Mr. Badmouth wrote:
I had another dream of Polly last night, and where else to share it but here. I was holding her new book, The Forest, in my hands. The design of the book was very similar to The Hollow of the Hand, the font used was the same, and the cover was sort of blurry and purplish/pinkish in colour, it sort of looked like those reddish pictures of the universe you see, really. The bio inside the book said that she had a son named Dimitri, which surprised me substantially. I can't remember any of its other contents unfortunately.
Brilliant. We will have to wait to see whether any of this is prophetic.
You have encouraged me to share my only Harveyan dream. It's quite long as I have learned it off by heart!
I and she are in a small cottage, owned by an older woman who I never see properly. It's decorated inside in a twee sort of way with little china ornaments and small pictures on the walls. Polly and I are sat opposite each other at a small wooden table, writing in notebooks (I don't have any clear idea what I'm writing about). She is as she was 25 years ago, a black-clad art student with her hair in a bun, which is very strange as I never think of her like that at all. It gets darker and darker outside, not because it's late in the day (it's mid-afternoon) but because the sky is becoming overcast and stormy. Eventually it gets so dark I find it hard to write. Polly seems to have no problem at all and I can't work out how she's carrying on. I soldier on until I really can see nothing and pluck up the courage to say, 'Look, I think we'll be able to see better if we put the lights on.' She puts down her pen, sits back, folds her arms, and says in the most sarcastic voice you can imagine, 'Oh, you
think?' I am driven to protest, 'Look, don't blame me, it's not
my house, I didn't like to ask!' The lights are put on and we continue working with a bit less tension.
Next, it's daylight and we are catching a bus on an urban street. It's a double-decker yellow bus and I wonder whether this part of the dream is set in Bournemouth, where I grew up and where the municipal buses were yellow. It's very crowded and we are squeezed onto a long seat running along the side of the bus towards the back: Polly is on my left and to my right is a sandy-haired man of about 50 in a black mackintosh with glasses and a brown attaché case. He looks at me and says with a very supercilious air, 'I suppose you were so keen to get on the bus because you're worried about being deported'. I reply 'I and my friend [my friend!!] were both born in Dorset so I think it's exceedingly unlikely that we're going to be deported'. Polly remains scornfully silent throughout this encounter. Actually until now I hadn't realised that she's in a pretty bad temper throughout.
Finally we end up at a party in a large house. The surroundings are vague but there is a series of big, high-ceilinged rooms without much furniture, and lots of people milling about. I'm aware most of the partygoers are significantly younger than me and I wonder what I'm doing there. Suddenly I'm aware that Polly has disappeared. 'I'd better find out where she is', I think, 'It would be awkward if we lost one another'. Then I spot her on the far side of a room talking to a group of young women so that sets my mind at rest. I wander outside and sit by an ornamental pool in a paved garden. 'I could do with a drink', I think, and then notice that there are tumblers of orange juice on the bottom of the pool - yet the juice stays in the glasses. I'm reflecting how odd this is when I wake up.
Where is Dr Freud when you need him?