Are my dreams someone else's nightmares?

 

I keep returning to this place in my dreams (not the bed store in Chico where I bought my bed 20 years ago). Actually, I don’t go anywhere. I’m in my bed in my dreams as well. The place I keep returning to is a place of warmth and coziness, with my friend E____ lying beside me. 

It’s never sexual, although I won’t say there isn’t desire. It’s more of a contented feeling, and the wish to extend that to her physically somehow. There is the electricity of a single touch, a warm satiety, like the feeling of a full belly after a good meal. We share that in my dreams. I’m always hesitant, and I always ask if she’s OK with it. Clearly, I am.

I was in bed in such a situation, and she was lying next to me, my arms loosely encircling her waist. Something shifted, and she rolled over on top of me. My hands slipped dangerously close to regions unexplored. I didn’t cause it, however, I wasn’t fighting it when it happened.

“Is this OK?” I asked.

“It’s fine,” she said, and she didn’t squirm, so I left everything as it was and just enjoyed the moment.

Next, we were in the kitchen, and she was making something that used lasagna noodles. She used about half of the package and put the rather plain looking pasta dish in a Tupperware as a to-go meal. As she headed out the door, she asked me what I was going to eat. I told her that I would make something using the rest of the lasagna noodles.

“I think I’ll make lasagna,” I said.

Looking around, I could see that I was short quite a few ingredients to make actual lasagna, as she had left me only a few of the flat noodles, and I had no ricotta, mozzarella, tomato sauce or ground beef. 

“It’s going to be pretty skimpy,” I admitted. 

She suggested that I go to town, not necessarily to pick up ingredients, but to clear my head. I agreed this would be a good idea, and I got in my car.

I was driving down a mountain road, rather bumpy and steep, in my Honda fit. The headlights were doing a poor job of illuminating the road. I turned them off momentarily, and it made very little difference.

Misty Rose

The next thing I recall, I was making the same trip during the daytime, this time astride my Tennessee Walking Horse, Misty Rose. She wasn’t the old, arthritic pasture horse that she would later become, but in her prime and rather frisky. She trotted down the road at a brisk pace, and I had to post just to keep from bouncing out of the saddle. She always did have the tendency to mix her gaits. 

We were in a mountainous canyon with a river that ran alongside the road. We came to a place where the river was inches from a narrow point in the trail. The water, to our left, was a raging Yosemite like torrent. We were hemmed in on the right by rocks. She navigated the narrow opening with ease. It began to get dark, so I made the decision to turn back, however, the path we had had taken was not even visible on the return trip. The narrow spot had been swallowed up by the river.

I looked around, getting off of Misty to investigate. I found a different path, through a nearby parking lot with a gate that led to a safer spot on the road. Misty had become separated from me for a moment, and I whistled and called to her frantically. She came bounding up to me like a puppy dog, and I threw my arms around her neck. She tumbled over onto me, and I thought for a moment that I would be crushed, but she turned out to be light as a feather, and we rolled around like a couple of kids on the grass on a summer day.