42 Dreams of Arizona Bay

It has been a long time since I’ve written about my dreams. I still have vivid dreams and often. But even with best intentions, I get lazy and forget to write them down, still clinging to the vague feelings hanging like cobwebs in my brain.

Yes, I’ve had a bathroom dream or two. I think I’ve had a tornado dream. And lots of mundane or not mundane dreams in between. Like the one where I find a former neighbor of mine from childhood has turned into a loping half-human hairy monster and has been killing people in a warehouse-style grocery store.

But this is the latest dream. No crying over spilt dreams.

I want to meet this woman.

A pack of copy editors walking after a conference begins walking out in the country. Down a long road. I only know they’re fellow copy editors because they start sharing war stories and copy editing jokes. I don’t particularly feel a part of the group. I always feel the pretender; I don’t enjoy copy editing because I don’t do it often and I don’t do it often because I don’t enjoy it.

It’s warm. The air is golden. We’re walking past a meadow, brown and gold of dying grass, high to the knees. We walk through a path, and then on a dusty, forgotten road.

It’s a meandering walk. We explore, not really expecting to find anything. There’s no sound except for the chatter of the small group of people.
I’m still apart, still alone. Smiling at a joke, at the conversation, but not taking part. In that uncomfortable way I feel when I’m with a group at a bar.

And then we come upon a ramshackle old building, choked with weeds. It appears to have been a store, with a broken, dirty Pepsi or Coke sign blending in with its decay. One of those arrow signs with the plastic letters stands out in the dusty ground, with only one or two letters left.
There’s a car outside, considerably less dusty than everything else, but certainly not in good shape. Perhaps a peeling black Camaro of the vintage I like best — mid-70s. Or another muscle car. Something with power and looks.

We’re all excited now. Perhaps there’s someone here. How odd. How quaint.

I’ve lugged my beloved camera along. It sometimes seems too heavy to carry when I don’t know if I’ll end up shooting anything. But now it pays off. I offer to drag it out. The group of people are impressed by my camera. It is, after all, a nice prosumer camera. I love it, and am also proud of my skills. I explain that I used to shoot as part of my job, and have picked up a healthy love of photography just by shooting. Have become a much better photographer because I have a good digital camera.
Finally, I have something to talk about. Finally these people are properly impressed, and don’t consider me that goofy, slightly unhappy and uncomfortable hanger on of design.

With abandon, I start taking shots of the car. Of the golden light and grass. Of a black and white cat sitting on the concrete in front of the decrepit old store. It looks healthy and young and well-fed. Someone must be feeding it. I start talking to it, start shooting more pictures. But I must not let this cat steal my heart.

Then there’s a squeaking of an old screen door, covered in dust and rust.
I look up from my squatting position to see a tiny, ancient lady peering down at me.

I don’t know what she says, but I know I must talk with her and take her picture.

Her hair is white and bound up in untidy, loose braids that hang on either side of her face. She wears an old lady housecoat, shapeless and almost colorless, with a vague hint of blue, from many washes. She has a happy, round but sunken face carved with joyful wrinkles. She is so old, but I already can tell she’s young inside.

We’re invited in, though it seems that the group has grown smaller. Perhaps they look around, or perhaps they aren’t interested and don’t come inside.
It becomes just me and the woman.

She sits in a worn recliner as I ask her questions, and of course, shoot her from different angles.

This used to be a store, she tells me. It still is a store.
I look around at little bins arranged in what seems to be part living room and part store. I look into a bin much like one used to hold nuts or bolts at the hardware store. I can’t identify what it is: either it’s a dream vagueness or I really don’t know. But it looks like it long passed into junk and uselessness.

I ask her when she last sold anything. 1962, she tells me cheerfully. But we’re still open.

Probably because she has nowhere else to go, nothing else to do. She lives here. It smells of old lady, but not in a bad way.

I wonder to myself, but don’t ask, whose car that is outside. I know she can’t drive it; she tells me she never leaves the store. Not to go anywhere.
I wonder who makes sure she eats, pays for the small amount of electricity an old woman must use in a place with unchanging weather.

I’m just fascinated by her, and start taking notes in the notebook I always carry in my photograph, as if I planned to write a story.

I wake up with a golden happy memory of this woman. I don’t know why the dream was so vivid. I wish I could meet her.
I also wonder if part of my dream is telling me that I want to be a reporter again, or to shoot photos again. I don’t, really.
I didn’t like covering meetings or issues. But I loved writing features on just this sort of person: an ordinary person in an unexpected place, or an extraordinary person in an ordinary place. Nobody was too dull for me; with the exception of some teenagers I interviewed, I found I could always write a decent story about anybody. And enjoyed doing it.

I wonder if I’m searching for happiness with nothing.

I wonder if I’m searching for a warm, golden afternoon with my camera and some of the best shots of my life.

I know I’ve been neglecting my camera. And my creativity.