I had the most intriguing dream last night. Have NO idea where it came from, but it was a “page-turner,” for sure!

 

At the start, Mom and Dad had dropped me off in New York City with all of $120 to spend over the next three days “just staying alive.”

 

I thought (because it was present-day NY, not 1960’s NY), “$120 won’t get me a hotel room or even three decent meals, so I’m going to have to find inventive ways to stay alive for three solid days and nights.”

 

Now, I have never even been to NYC and don’t have a clue what lies outside its perimeters, so everything my brain came up with was sheerest conjecture.

 

THE BIG CITY

 

To my eyes, NYC was Los Angeles times 10. People were shoulder-to-shoulder on every street, scurrying to get from hither to yon without driving, but I never felt so freaking alone in all my life. (Animals and farmland are my comfort zone, not people, traffic, noise and congestion!)

 

For a while, I tried to navigate, until I found myself needing to find a restroom. (My dreams often include having to find a restroom, ever since my intestinal bypas surgery in 1977, because I have malabsorption syndrome, and bathroom-going is definitely a constant in my life.) I asked a few passersby where I might find one, but most of them ignored me; one or two pointed vaguely at different stores and restaurants.

 

So, I went inside and tried to find someone working there who could direct me to their facility, since I could see no signs saying “Bathroom.” Most of them were so busy serving or selling that they didn’t respond, and the few who did again pointed vaguely in a direction, so I followed those prompts, without success.   I knew it would only be a matter of time before I wouldn’t be able to contain what my bowels were carrying, so I was becoming more frantic and insistent,  hoping to reveal my desperation without coming across as demanding.

 

I knew it would help my cause if I sat down to buy a meal or purchase something, but with just $120 to keep body and soul together, I was reluctant to part with any of it “frivolously” on my first day.

 

I considered pulling out my “DeForest Kelley friend and author” wild card to gain favor with someone who would “adopt” me for a night or two to tell my stories, but felt that would be cheating because not every “down and outer” had such a story to help them gain favor, and I ddn’t want to cheat (although I knew that, if I were to remain in these straits for longer than even three days, it wouldn’t be long before I’d use every card in my hand to ensure my survival).

 

At some point during this dream, I found myself in a kind of halfway house for down-and-out city folk. The place they were staying was clean, neat and dry, but quite unsatisfyingly sparse, and I still couldn’t find a bathroom! While there, I ascended a staircase and was able to look over a half wall when I got to the top and I could see the woman’s home whose largesse had supplied us “down and outers” (mine was temporary, the other’s appeared permanent) with the barest rudiments of decent housing. She was living in opulence and there were rich celebritiess coming and going without ever looking up to see who was looking down on them from the “poorhouse” with hollow eyes.

 

SCENE SWITCH

 

Somehow, in the next scene, I was on the outskirts of NYC. The scene here was almost desolate. The road headed left, back toward the city, or right, up what looked to me to be some kind of unpaved, rusty-colored landfill site, and I thought, “Well, if I go right, I can at least probably find somewhere to hide in while I go to the bathroom!”  So, I headed right.

 

What I found was  a kind of “rendering plant” for shrouded, dead humans, from infants to adults, so I turned back around and found another road heading into a semi-wooded area, where I heard music coming from a field that was down a sloping gulch from where the road I was on.

 

I wandered over, peered in, and found some hippie-types reclining face-up toward the sun in a grassy field, with several other folks nearby, just below me, who had stopped by to listen to the music.

 

I thought, “This is better!”

 

Several of the “hippies” in the gulch had woven ivy around their entire bodies, so they looked like living plants as they moved minutely to the music that was playing.

 

I thought, “I can veg here for three days, no problem!  I like this bunch!”  (I was never a hippie or into their MJ smoking, free love/Make Love, Not War!” thing, but their vibe always made me feel like the world was a better place, with them in it. I thought they had it right, and I probably had it wrong, as a semi-Puritan at the time!)

 

I woke up not long after that but I did wonder, toward the end of the dream, that if I decided to stay right there even after the three days were up if Mom and Dad would freak out, worrying what had become of me!

 

Wild, huh?  I will be trying to analyze this dream for quite some time to come.  I know the bathroom part was due to my condition, but I wonder if the rest was my attempt to try and experience what life would be like if I hadn’t been born and raised in a semi-privileged position (with white skin and a great education). I often wonder what it’s like to be homeless simply due to a change in one’s financial status, which is  capricious whether you’re an employee or an entrepreneur! It has to be a living hell. I know I can’t actually imagine homelessness to its full extent, but I do know I want to help end it, that’s for sure!