serial dead cats

Last night, I dreamed that I saw a dead cat. It was dark-haired-- dark gray, I think. This morning, (which is nighttime for me, so it is always dark out,) while driving to get gas, I saw the cat that sometimes sits on the hood of my car. Whenever I see him in the garage, I try to coax him close to me so that I can pet him, but he always resists my efforts. At present, he was sitting at an intersection, in a stare-down with another cat. This aloof little friend of mine has light gray hair, much lighter than the cat in my dreams, but still, I found myself hoping that he would not soon meet his demise. Later in the morning, my concerns were dispelled when, on my drive back from breakfast, I saw the cat of my dream. He was dark-haired-- dark-gray, I think-- and pretty well erased from the waist down, with a great pool of blood collecting downhill from him.

another serial event

On Wednesday night, I had a dream about Bo. Bo was the cat that I got in the eighth grade, who died in 2004. I hadn't had a dream about him in awhile, and this dream turned into a lucid dream. I was able to acheive lucidity because it was pretty easy for me to figure out that I was dreaming since I knew for sure that Bo was dead. Incidentally, I also had a lucid dream the very next night. And I hadn't had a lucid dream for at least three months prior to that. I hope to get back into the habit of having lucid dreams. In order to improve at this, I think it will be necessary to incorporate some reality checking into my daily routine. Perhaps it would be best to check reality whenever I am talking to another person. People seem to populate my dreams. And if, during my waking hours, I get in the habit of asking, "Is this real? Is this conversation really happening?" then I'll be more likely to continue the pattern of behavior during my sleep. It's a matter of conditioning, and so, of course, any self-respecting Russian would love the idea.

But back to my dream about Bo. In the dream, he was standing in the horse corral at my mom's house, and I saw him from the driveway, so there was some distance between us. I approached him, and at first, he was familiar, but then, when I got up close to him, I wasn't sure that it was him. He seemed uncertain as to whether he trusted me, and eventually he turned and walked away, even though I was trying to coax him to stay. It was an interesting dream in it's own right. It was made much more interesting by the events of the next day.

The next afternoon, I was at Nansen Field, juggling the soccer ball. I tied my record of 207 straight touches (yesterday, I set a new record of 261) and then decided that I was getting tired, and should leave. As I was walking to my car, I saw a cat from about 30 yards away. He looked just like Bo from that distance. I put my ball in the car, and approached the cat, whereupon, he turned and took cover under a mobile home that sits at the bottom of the parking lot on a small cement pad. I sat down on a rock and watched the cat watch me back until Clive drove by and asked me to close the gate on my way out. I told him I might as well leave too, and then I shared the coincidence of this story with him. He was a little nonplussed, I think.

from Glory, by Vladimir Nabokov

"On the bright wall above the narrow crib, with its lateral meshes of white cord and the small icon at its head (lacquered saint's brown face framed in foil, crimson underside plush somewhat eaten by moths or by Martin himself), hung a watercolor depicting a dense forest with a winding path disappearing into its depths. Now in one of the English books that his mother used to read to him (how slowly and mysteriously she would pronounce the words and how wide she would open her eyes when she reached the end of a page, covering it with her small, lightly freckled hand as she asked, "And what do you think happened next?") there was a story about just such a picture with a path in the woods, right above the bed of a little boy, who, one fine night, just as he was, nightshirt and all, went from his bed into the picture, onto the path that disappeared into the woods. His mother, thought Martin anxiously, might notice the resemblance between the watercolor on the wall and the illustration in the book; she would then become alarmed and, according to his calculations, avert the nocturnal journey by removing the picture. Therefore every time he prayed in bed before going to sleep . . . pattering rapidly and trying to get his knees up on the pillow-- which his mother considered inadmissible on ascetic grounds-- Martin prayed God that she would not notice that tempting path right over his head. When, as a youth, he recalled the past, he would wonder if one night he had not actually hopped from bed to the picture, and if this had not been the beginning of the journey, full of joy and anguish, into which his whole life had turned. He seemed to remember the chilly touch of the ground, the green twilight of the forest, the bends of the trail (which the hump of a great root crossed here and there), the tree trunks flashing by as he ran past them barefoot, and the strange dark air, teeming with fabulous possibilities."