January 2010

I woke up around 6ish or so this morning, conscious of having just interrupted a dream I was having. This happens a lot, but what was unusual about this one was that it didn’t seem to involve me in any way. Rather, it was a bit of what seemed like it was trying to be a story playing out in my head.

What I remember about it is that it involved a guy who had lost his memory for some reason and was living homeless on the streets. He’s found by a woman who clearly knows him and who was probably his love interest or potential love interest–and who had been convinced that he’d disappeared on purpose. But when she realizes the state he’s in, she takes pity on him and takes him home.

Random bits I remember from the dream:

• The guy’s name was Alex or possibly Alec Chambers.
• The woman’s name was possibly Rachel.
• It wasn’t set in Seattle, or at the very least, the parts of Seattle I usually frequent. The place I remember Rachel finding Alex on was up on a hill and overlooking a lower area; the street was wide but lined with trees and seemed generally pretty. It’s possible that my brain might have been keying off of parts of West Seattle or maybe Capitol Hill, but I’m pretty sure not.
• Whatever street Alex is on when Rachel finds him, it’s not Fourth Street. Rachel asked Alex why he was where he was, and he said something like “On Fourth Street, they find you.”
• When Rachel takes Alex home, the place she takes him looks like a church and Alex comments to her, “You live in a church?” She explains that this is home. I remember them driving in under a walkway of some sort between two different parts of the building. I got the impression that part of the building had been converted to apartments, or something. There may be more story there as to why Rachel was actually living there.
• There were children, two or three of them. But it was unclear to me whether they were actually Rachel’s children, either by Alex or by the other guy who showed up, or whether they were younger siblings or cousins or something. They were nonetheless pleased to see Alex but distressed at the state he was in, and took pity on him.
• Another man shows up who was clearly a prior rival to Alex for Rachel’s affections. He has a lot of luggage with him and is clearly expecting to stay at Rachel’s place, and he snarks at her about where “he” (i.e., Alex) is going to sleep. Alex says mildly that that’s up to Rachel.
• There’s a dinner scene where Alex catches himself handling dishes in a certain way and he realizes in wonder that he’s left-handed, which is something he hadn’t remembered about himself. (My brain then tried to play with this, I think, because I remember replays of the same bit in which he also noticed he was right-handed, and then that he was possibly ambidextrous.)
• There’s a playground scene where the children are trying to get Alex to play hide and seek with them.

After that I think I was either waking up or dropping more heavily back into sleep, because I started getting more random dream-like bits such as Alex trying to fly, which made less sense. But I wonder if there’s a story here that I can play with. Maybe Alex is a Warder somewhere.