The Wedding Dress

I had a dream this week about a wedding dress. I say wedding dress and not wedding, because the woman wearing it was a student who, in class, suddenly appeared in a low cut, brown, wedding dress with a short veil and matching pillbox hat. She wore pearls, too. They were light brown and not white. I thought only rice came in that either-or variety but apparently not.

In the dream I was teaching a class. This dream bride looked like someone I went to school with years ago but couldn’t remember. She had dark eyes, pointed eyebrows, and olive skin. Actually, she could have been the girlfriend of a fraternity brother in college or of a baseball teammate in high school.

The class took place on a dimly lit, upper floor of a hotel with low ceilings, brown carpet, and rounded columns. During our break, the student in the wedding dress processed down the hallway as if in church. She went past me toward a room at the end of the hallway, which could have been the ladies’ room where friends waited for her or the hotel kitchen where workers in white aprons and caps prepared the feast. I want to say the meal was duck but can’t swear to that. Maybe that was just part of the earth tone theme.

You see how complicated things can get in dreamworld? I can’t say that the dream “went” anywhere. That is, I don’t think there was a point to it except to place me back in a classroom in an environment that was new (the hotel) with people who were vaguely familiar (the bride). But maybe that was the point. It’s like my life right now. New things are vaguely familiar.

There are practical explanations, of course. Currently, in my writing I include dreams, flashbacks, school, and traveling to odd places with vaguely familiar faces. That’s what happens when you create characters. You have to follow them wherever they go, as long as you don’t let them lead you all over town, with or without the goose. It’s a constant concern.

I’m also writing this in a house that had a wedding dress stored for years in the basement. Although not brown with a pillbox hat, it still leaves an impression. That the neighbor across the street could be a clone of the woman who wore that dress down the aisle as I waited for her at the altar feels a bit strange. I won’t say “eerie,” but it does make me stop and wonder. I try not to stare through the shutters. It would be hard to explain away.

There are external influences, too, which is to say friends, family, and the wider society. I’m not suggesting that recent political events have anything to do with it, but I did have to calm a guy down who was beside himself over the presidential election. I advised him to do what all boxers have learned, which is to drop his shoulders and keep breathing. It seemed appropriate since we were in a locker room at the time. It was all new but familiar.

I have to admit that after all these signs leading to a wedding dress, it still came as a surprise. I can say the same thing about certain behaviors of characters on the page. They might do things that I have to correct, edit, or delete. But with dreams, there is no editorial function. So, I am left to wonder about its significance. Are things or people from the past coming back? I am open to that and welcome it. That’s because I have made some progress in letting go of the past, as much as that is a conscious decision to make. There are only so many mea culpas you can do in a day.

Honestly, though, I am fascinated by the color brown. It was everywhere in the dream in various shades and looked good on the bride as she sashayed her way down the hallway. I have brown rosary beads that match her dress. That must be it. And, suddenly, I see brown everywhere, especially people’s eyes. It is, after all, fall.

Image credits: wedding dress by Yves Monrique; hallway by Dylan Ferreira. Want more? Go to Robert Brancatelli. The Brancatelli Blog is a member of The Free Media Alliance, which promotes “alternatives to software, culture, and hardware monopolies.” Happy birthday, triplets!