A Night at Shakes Manor

It is a truth universally acknowledged that nothing on earth is more boring than reading about other people's dreams. Personally, I can't even stand accounts of dreams in fiction, which are at least theoretically designed to be meaningful and advance the plot. I just reread The Time Traveler's Wife, on the advice of a gazillion Shapely Prose commenters, and I enjoyed it again, but oh my god, I'd forgotten how much of that book is spent describing dreams. Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz x 10,000.

And yet. I have to share.

Last night, I had a dream that -- after much confusion about train schedules -- I arrived at Shakes Manor for what I thought would be an evening of drinking and chatting with Liss and Mr. Shakes (and petting Tilsy and Livs, allergies be damned). But it was Paul the Spud who answered the door, and when I inquired as to Liss's whereabouts, he indicated a darkened living room and said, "She's in there, stoned off her ass."

Not only was she in there stoned off her ass, but so were nearly all of the other Shakesville contributors. Except, I didn't recognize them as such at first, because I've only met three of them (Liss, Mr. Shakes, and Spudsy) in real life, and thumbnail pics translated to dream images didn't do all that much for me, identification-wise. I only figured it out when the guy sitting next to me put on a long, white, curly wig, and I went, "Oh, you're Jon Swift!" For real.

I won't bore you with all the rest of the details, but I also have to share that at one point, I went out for a smoke and took a walk down the block, then returned to find Liss standing in front of her house in a pink bathing suit with an attached knee-length skirt, soaking wet, in like 30-degree weather. She'd just gone for a swim in Lake Michigan (which, in the dream, was mere steps away from Shakes Manor), and was absolutely giddy about how awesome it had been. She looked radiant, and I really wanted to know where I could get a bathing suit just like hers.

So, any Jungians out there want to tell me what's up with my unconscious? For now, I'm just taking it as a sign that I need to post more here in the new year -- 'cause y'all are a super-fun bunch, even without the wigs and pot and ass-freezing night swims.