House [the dwelling, not the tv show] dreams

[resonant]

I dream about houses a lot, especially when my life is changing. For the past five years -- since I lost my tech-writer job, since I started working on novels -- I've been having a lot of very similar dreams.

A house comes into our possession accidentally. (It's not always clear how this happens; when there is an explanation, it's usually that we've inherited it, sometimes from someone who really exists and sometimes from a dream person.) Sometimes we're living in it, and sometimes we're staying here and using our spare time to work on cleaning it out.

It's always dusty and neglected, often oddly laid out (with two kitchens, say, or two buildings separated by a porch, so you have to go outside to get from a bedroom to a bathroom). It's always full of stuff, and always it's obvious that while we'll have to throw out some serious trash, some of the stuff is useful, and some is really valuable. (Anyway, throwing out trash is its own kind of pleasure.) It's a place we'd like to live, one day, but it seems to be a standard feature of the dream that there's no hurry; we have another place to live, or have a suite of rooms that are already in good shape, and we can get to it in our own good time. The principle feeling of this dream is giddy, slightly overwhelmed anticipation.

Last week I had a new one. We had bought a house, on a whim, and it was all wrong in a million ways. First, we still owned this one, so we were paying on two houses. Second, it was in the same screwed-up school district as this one, removing the one and only reason we'd ever buy a different house in the same town. (And it was in the same town. Not in the vague place-less place where the other houses are, but right over on the other side of Sheridan, eight or nine blocks from here.) Third, it was old enough to be dilapidated without being old enough to be interesting; I distinctly remember sliding windows with frames made of brown aluminum. (It also had a bunk bathtub -- like a bunk bed; you could shower above or below -- eminently practical.) The feeling of this dream was harrassed and guilty.

It troubled me a lot, for several days. And then I remembered the other house dreams, and somehow putting this one in the perspective of those made me feel better about it, for reasons I don't really understand.

Oh, and also there was the dream where after living in a house for ten years we went outside and discovered that the neighbors could look right in through the windows and see all our dirty laundry crammed in the corners and the garbage cans we never emptied spilling down the stairs, but the meaning of that one is pretty clear.

Comments

[florahart]

Bunk bathtub.

...

I am quite entertained by this. :D

[jeddy83.livejournal.com]

I know me too.

[springwoof.livejournal.com]

ooh! ooh! I have house dreams too! mine are full of interesting rooms with cool stuff in them (or else equally fascinating junk-to-throw-out), and swimming pools and fish ponds, courtyards and fountains, porches and balconies, basements and turrets, kitchens and crawlspaces, garages and gardens, and always stairs, lots and lots of stairs....

I love house dreams! I always wish I could take digital photos of the ones in my mind, or that I could remember them well enough after waking up to somehow draw them or write them down well enough to depict them accurately....

thank you, so much, for bringing those house-dream memories (only half-remembered, but evocative nonetheless) spilling out of the recesses of my mind...

[carolyn-claire.livejournal.com]

I was going to comment Res that I have them too, all the time, though they seem to come in cycles. I never know whether I should interpret them, as one does, or consider them a result of my obsession with houses. We went through a couple of years of house-hunting, and we loved prowling through each place, checking them out. Many of my house dreams are like that, discovery dreams: a house I used to live in has grown huge, or a house we bought turns out to have many more rooms than we'd realized, or a spa tub (or two), things like that, rooms I hadn't known were there. I wonder how common these dreams really are? (And they're so much better than the tornado dreams....)

[wolfiekins.livejournal.com]

It also had a bunk bathtub -- like a bunk bed; you could shower above or below -- eminently practical.

I'd bet that it's already patented...

..the neighbors could look right in through the windows..

Very vivid and relatively coherent dreams...and that there's been a recent change in them...surely telling...

[carolyn-claire.livejournal.com]

Are you re-thinking any potential life changes you'd once planned on/looked forward to?

[tofty.livejournal.com]

Oooh, I have house dreams too! There's one in particular that I always dream about -- not my house but a random Other House that's always the same house.

I have no insights to offer, but I did want to express my solidarity. :)