A couple weeks ago, I had a wild dream. I wrote it
up the next morning then completely forgot about it. A friend just told me
about her dream, reminding me of mine. So herewith is the post.
In the last couple days, I have:
1) Edited an article on the Soviet party and state.
2) Read a chunk of Alan Furst’s Mission to Paris. (It’s set in 1938, about Europe’s impending collective
suicide.)
3) Perused my friend Caryolyn’s pics of her trip to
Siberia.
4) Watched some of Breaking Pointe, the reality show about ballet dancers in Salt Lake
City.
5) Consumed huge quantities of water because many days it was over 100 degrees. This is very important.
These things apparently combined last night to produce the
following dream.
I was walking through a kommunalka (a Soviet communal apartment) looking for a bathroom. The
main staircase was notably reminiscent of the dorm I lived in in St.
Petersburg, but when I got upstairs, it became a kind of early-twentieth
century rabbit warren of rooms. It was deserted, but I could hear people
talking. I brushed hanging laundry out of my way as I walked from room to room.
Then I went through a door and found a bunch of Russian
sailors standing in the middle of the room.
“Do you have a toilet?” I asked.
They nodded, then threw down their cigarettes and
vodka bottles and moved en masse across
the room. They pulled back a curtain, showing me where the toilet was being
stored in a closet. (It was hidden, so it wouldn’t be stolen, or envied by the
neighbors, or something.) Then they picked it up and suddenly changed into Ballet
Russes-style sailors — their naval dress was now a costume, with sparkly bits —
and hoisted the toilet as if it were a prima ballerina, then brought it toward
me and put it at my feet.
They began bolting it to the floor so I could use
it, but I couldn’t wait, I really had to go.
