My Subconscious

I have no idea, none whatever, why I might have been so grovelling; it was a dream, after all; perhaps true instinctual personality claims its presence when our sleeping mind is in control.

We are of like vintage and heritage, the women I was standing beside. And there the similarities end. Her face is well known in the world of aristocratic society. She has made a name for herself, first as an outstanding writer, and then as the wife of a media baron. Her dark, seductive beauty and her penchant for wearing alluring, expensive clothing added another dimension to her celebrity persona. As did her acerbic wit and graceful carriage.

So how was it that we were standing beside one another? Much less in front of the grey, cut-stone mansion that she owns, along with her estimable husband? It was a dream, there need be no other explanation. Other than the curious fact that the dream was of my mind's making and where was this taking me, and why?

Aside from the niggling little thought that it was strange that I would even dream about something so peculiar - but such is the human mind, evidently, undisciplined and prepared to go where it will, one can only conclude.

There we were, she kindly enquiring whether I would like to venture inside her home. And there was I, anxiously assuring her that I would so very much appreciate that opportunity. And then there we were, suddenly transported into the interior of that place, with its majestic height, breadth and width, larger than any place I had ever before entered. This place surpassed in size, exquisite interiors and costly trappings anything I'd previously seen in places like the Villa Vizcaya or Biltmore, or photographs ogled riffling the pages of Architectural Digest.

Biltmore House is a 250-room French Renaissance-style château.
She led me through room after room, one outstanding chamber after another, all furnished with antique pieces, marbles and bronzes. On the walls of these gilded, sumptuous spaces were more paintings than I'd ever before seen, and I could recognize the presence among them of Old Masters. Her husband, lord of the manor, was nowhere to be seen. He had been released from prison, I knew that, but was obviously elsewhere detained.

Finally, she ushered me into a room that appeared to be a bedchamber, much smaller than any of the previous rooms. In it, seated upon a chair much too large for his frail figure, was an elderly, bewizened man. His facial features led me to the conclusion that he must be an elderly relative of her husband. It was evident that he wanted something of her. She lifted him, slight as she herself was, and deposited him within a playpen, one that had a chamber pot in it, and there he sat.

Suddenly she was transformed from the graciously beautiful matron that humbled me so, to a feral cat that tumbled itself about on the floor, and which began slithering and sliding there, as a creature demented. I felt a sense of responsibility toward this woman, though she no longer resembled a woman. I reached over to the tumbling creature, managed to still it, and lifted it into my arms. Whereupon it lay there, panting, but still.

Carrying it, I began to stumble from one room to another, down long, lighted, carpeted and picture-hung galleries, looking for someone responsible to whom I could hand over the burden of this poor creature. To no avail, for there was no one there, no one present in any of the rooms, the place a huge palatial estate with no one seemingly in charge.

The person who had been in charge was no more, displaced by a creature that now licked my hands, now grimaced, utterly dependent on me. Time to awaken.