A Vivid Dream

My dream life usually consists of equal parts inanity and anxiety, and I hardly ever remember much about it. Last night, though, I had a dream that left clear impressions. It focused on a little community of shacks made of old junk that had been assembled by various outcasts. There was a story, as I will tell, but this place was the star, and the crazy shacks were always more clear to my eyes than anything else. They remain clearer in my memory. They had the desperate insanity of a homeless camp but also a genuine sense of creativity and beauty. They had gabled roofs made of sheet metal or wooden boards, and walls made of a crazy pile of wooden and metal junk, some of them half open. The setting was dry, rocky, and hilly, but not a complete desert, since I remember some scrubby pine trees. I was supposed to be doing an archaeological or ethnographic study of this community and its strange inhabitants. As an archaeologist I was fascinated by the shacks and what they said about those who built them, who were moved to abandon the ordinary world and build their own from our trash. Early on there was some sliding back and forth in time, between an old and abandoned place, the shacks half full of sand, and one recently made and full of people. It finally settled down half abandoned, with a few people still living amidst the ruins. I began to draw one of the shacks and finished a detailed rendering of one facade, which I can still see in my mind. If only I could really draw that well.

There was a man living in one shack. He was tall and handsome, with a cowboy look, and when I interviewed him he proved to be something of a philosopher about the corruption of our society the need to escape from it. I had a sense that he had once had money and power but had given them up. Then rather suddenly I had a companion, a woman who was an acquaintance in college but whom I haven't seen or thought of since. She was drawn to this cowboy, and somehow ended up living with him. I was uneasy about this but I agreed enough with the cowboy that I couldn't say anything to stop her. Then the scene shifted and it was years later, or rather my friend's arrival in the camp was something that had happened a decade in the past. Now I was there to investigate her death. Nobody would talk to me except for the cowboy philosopher, and he was hostile. He made more accusations about the emptiness and corruption of the outside world and said that my friend had found the peace she was looking for. I could learn nothing about how she actually died, but I did have a vision of her face, dead and sad. I knew that she had not been happy here, but that she had also not wanted to leave.