She reminded me of the Edies*

(A woman in my dreams, that is. It probably has to do with the death of Teddy.)

There was this most eccentric family next door. Well, the perspective kept shifting; I was ostensibly watching a movie, only each time I watched it, things happened from a different perspective, based upon where I was– because I was in the setting of the film, you see. Except everything was real. (It was a dream, after all.)

A tall, fantastically over-the-top woman was the matriarch, and another woman had died (perhaps her sister?)– for whom an rather carnival-esque wake had been prepared at this compound. In the first round of experiencing/viewing it, I saw it all from a ways away, as varying personages arrived in unexpected ways, as if to some sort of competition (which was, in fact, going on as part of the festivities). A tall beanpole of a man arrived driving a small wooden market-cart; the remarkable thing being that his small horse was able to jump hurdles, cart and all. (They leapt into the shabby arena, surrounded by weeds and half-hidden.) Others whom I can’t now recall arrived as well, all different, all quite out of the ordinary. I couldn’t fathom what this event would consist of. While this went on, other things were happening– the tall woman making plans and gathering people to come over to the compound house.

Later, during a second look, I was on the compound– in the areana/ring; saw all the same cast of characters arrive from inside. I realized that what I’d seen/experienced the first time (the woman making plans, personal invitations to those of us gathered next door to her place) must be happening again, simultaneously, even though I was no longer privy to it. I really enjoyed seeing the arrival of the guests again– this time with a clearer view, and looked on in anticipation of the horse who could leap with a cart. It wound up with seeing a large red, carved-stone vessel in which the body of the deceased had rested prior to her cremation, and which was now (for some reason) bequeathed to me by the tall woman. At this point, I became really confused as it seemed the plot was changing. The woman hadn’t acknowledged my presence at all the first time. It was as though I’d become part of the story by shifting my vantage.  I asked a man near me how this could be, to which he enigmatically replied, “Well, maybe she is you. Ever think of that?”

(True enough; my dream, my brain.)

There were great mounds of food, and much wine all on a sort of roadside terrace. I’d missed the feasting part, and people were preparing for some kind of exodus or march for the cremated woman, so I grabbed a glass of wine and a large cookie from a pile nearby. The mourners didn’t seem to be in mourning, least of all the woman in charge, also decked out in red– a flowing long gown of many layers, her hair pulled up into a festive turban.

The later portion of dream was likely a different one altogether; part of it taking place inside of a vast multi-level department store, and part of it consisting of me swimming in a cavernous, but city-bound body of water. I was swimming among two immense orange octopi. it may have been part of some kind of interactive aquarium possibility, as I’d just been learning how scientists recently discovered that the presence of humans in their [natural and in this case simulated natural] environment caused the release or scattering of some kind of microscopic form which the octopi ingest. Or something. Our exhalations or oils activating micro organisms; plankton? Something like that.  But swimming with them was soothing and they moved like ballet in the water.

* Big Edie and Little Edie, that is– of Grey Gardens; the Bouvier Beales, thereby the connection to Ted Kennedy. Or perhaps, even more, she reminded me of Miss Havisham of Great Expectations– also eroding in her crumbling once-palace, but perhaps slightly less cracked. )