Dreamscape: Of dreams within dreams

A gathering of old faces

In the ethereal world of the mind, as slumber took hold, I found myself on a journey to attend the wedding of a distant relation who only had a surviving sibling, her brother.

It appeared I had to fly there, but I ended up on a seemingly crowded bus and for the first time in a long time of memories that come to the fore, none of the occupants were from the Great Beyond.

Yet, I found an eclectic mix of people, all of whom I was supposed to know, but two of them stood out particularly, the first had only recently celebrated his 50^th birthday and this was the first time I was seeing him for almost 30 years. We embraced and had a quick chat before I found one of the most uncomfortable seats towards the front of the bus with my back facing the direction of travel.

The other was at the back of the bus, I had not seen him for decades and he had an engaging audience, seemingly having some very knowledgeable and agreeable points about current affairs. I did not go up to him to greet him because I was harbouring resentment at something he had done long ago.

The detail of events passed

In a chat with another cousin, we went over how he stole the identity of another close relation and successfully used it to acquire a British passport declaring certain guardians deceased. His chicanery was only discovered years later when the true owner of the identity decided to obtain his passport. With the system hot on his tail, he fled to the United States of America, even in our anger and derision of the underhand activity everyone was left embarrassed by it all.

We travelled through lush tropical forests and barren landscapes until we arrived in the centre of gridlock traffic in Paris which also happened to have a border post. The customs officer appeared to have collected our documents and looked in the bus and made a comment about how better attired we all were, though casual, compared to others she had seen.

A passport forgotten

Meanwhile, I was informed that there was a case pending against me in France that every visitor must have done or they would have broken the law. The person who I thought was conductor cum guide, these things do get conflated.

I enquired as to the substance of the charge and learnt that I was observed protesting outside the US Embassy in Paris, that sounded quite laughable because, not only did I not know where the embassy was in Paris, the last time I protested in front of an embassy was in the Netherlands in 2012.

However, just at that time I realised that I did not have my passport on me and that meant I would not be able to get beyond the checkpoint, I became frantic with distress as I imagined being taken off the bus and put in detention, all sorts of scenarios played away in my mind and then I came to, I was not on that journey, there was nothing to be worried or distressed about, I was dreaming within another dream.

I extricated myself from that dream, though still fast asleep in the envelope dream, I aroused myself to wakefulness remembering other dreams within dreams that I had had in the two hours of deep sleep. The informed commentary with inputs from BBC Radio 4 getting intertwined with my dreams.