The Fabric of Dreams

[bunsen_h]

I am at the fabric store, looking for fabric suitable for me to make a nice tie.  I ask the guy at the cash if it's possible for me to take a look at the odds and ends they keep "in the back".  He hesitates: though he knows me and trusts me, the door to the area must be kept locked if someone from the store isn't available to watch it, and he can't spare the time away from the cash to do that.  What he can do, if I'm willing, is to let me in to the area and then lock the door behind me; he will let me out again later.  I thank him for his kindness, and that's what we do.

The back area is a high-ceilinged warehouse space, unfinished.  All around me are shelves, with bolts and rolls of fabric, and piles of folded cloth pieces.

Quickly, I find a piece of a beautiful iridescent brocade, perfect for what I need for my tie: on one side, a pattern of large fleurs-de-lis, peacock-tail-coloured shimmering green-blue-purple against a blue-purple-blue background.  On the other side, though, the pattern is stark white fleurs-de-lis against bright royal blue, like the Quebec flag, and this would be a garish contrast with my suit.  And the problem of how to fold and sew the fabric so that only the "good" side would show is complex enough that, thinking it through, I awaken.

But as I lie in my bed half-asleep, half-awake, it occurs to me that I have left a great mystery for the people who remained behind in my dream, particularly the nice fellow at the store: How could I have vanished from that locked room?

Comments

[metalana.livejournal.com]

ooo! cool story.

[beable]

And somewhere is somebody dreaming that he opened the door to the locked room and the person inside had disappeared.

[ladymondegreen.livejournal.com]

But just a corner of the cloth is trailing from your waking hand, back into the dream world, he follows it and starts appearing in your waking life ...

[bunsen-h.livejournal.com]

The thing is, I do know the guy in waking life -- vaguely, at a distance; I can't remember his name or even pin down the context. He might be a clerk at some store that I see about once a year, or a friend of a friend that I encounter at parties in some social group that I don't really belong to. Or something like that. Such acquaintances and long-ago friends and classmates appear as bit-part actors in my dreams fairly regularly.

[ladymondegreen.livejournal.com]

My dream mind tends to agglomerate people from pieces of people I know. Often someone will show up in a dream wearing someone else's body. I'll know it's them, but when I wake up, it'll take a little double-think to figure out what's been going on.

[kattale.livejournal.com]

It's been a long time since I've mentioned it:
I love the way your mind works. :)