Lost in Dreamland

A few weeks ago, I wrote about my recent trip to Argentina and getting profoundly, deeply, reliably lost in the streets of Córdoba (see Lost in Argentina). I say “reliably” because it was something I could count on every day. No doubt it would have gotten easier had I spent more time there, walking around and visiting sites, but something tells me I would have gotten lost, anyway. Why? My inner logic didn’t quite match the city’s design, which has changed over centuries—from the colonial period until today. And I do mean today. They were jackhammering and digging up the street outside my hotel window in the heart of Córdoba, which is another story, even as “Heart of Córdoba” sounds like a gaucho ballad with acoustic guitar.

Getting lost is a theme of mine, especially in my dreams. Just this week I had two dreams about being lost. One was outside, the other inside. Both involved what I call a “map meld,” which is something like a Vulcan mind meld but without the distinction of whose mind is whose.

A map meld consists of images and memories from different locations in my past thrown into a blender, the results of which I then use either to find my way out of a jam, or to arrive somewhere familiar, safe, and eerily reminiscent of home. Just which home it resembles is another matter, but at least I get to sit down and rest from all of that walking, running, riding, or flying. Actually, flying has its own taxonomy that deserves a separate post.

The outside dream had me on a quest—Odysseus‑like—to get back home. I stood in Yonkers with adult students about to board a bus. As I waited my turn, a Jackie O figure with dark hair, sunglasses, and a trench coat cautioned that I was on the wrong bus. I thanked her and drove frantically through traffic to reach the Staten Island Ferry so I could get back to New Jersey and my D.C. neighborhood. As you can see, it was very jumbled. Patterns, images, and scraps of conversation melded together to help me get home in time for dinner (or hinder me). I wasn’t sure who would be there when I arrived, if I arrived at all. I also may or may not have been driving a yellow Checker taxicab, which I actually did one summer during college. Think of it as my Achaean longship.

In the inside dream, I attended a conference in a hotel. I’m not sure what my role was. I could have been a speaker, a vendor, an organizer, or an attendee. Over the years, I have been all of those. I remember being loaded down with the usual—travel bag, laptop, tote bag, and something else heavy and indiscriminate. It was extra baggage in every sense. I struggled with the load, heaving things to and fro while trying to find Room 614. Apparently, I had been in the wrong room and needed to find the correct one and settle in. The front desk wasn’t helpful, so I wandered the beige‑carpeted hotel with my colleagues in search of my room. The pursuit involved elevators, which, like flying, belong to a category all their own.

So, does this mean I should buy a lottery ticket with 614 in it? Or expect something to happen on June fourteenth? I don’t know what the number means—if anything—nor the beige carpet, for that matter. Liminality? Jackie O does remind me of my mother when she was young, but these are ways my psyche colors the messaging. After all, iconic images and archetypal quests have to present themselves in a language you understand. Otherwise, what would be the point? The psyche is not dumb.

What I do know about these recurring dreams is that they call me to do something, achieve something. That could be as simple as getting back home for dinner or saving someone from danger. In each case—every case—there is an obstacle that frustrates. The map is wrong. The directions were misleading. The bus has no brakes. The plane is running out of fuel. And with each obstacle, I struggle.

I can feel the struggle in my lungs as I push, pull, and muscle my way through. So, the question becomes, am I struggling too much? Is the struggle the real obstacle even as it is part of the human condition? It’s possible, maybe even likely, in which case the answer is devastatingly simple: let it be. Now, wouldn’t that be a fantastic Act Two reveal in a play entitled Lost in Dreamland?

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