Come home, Lucy

Arnette Miller and Lucy Barker

I dreamed I was out walking in the suburbs of greater downtown Marysville. Not that it looked like the real place, but I concluded that's where I was from directions someone gave me. I was out for a stroll when I encountered a little pug dog who had gotten out of its yard. The dog belonged to Manuel Silva, my ex-coworker at Honda. 

I first noticed the little dog as I was crossing the street at a busy intersection. It followed me across, using me as a crossing guard.

"Go on home, Lucy," I chided the little dog.

Lucy Barker was my deceased friend Greg Miller's mom's pug. Since I didn't know the name of this dog, I decided to call it by the name of Arnette Miller's companion animal. 

The dog paid me no mind, and after crossing the street, it disappeared down into a crack in the earth. It was a narrow fissure, with an opening about a foot and a half wide and the length of a city block long. It was about four or five feet deep, and in it there was an underground river that ran through the town and connected to various other underground aquifers. 

"Where does this river connect to?" I asked a lady in a muumuu who reminded me of my grandmother.

"This river is just a part of the sewer system," she told me. "It connects to all the houses in the neighborhood."

"But ultimately, where does it go?" I asked.

"Sacramento," she said. "It hooks up with the Sacramento River in a couple of miles. It will take you all the way to the ocean." 

The little dog was still within earshot, and I kept calling for it to come out. There was a rocky shoreline next to the river, and the dog was playing with some other dogs dangerously close to the banks. I knew that if it went into the current, that would be the last I'd see of it. I really didn't want to have to tell my friend that his dog had gotten out and followed me and that I'd let it get away.

I would need a flashlight to get very far in the underground network, so I left the scene for a minute to retrieve one. I don't know where I wound up procuring it, but I found myself in possession of an old D-cell Mag Lite. I played with the button to make sure it worked. Good. A faint glow. Not great, but it would suffice. 

I crawled into the crack and walked around on the gravel next to the river. I couldn't see the dog anymore, but I could hear it yelping faintly from downriver. The river was shallow enough at the point of entry for a little dog to play in the water, but farther downstream, the channel deepened, and the banks became too steep and narrow to exit. 

I waded into the stream and felt the current pulling me. There was no sign of Lucy or the other dogs. I was now at the point of decision: jump in and let the current take me, or abandon my rescue mission altogether.  Surely, my friend wouldn't know that I had been the last person to see his little dog. He'd just assume his dog had gotten out and gotten lost. I'd never have to tell him about how I unwittingly assisted it by letting it follow me across the street. 

I wasn't inclined to keep secrets from my friend, though, so I felt obligated to do my best to recover his dog, even if that meant going for a river rafting journey sans flotation device. I was contemplating the fate of both the dog and myself in this scenario, and it didn't look good for either of us. As usual, when faced with a challenging dream situation with no easy solutions, I woke up. 

Earlier in the dream, I'd been driving a bus. I was up on a winding hilltop road, trying to parallel park on a narrow, curvy section. 

"You're doing a fine job," my sole passenger, an Asian lady of 40, said to me.

"Thanks," I said. "It's my first day, but I think I've got the hang of it." 

I proved my statement by deftly backing into the smallest of parking spots without taking out any light poles or parked cars in the process. I let my passenger out and extricated my unwieldy vehicle from the constricted space, pulling back into traffic with ease. 

----

Today is taking too long to start, as usual. 

I had to write this dream down, since I haven't been able to recall my dreams much these days. My life is apparently too full, so my dream life has taken a backseat. Or it could be that my use of cannabis as a sleep aid is having a deleterious effect on my dream recollection. I don't like having an addiction, even one that I enjoy, and I miss my nightly dream entertainment. So I think, as of right now, I will go back to my once a week schedule.