Chapter Thirty-Seven: The Unsettling Dream

Chapter Thirty-Seven

That Unsettling Dream

One of the first things I remembered was a dream that I had as a kid.  I had the dream, or some variation of it quite often for a while back then.

It was night.  I was walking home.  It was my suburban development, but the houses weren’t quite right.  My house wasn’t where it was supposed to be.  I would search ever more frantically, but too no avail. It was like that old Blind Faith song, “I Can’t Find My Way Home.”

I had always thought it was a product of my parent’s divorce, and my bouncing between their houses in a quasi-nomadic lifestyle.  But, later, of course, I found out it was something else having to do with the nature of Place in our minds.  With how we can never really go home again.  That feeling of home is a time as well as a place, and it is lost to us.  Place as a concept is tied intrinsically to the people who were in our lives at the time, and Home is tied to our parents and siblings, of the safety we felt in their company, if we were privileged in that way.

So, there you are, wandering strange yet familiar streets in a quest for something you can never hope to find, because it is a state of mind tied to place that no longer exists.

Have you ever visited your old house years after you have moved out?  Your childhood home?  It’s weird.  It reminds me of this dream a lot.  There are people living in your house, strangers, and yet they are at home, and you are the stranger.




(c) Copyright 2020 by Diana Hignutt