Morning of October 20, 2013. Sunday.
I am in a mostly empty room which seems to be a store of some kind, possibly one that only sells hats, because I am thinking of a talking-animals story I did as an educational task a few years ago (for second or third-grade level) - not sure as I have been extensively through tens of thousands of stories at various grade levels, or perhaps it was related to only a reading session for a younger son. Now that I think about it a bit more, it (the real-life children's story) might have only been mostly an umbrella store. At any rate, my dream presents the store as empty and I am somewhat concerned or rather puzzled.
"About hats?" I sort of speak aloud to an empty hat-rack near the main public entrance which has a sort of Art Deco appearance. "About hats?" echoes a voice behind the apparent counter and room-focus of the store. I see my shadow and realize, as I swing my arms, it was only a "real" echo and no one else is there, apparently. People are walking by the windows of the store as if in an informal parade. I wonder where my hat is. Of course I am wearing one, but it seems illogical to be wearing a hat in an empty hat shop.
"You're missing the end of the world," someone cheerfully calls through the partly open door from outside after dinging a small copper bell when he opens it.
"I can't find my hat," I affirm, even though I know I am wearing one. An entire series of dreams sort of comes back to me from when I was three years of age. Many of my dreams I had during one time period at age three involved people walking along the side of the road carrying heavy (wicker?) baskets and in some cases, carts or "primitive" wheelbarrows, as well as a small horse and carriage. The fruit and vegetables they had gathered were bright and colorful (some also had several rabbits from a hunt or collections of fish) and it seemed that even though they had little money, the experience of simple day to day gardening or farming or hunting made them as fully aware and as enriched as possible. I marveled at their friendliness. I am not sure what my place was. I had been walking about outside, and from a child's perspective I almost felt at home, even though they were "not my people". When I look back, I get the impression of somewhere in Eastern Europe, perhaps Croatia(?) However, it also seemed to be a different time period, perhaps the 1920s or earlier. This dream within a dream comes back to where I am.
I peek through another door in the back of the shop and it is a small library or possibly an area that sells second-hand books. There are books of various colors of binding, but many of red and blue. A girl (unknown) seems to be confused on what book she is holding as well as looking at other areas on the shelf. "This library is wrong," she says in a matter-of-fact way. I look at a page from a book and see that all of the letters are symmetrical mirror images from their end width and cut off at where the middle would be. For example, an "A" looks like a "V" with a short horizontal line on each side, a capital "H" looks like a lowercase "t" and so on.
I place my left hand on the large mahogany bookshelf and at first it seems to quickly grow ice everywhere along every row, all around the entire room. It makes a very pleasing, blissful "tinkling" sound, like coins falling on a soft metallic or perhaps glass surface and spinning or rolling very gently. However, the books seem to shift somehow, a sort of a wavy impression in the eyes.
"It reads well," she nods. "Thank you. I wanted to enjoy a book while the humans are celebrating the end of the world yet again. There are so many there. Some of them never leave...they are all LEMMINGS," she whispers loudly, her eyes creating a vibrating "ripple of the surface of a pond" effect. All light, too bright to see, then normal.
"What is your name?"
"Hattie..."
"Oh that's real funny," I say cheerfully (relating to the play on "hat"). "...real funny," echoes the shadow from the front room of the shop. (Perhaps unintended or unrelated by my dream's character, but "Blackwater Hattie" - also written as "Haddie" is the name of a witch from one of my favorite songs, Jim Stafford's "Swamp Witch", from my youth - with a fantastic message - one of the best I had ever heard - about mainstream ignorance and hypocrisy.)
