After
weeks of intense dreams that I forgot as soon as I rose from bed, I had a
feature-length dream:
It was my first day as a transfer student at MIT. I had transferred in mid-semester. My first class was in a
very old building. There was some excitement because a ghost had been seen. I was sitting near a
small group of people. We introduce ourselves. One was a tall good-looking brown haired guy,
and he whispers in my ear something in Spanish. I tell him in Italian to speak slowly, because I
only understood a word here and there, and he whispers in a warm voice the whole thing all
over again, just as rapidly as before. It's clear that he likes me.
I know what's behind the "ghost" so when they sent us out of the building (which was about to
be condemned) I lead our small group to a little house. An oldish woman answers the door,
and at my request she shows us the ghost: a little ground monkey covered by a sheet. The
monkey is very small, and someone steps on it, killing it. A little boy upstairs is quite upset.
The old lady goes up to calm him, but I hear her saying, "Ouch!" at intervals of a couple seconds.
I step back to see what's going on in the balcony, and I see that a long narrow white snake (yes,
I know) is biting her. She gets very agitated, and a whole chorus of snakes and serpents rise up
to strike her. Me and my friends - we get the hell out of there, closing the door behind us.
We go into the city (which is New York) to look for a clue. We make our way through a very narrow
access space to a dirty elevated subway platform. We are almost even with the roof of a famous
performance hall. The name on the building is "Gordon Hall" but that's not what New Yorkers
call it; just the way that no New Yorker says "Avenue of the Americas" although that's what the
street is clearly labelled - they call it "Sixth Avenue".
One of the group, an Asian, who in real life is an ex co-worker of mine, is dressed as a policeman.
In real life, his children are always ill. In the dream, the child who died in the snake episode
was his son. He knows the name of the concert hall, but for some reason he won't say it.
"Carnegie Hall?" I say, knowing as I say it, it's wrong.
"No," he says, and makes his way rapidly down the access space. I have trouble keeping up.
I woke, and later fell alseep to find myself dreaming part of the dream again. I entered the old
lady's house and said to her, "
Listen, don't bring out any animals to show us, okay?" Puzzled,
she asked, "Why?"
"Because I've seen this movie before, and I know how it comes out," I told her, looking around
nervously.