Hunger & Family.

Nov. 28, 2010: Had an ugly mess of dreams last night after a quietly emotional evening.

The first was a dream of excess: drinks, legs, dancing, big, gaping mouths… I was sitting at a bar with a number of people, including a casual friend I haven’t seen since my freshman year of high school, named Jeremiah. We all sat, slouched and lazy, over wooden bar stools and made loud jokes while drinking gin and watching high-heeled women stumble through the crowd. After a while, my friend became uncomfortable and decided to leave. I can’t remember much of the rest of the dream, except for me buying two drinks at a time and referring to the bar as the “watering hole.”

The second dream is also a blur, but instead of being one of piggishness, it focused on the opposite. I was in some sort of camp, I think as a prisoner of war, with a few other people. We were in a roomy encampment with fenced walls and dirt floors. Some of us had lean-tos or one small wall of fence for a bit of privacy. We were all filthy, extremely emaciated, and wearing rags. My skin was dark with dirt and sun, and my fingernails were long and yellowing. I decided that I needed to find Gabriel, who I knew was being held in another camp, and simply climbed the fence and walked off (there were no guards). I found Gabriel, who looked healthy, though he was also wearing rags, picked him up, and brought him to the kitchen. I knew he was hungry, even hungrier than I. The kitchen was a spacious room in the exact style of an aunt of mine’s old home. I had to step over moldy mounds and disgusting, festering cracks on the ground. As I began rifling through the old cupboards, I realized there would be nothing here for us. In the fridge, I found a wedge of old lettuce covered in mayonnaise, which I knew was no good. I took a small bite to test it out, anyway, and, with the curdled bite in my mouth, I looked up to the back doorway and saw my father standing there. He shook his head slightly, and I spat out the lettuce. He was finely dressed and posed an impressive sight, standing tall and strong in the door. He was some sort of political power there, and I knew he could help us find food. I began to beg him for something to eat, telling him that Gabriel wouldn’t survive unless he led us to the food. He wasn’t allowed to help prisoners, and kept repeating that fact, but I grew angrier and angrier.

“He’s your grandson!” I screamed, finding myself suddenly standing in the gutter of a side street near my old middle school. My father shook his head sadly, and the dream ended.