Some nightmares are too plausible

In most of my nightmares alien armadas invade, worlds explode. All the trashy science fiction that I used to read comes alive with even less plausibility than contemporary cinematic potboilers but considerably better special effects that Industrial Light & Magic.

For a couple of years I dreamt of being lost in vast subway stations. Spooky they were but so odd I enjoyed waking from one.

For the first ten years after moving to Durham, NC had repeated dreams where I'd moved back to either Manhattan or San Francisco. In the New York dreams I'd always forget how to get home or the phone numbers of my friends. As is the way with dreams the city would continuously change shape and aspect leaving me ever more confused. No therapist was needed to tell me that part of me wanted to go back to a big city. The dreams abated, better to own my own used bookshop in North Carolina than be a wage slave in Metropolis.

I was back in Manhattan last night. My relationship was ending. I'd been staying at the home of icky middleclass people who didn't really want me there. Unemployed, almost broke, all of my friends were dead. I thought I was going to have to go back to Savannah and let my life dwindle away in misery. That woke me up.

I much prefer the dreams where I wake up thinking there's a phosphorescent monster at the end of my bed.