Dreams
August 4th
It's a cleanup day for our apartment complex, part of the Homeowner's Association stuff, and there are people in and out of all the units, examining and checking and snooping -- Erin is there and looking very pregnant, discussing the cobwebs on our lawn and how they will need to be removed --
Our apartment has secret rooms, walls that move up into the ceiling to reveal a den and another bedroom connected to our bathroom -- so much more space! How did we not know about these rooms before? Furnished and carpeted with lots of doors and windows and shelving -- It's a miracle! -- Erin leads us around through all the rooms -- Spacey and disconnected, her eyebrows are thick and dark -- her husband cooks something in his kitchen -- Suddenly, all the apartments in the complex are hooked together -- we can walk seamlessly from one to another without going outside -- hallways and windows and people wandering around everywhere -- a big community space that is much bigger than I recognized but it still makes me a little bit mad --
I'm standing on the outside of the building and it looks uncannily like the Brightwood House -- No, it is the Brightwood House -- on the corner with the redwood trees and pines in the corner bed, and the porch with white railing that wraps around and around -- I think, Our complex is in Portland, Oregon but it is Brightwood -- I don't think it odd, the resemblance, but it warms me with calm feelings and the slight sense of nostalgia without the sadness --
We're back wandering through the rooms, the big secret rooms that I didn't know about, there is one with a bathroom -- all this time when he would leave the bedroom in the middle of the night to go pee, he was using this other toilet, the Secret Toilet, and assumed I knew all about it -- Again, questions -- so many questions! -- How could I not have known about the walls that go up into the ceiling, revealing a den that could easily be utilized for hanging out and TV watching?
All this time we could've been using this as our hanging out room, instead of the living room that becomes so unbearably hot in the evenings -- I'm irritated, left in the dark -- everyone else knows except for me and that makes me so mad -- Struck with angry thoughts laced with small amounts of panic --
I now have more rooms to buy furniture for, more rooms to decorate and shui and figure out and organize things for -- this was not in my budget -- resentment, frustration --
[...]
The small backyard has railroad tracks running through it, running right through it, mere feet from our back door -- trains run feet, FEET!, from our glass sliding door -- While shocked and amazed and again not understanding how I could not have known about this previously, I think how it makes a lot of sense, because the train sounds are so loud at night --
Not only does the train run right behind our house, but it's the end of the line, the tracks just STOP right here, dead end at a tree with a patch of dirt and a small unpainted fence -- There are small dogs looking far away, below me and the wooden platform I stand on -- a white terrier type and Rottweiler -- William the Rottweiler -- running exuberantly in the yard and then, on the tracks -- tracks that now move further and further below, now a considerable drop going further away --
The dogs are specks now and the train is coming full speed but they can't hear me shouting -- Cale runs down to wrangle them -- sounds are muffled and the train's horn blares -- I see the conductor and he looks familiar but I can't place him -- not slowing, signaling them to get off the tracks, Cale chasing the dogs -- the train runs over them but they are not smashed, they are in tact, frozen from fear and shock, waiting for something, a signal or sign -- Tim emerges from the cabin angry and red-faced -- Cale and the dogs move aside and it is only then we realize they have been injured, not fatally, but with wounds that will need swift attention -- I cannot believe he went onto the tracks to get the dogs! -- Oblivious to any real danger -- tracks that still move further away from our glass door -- I don't know how they are so close --
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