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Trick or Treat: The Art Thief and the Wild Swordsman
Are your dreams tricks your sleeping brain plays on you? Or are they treats? Mine are usually treats. They are cinematic extravaganzas. In fact, I am not always in my dreams, and sometimes famous actors are, even if I have no idea who they are at the time and only recognize them later. Or, there was the time after James Gandolfini’s death where I saw him playing the romantic lead in a RomCom dream. Sure, my dreams don’t always make perfect sense, but they are far better than the dreams I hear other people tell about where they are late to a test for which they haven’t studied and they happen to realize they are naked. Those other people’s dreams are definitely tricks. If that is the sort of dream you have, it’s time to sit back and read about another type of dream.
My first realization in this dream found me standing in a 1920s style convertible. It was the type where the opened roof was opened all the way back to the end of the car since, in those days, the trunk was literally a piece of luggage that one tied to a luggage rack on the back of the vehicle. The convertible was bright yellow. It was a larger car with perhaps as many as three banks of seats. At the very least, it was what would have been called a seven-passenger touring car. It was also moving. My middle brother was driving.
I come from a family of three, all brothers. My father was a gruff old policeman. Middle Brother is not gruff. His personality is nothing like Dad’s. What Middle Brother did get from Dad was left-handedness and artistic ability. He also decided to follow my father into being a policeman. The artistic ability matters to this tale because as I was standing in one of the areas between seats, I noticed there were several works of art stuffed into the floor area of the last bench seat in the vehicle.
“Did you paint these?” I asked my brother.
“No, I stole them.”
Given that our father was a law enforcement officer and so is Middle Brother, this came as something of a shock and raised some concern about being in a vehicle with stolen artwork.
“I also fought the Foiler recently,” Middle Brother declared.
As one does in dreams, I immediately knew something. You might have dreams where you know you are late for a test and haven’t studied. In this dream, I knew who the Foiler was. He was a crank who went around in a fencing outfit and stuck people with his fencing foil. The fact that my brother said that he fought the Foiler was interesting. I pictured it as his fighting the crank also armed with a foil. To my knowledge, my brother has never been into fencing and has probably never touched any sort of sword other than a military dress saber. First, my brother is stealing works of art, and then apparently sword-fighting in the streets. What other revelations might such a trip hold for me?
We happened to be on the main street of the city we grew up in and passing Weber’s Dairy when my brother mentioned his fighting the Foiler. I doubt the old Weber Dairy building is there any longer, but we passed it in this big, yellow convertible from the 1920s with hot art in the backseat.
Of course, no sooner was the Foiler mentioned than he appeared at the next intersection with a light. He jumped into our land yacht and started complaining about my brother’s having fought him. I grabbed up the stolen art and handed it to the Foiler and had my brother pull over, so we let the Foiler off at the next intersection with hands full of stolen art. Then, we drove off.
That is not an atypical dream for me. How about you? What sort of dreams do you have? Are they tricks? Or are they treats?
Published in Group Writing
Weber Dairy – best place to get ice cream sundaes if you didn’t mind standing in line. Looks like part of the building is still there, but empty.
Are you from Joliet?
Yes – thought you knew that.
It’s kind of funny there would be three of us on one small site like this. Then again, Eau Claire, Wisconsin has more like five, and it’s an even smaller city.
I’d like to sit in your brain just once when you have these dreams! Mine are so boring!
Before I say anything else…
You are familiar with the law criminal slang term, fence , someone who sells stolen goods?
My best – but weirdest – recurring dream is the one where I jump, or fall, into an ordinary swimming pool, but once underwater, the pool is like an enormous aquarium filled with orcas, dolphin, sharks, sometimes there are even gators.
Holy Epee, Arahant, this is one heck of a dream. Unlike Susie Q’s boring dreams, my dreams are almost always anxiety dreams–late for an exam, no blue book, studied the wrong chapters, etc–and are stress inducing. I did have a positive recurring dream in college, where I woke up in my room in the athletic dorm(I played basketball for four years at Tulane) and was 6’6″ instead of 5’10” and pro scouts were coming in droves to watch me play, “but that’s not important now”(my favorite line from Airplane!!).
I think your subconscious is suggesting you write a story involving these elements: The Foiler, the convertible, and the dairy. How about this as an opening: it’s your family’s dairy and the Foiler, who’s an elected Democrat official, is constantly trying to relieve your cattle of their environment-destroying flatulence by poking them with his epee at your family’s dairy, but your artistic, but conservative, brother captures the escaping gas and entrails on canvas and becomes a world-renowned modern artist and as wealthy as Picasso, and funds the campaign of the Foiler’s opponent who exposes the Foiler for what he is–a cow poker–and defeats the Foiler and destroys his political career.
Whew. Now, I’ve got to get some rest. MH
Of course. I had not made that connection consciously.
Not exactly. The building has either been replaced or extensively remodeled. I’m going with the former. There is an insurance office there now. The name on the sign in the parking lot reads “Dairy Center,” so there’s that.
I don’t think I’ve been to that part of town since 1989.
I rarely remember dreams but when I do they are almost always post-Apocalyptic hellscapes where everyone is trying to kill me, including occasionally rabid baboons. I don’t mean the baboons are occasionally rabid, I mean they are occasionally included. They are always rabid.
A lot of my dreams involve famous people from history. Benjamin Franklin appears regularly. Usually when he does, we have to go to Europe — right now! Sometimes it might be something closer to home, but Ben never has time to explain the entire situation at the beginning, and it unfolds as the dream progresses.
Other dreams usually involve me observing and occasionally commenting on how the dream is different from the historical record. (I had to tell Belisarius how to take Naples in one. Poor guy had tried everything. “There’s a sally port by where the aqueduct crosses the wall. It’s hard to find, both outside and in. I don’t think it’s guarded.”)
One last week stuck with me, mainly because I wrote it down in the PIT when I woke up. I was a knight who was tasked with escorting a Welsh princess to Ireland. The main thing that stuck with me was that my situation was similar to Tristan in “Tristan and Isolde” except the princess should have already been in Ireland and I should have been taking her to Cornwall. Oh, and I couldn’t find the princess. She wasn’t at the convent where I was supposed to pick her up.
“You are about to enter another dimension, a dimension not only of sight and sound but of mind. A journey into a wondrous land of imagination. Next stop, the Ricochet Zone!”
I did not need to roll out bears or outhouses as part of October’s theme: “Trick or Treat!” Thanks for doing your part to keep it that way!
November’s theme is “Service.”
You went to Africa right before the Apocalypse? Or did they escape from a zoo?
I used to remember my dreams from time to time but for maybe the last year or so I almost never remember them. And the ones I do remember are just about inventorying helicopter parts. I used to have and remember dreams about various Ricochet members, but now it’s just panels and gears and nuts and bolts.
Oh, so it still is about us? 😜