ast night I dreamed that I was riding to San Francisco on a train, in one of those fancy old-time private cars. There was a party going on, with lots of elegant people wearing elegant clothing, saying elegant things, and drinking lots of elegant drinks out of glassware big enough to house fish. Music played. The scenery rolled by outside the windows: the Pacific on one side, the rolling green of springtime California on the other.
In that peculiar way that dreams spool out their logic and rules, I slowly discerned that the train was scheduled to arrive in San Francisco in time to “catch” the 1906 earthquake.
Needless to say, I recognized this as a bad idea, and understood that we must stop the train. I tried to tell people, but, no, they wouldn’t listen. They kept partying. Finally, I decided to save myself and so I resolved to jump from the train, but the windows and doors wouldn’t open. If they had opened, the train was moving so fast that, had I leapt, I would have been sucked under the wheels.
So I sat there inside the train, waiting, consoling myself that Amtrak, our under-funded national rail transportation simulacrum, generally ran late. Our salvation depended on incompetence.
Why we were deliberately headed so gleefully toward a rendezvous with disaster remained unknown.
Then I awoke.
told my husband the dream. He said, without hesitation, “It’s your job.”
I told the former chair of my department my dream. (Yes, that’s what we do in Humanities and Languages—we exchange dreams, Jungian interpretation.) She replied, “Yes. The dream of the English chair.”
(Did I mention what an extraordinary job she did as chair for many years? Extraordinary woman, working under extraordinary conditions. Forget Amtrak. Think Japan Bullet Train.)
I told my lawyer my dream. (Yes, it’s still a good thing to have one on hand around these parts.)
He said I should tell it to my analyst, and then sue the district for damages.
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