemaid. However, at the train station Noisy talks to another man and woman who work for the agency and she either steals a white housemaid’s assignment or gets a new one because they don’t know that she isn’t white. Basically she has a crucial moment where she chooses to pass and try her luck with it. It’s a choice that costs her everything ultimately but out of curiosity and a love for adventure, she chooses to do it, and she is a complex character that seems to indulge in bad stuff and like bad people, and is kind of drawn to ugly decisions. She’s a daredevil, a bit selfish, and above all adventurous. So I dreamed stuff I might use in the novel!
