This one is weird.  If weird ain’t your thing, stop now.  You’ve been warned.

Very strange dream last night.  Vivid.  One of those dreams where when you wake up you kind of have to pause a minute, and are just a little shaken because it seemed so real.  I have a lot of dreams like that.

(In the interest of full disclosure, I filled in just “a few” gaps here and there.  But overall, this is very accurately my dream.  Not sure I should admit that.)

I was homeless, dirty, and living on the street.   I had long, greasy matted gray hair, and a very long, scraggly, bushy and out of control gray beard.   I was wearing a dirty sweatshirt, but had on no pants.   Yes…I had on no pants, but around my waist was wrapped a very dirty and ragged chenille blanket … the kind you used to see on grandma’s bed.  It was wrapped around me sort of like a diaper.

I was in a big city, skyscrapers all around.  There was a lot of vehicular traffic … cars, cabs, buses, etc. in the street.  And lots of pedestrian traffic on the sidewalks.  It was a gray blustery day.  It was cold and there was a sense of foreboding … as if the sky was about to break open at any moment.

I was lying in the dirt in a large planter, at the base of a tree that had been planted there as part of a project to “beautify” the city.  As such, I was up about 3 or 4 feet off the sidewalk.   I had a small dilapidated dirty foam pillow wadded under my head, and a filthy old sleeping bag pulled up around me.   I would occasionally call out to people passing by, but no one paid any attention.

Two women walked by, whom I recognized as girls from my high-school class.   I hollered out to them….. calling their names. “Sharon!  Ann!”  They turned and briefly looked at me but kept on going, apparently not recognizing me …. Even though I obviously knew their names.    I reached out towards them, but they paid no heed.    (In real life, these same two women were just back in my hometown for a visit at Thanksgiving, a visit that was documented by a photo, with a third friend, and posted to FB.  Bolstering my theory that dreams are basically the mind rehashing and reinterpreting events from waking life.  Although the rest of the dream sort of belies that theory.)

Before long, three of my (real-life) co-workers walked by.  I called out to them.  They came over to where I was laying.  One of them said, “Geez, man … what happened to you?”

I said to him, “Nothing happened to me. What do you mean?”

They shook their heads, turned and walked off.  I reached out towards them, and called out again … but they paid no heed.

People continued to walk by.

I felt so profoundly sad.

I looked up and noticed that a man in a nice dark gray overcoat and scarf was standing just inside the building near where my planter was. He was taring at me through the large plate glass window.    It was Peter Bogdanovitch.  It was then that I realized that the whole dream was in black & white.   (I usually dream in color).

Clouds were moving rapidly overhead.

I got up and walked over to the glass, just where he was standing, and stared back at him.   He said something to me, but I could not hear.  I motioned that I did not understand.   He opened up a clipboard with a notepad, took out a pen and wrote in big letters on the page….. holding it up for me to see.  “May I buy you a meal?”

I was hungry, so I nodded in the affirmative.   He motioned for me to come inside.

Once inside, he introduced himself.  “Hi.  I’m Peter. There’s a restaurant here in my building.  Is that ok?”   I said that it was.

I knew he was Peter Bogdanovitch, the famous director, but I did not let on that I recognized him.

As we walked into a fancy restaurant on the ground floor of the building, the maître ‘d  looked askance at me, and started to say something.   Peter cut him off and asked disdainfully, “Do you have a problem with my friend?”     The maître ‘d said that he did not, and showed us to a prime table in the center of the restaurant.

The waiter showed up, glanced hesitatingly at me, but focused on Mr. B.

Bogdanovitch ordered for us, I did not understand what it was he ordered.   I heard the words, they were just unfamiliar.

He asked if I minded if he took some notes.   I said that I did not.  He took out that same clipboard.

He asked my name, and where I was from.  I could read what he was jotting down on his notepad.  “Preliminary Production Notes:   Homeless man, named John.  Small town Missouri.   Dirty hair and clothes.  No possessions.  Hollow eyes.  Opening scene, John, sleeping in planter on city street on gray, gloomy day.  Invisible to passersby.  Kind man sees him, and offers to buy him some food.”

The “food” came out shortly. It consisted only of four small colored mounds of foam on a white plate. The small mounds were touching one another.  They were … well … foam. Hardly a filling meal.   I had a goblet of water as well.  The mounds of foam were the ONLY things of color in the whole scene.

I asked Peter, “What is this stuff?”

He said…. “It’s foamed food.  The very latest thing.   I’m sorry.   I should have warned you.  Many of the best restaurants in the city now foam their food”

I asked again…. “Ok, but what IS it?”

He said, “The red is roasted red foamed peppers.   The green is foamed spinach.  The grayish-brown is roasted duck breast, also foamed.  The blue is …… well, we don’t really know what the blue is.  But everybody eats the blue.  It’s delicious and good for you.   Just try it.”

He jotted down more notes on the clipboard.  “Homeless man is uncomfortable and unfamiliar with foam cuisine.  Especially the blue.”

I took a bite of the red.   It was just tasteless foam.  Sort of like eating soap suds, but without the soap suds taste.  I took a bite of the grayish-brown.   Again, like eating soap suds. But this tasted bad.  I made a face and spit it in my napkin and took a drink of water and swished it around to hopefully wash the foul tasted out of my mouth.  I said, “This tastes like crap.  Looks like it too.”

Peter Bogdanovitch jotted down more notes.  “Homeless man is ungrateful and rejects food. Becomes agitated.”

I said, perhaps a little too loud.  “I’m not agitated dammit.  Stop making your damn notes!”

Peter Bogdanovitch looked at me and apologized. “I’m sorry.  I didn’t mean to upset you.  I only wanted to get you a square meal.   I’m actually interested in perhaps making a movie, portraying your life as metaphor for the hopelessness of the age.”

“My LIFE is not a METAPHOR for anything you pompous windbag!!   You don’t know a damn thing about me!”

Then he jotted down in his clipboard….  “Homeless man is ungrateful, on verge of rage.”

“I’ll show YOU the verge…..”

At this point I stood up and angrily overturned the table, sending plates, food, water glasses, and silverware crashing to the floor. I was cursing like a sailor, calling Mr. Bogdanovitch every vile name I could think of.  I yelled that if he even TRIED to make a movie out of my life I would sue him and I would win.  Diners and staff scattered around the restaurant froze in shocked silence.  I strode out of the restaurant, with my last glimpse being of Peter Bogdanovitch scribbling away furiously on his notepad.    The maître ‘d is on the phone.  Probably to the cops.

Next thing I know I’m standing in front of an elevator.

The doors open and I get in.  I’m still seething from the Bogdanovitch episode.   There are a few other people in the elevator, and they can sense my anger, and they all scrunch to the edges to get away from me.  When the doors open, everyone but me gets out.   I’m pretty sure most of them had other floors in mind.

On a floor way up at the top of the building, I get out of the elevator.    It’s my old dorm floor from college at Mizzou.  Hudson Hall.  I walk down to my room, and go in.   It’s exactly my old dorm room, except that there’s a bathroom and shower in there.    (The dorms in real-life actually had a communal bathroom/shower for each wing).

I looked out the window at the building across the street, another dorm, and thought of my dear friend R. who lived over there.  I wondered how she was doing, and what she would think of the state I was in?

I felt ashamed and started to cry.  The hot tears made dirty salty tracks down my unwashed face.

I resolved to clean up.  Literally and figuratively.

I took off the sweatshirt and unwrapped the chenille blanket from my pasty, dirty body.   I stood there naked and looked at my bowed, gray legs and bad posture and ridiculous nest of hideously dirty hair in the full length mirror.  I was particularly appalled at the state of my toenails.  What a state.  I wondered how I’d gotten in such bad shape.

I walked to the bathroom, and opened the door to go in and take a shower.

Inside there was a middle-aged, slightly heavy-set African-American maid, cleaning.   In a uniform like the ones worn in the movie, “The Help”.    (What, your dorm didn’t have maid service?)

She turned around and took one look at my naked and bent body and started screaming in terror.  Threw her hands up in the air and ran out.   I called after her to wait. I think I wanted to apologize for scaring (or scarring?) her.   But she kept going on down the hall.

I turned on the hot water and stepped into the shower, which was made of brick-red tiles.  The maid had left all of her cleaning supplies.   Yellow bottles, blue bottles, etc.    (The dream was back in color apparently, as per usual).

The hot water felt really good as it streamed down through my dirty hair and over my body, and I started lathering up with the soap.

The foam felt good on my body.

That’s when I woke up.