Dream: The Cabin in Memory

Dream 20021122, 1:30 AM:

I’m at Old City Park [note: a “Historical Village” style museum where I used to work] at a tiny cabin. I have to go and pick up some girls (a friend’s kids? Or are they friends of mine?) at a tennis court. I get there, and the people playing are lobbing balls out of the court to where I’m walking along; I pick them up and take a racquet and lob them back into the court, but they’re not real pleased to have balls flying in unannounced.

I drive off, taking the girls to an imaginary location. It seems very firmly set in my mind that it’s imaginary, but I don’t seem to know much more about it. I think that it is a mental image of the same cabin I was in earlier, but I know that only the parts I’m currently paying full attention exist. It’s dark, and I get the impression of a featureless void outside of the immediate area of my view. I have several jumbled small memories of being there – I remember planting small seeds that have something to do with memory, and they are sprouting up into tiny plants – I remember a bottle that someone is holding, and the person holding it is upset because it’s not labeled, and I just change my idea about it so that the labeling appears – I remember a silver key, very slender and delicate, held in my fist.

I want to leave this place. I am told (by whom?) that I can’t go. I explain to them that I’m simply maintaining this place in memory, and I can release it. I start to think back to the earlier part of this dream (although I realize, within the context of the dream, that it’s a story, I don’t really become lucid) and I start to recall events – something about a chunky chicken recipe with cheese, and making it out of supplies in a cabinet in the cabin, and something about Taco [the dog] and a dimly lit room.