Dream

(7-12-05)

I rode in a school bus through W___________, the town where I grew up. It looked more squalid than ever, decrepit and hard-hit; houses were crumbling. It had the look of a blighted, forgotten place. But the street names were familiar to me as the driver called out the stops. I was going there to go to college. The college office was located in a building that looked like my elementary school. I signed in with a secretary, an older woman in a white coat. I was shown to my room in a dormitory. The room was dark and cramped, wedge-shaped, with one small window looking out onto a dark stairwell. My room seemed to be below ground-level. The walls were thick damp concrete, with peeling paint and what appeared to be mushrooms or some sort of fungus growing in patches. There was a small dirty bed and a desk crammed into the impossibly narrow space. At some point--the chronology of the dream is unclear--the lady who checked me in gave me a funny look when I told her that I doubted I would stay in that room, that I was looking for an apartment in the town. Then I was handed a menu, as in a hospital, on which I was supposed to check my dinner choices. At dinner, when I met the other students, the food was repulsive to me, dishes of undercooked eggs, the same greyish color of the walls in my room.