Dr. Dolittle, I Presume / Caught / It's Nice, But...

Monday night

Dream 1: Dr. Dolittle, I Presume

My wife and I were visiting Maryland and were out having a walk in a downtown shopping district. I looked around, imagining the possibilities, and said, "I could live here. We'd be pretty close to our friends (in Virginia and D.C.). So, we moved. We bought a long, thin townhouse in the city, and I commented that I liked the views all around. One evening some old friends came over for dinner and we had a marvelous time. (The husband was actor John Cleese.)

A few weeks after we had gotten settled into our new home, my wife invited me to the location of her new job. She was involved in scientific research, but I didn't know what kind. She ushered me into a secret room in which large rectangular and square glass tanks filled a far wall. The cases contained some small apes, but there were also some large white chameleons and a gigantic albino grasshopper, which must have been four feet long. She revealed that she and her fellow scientists were teaching the animals how to talk.

*****

Dream 2: Caught

After some extensive research, I'd located an estate where one of the silliest adventure series ever had been filmed (think "Danger Island," or maybe "Land of the Lost"). The grounds were lush and green, and they surrounded a large mansion. I visited the location several times (without permission) and watered the huge, swaying palm trees to help preserve them.

One day I brought my wife to the site, and we got up the courage to knock on the front door. To our surprise we met no resistance; in fact, we were ushered in. Suddenly we found ourselves back in the 1970s, watching the filming of an episode of the show. The actors were working on an interior scene, and were massed in a stark white room with a closet, each fitted with clothing, makeup and hairstyles of the period. There was no furniture in the room. The actors went about their work purposefully and seriously, all the while seemingly aware that they were spouting some of the dumbest dialogue imaginable. My wife and I stood in the background, trying not to interrupt. Suddenly, two of the actors, a man and a woman, saw my wife, and broke character; one of them said, "Oh, Crap." They sheepishly removed their wigs and makeup to reveal that they were young versions of two people who would work with her decades later in Nashville.

*****

Dream 3: It's Nice, But...

It was a cold day, and I was visiting Martha Stewart's operation, which had recently relocated to Manhattan. Martha and I were standing outside; she was pointing out the sights and explaining the move. She said that she had the best of both worlds; her headquarters could be in the heart of the business district, yet she could live in a very nice house only 10 blocks away. I said, "Only 10 blocks from here? Wow." I was impressed.

I looked over to my right and saw a sight that intrigued me, but made me nervous. There was a long asphalt alley which formed a straight line from where I was standing. Employees parked their cars there, lined up with the front of the cars facing the side of a brick building on the right. The back end of each car leaned precariously over a sheer drop of hundreds of feet. Down below I could see a river, and beyond that, on the other side, was a marvelous row of red brick Victorian townhouses. I thought, "Geez, I'd hate to have to park there. There's no guardrail, or anything. If this parking lot ever froze, one slip and you'd be off that cliff and into the drink."

*****

Dream 1: Dr. Dolittle, I Presume

The other day my wife was sweeping our front porch and pointed out a large grasshopper who had stopped by for a visit. I was flipping the TV channels around the other night and came across one of the bad Pierce Brosnan James Bond movies. John Cleese (of "Monty Python" and "Fawlty Towers" fame) played the hapless successor to "Q," keeper of extraordinary gadgets.

Dream 2: Caught

This dream would be absolutely perfect if the man and woman who revealed themselves ended up being my wife's former Nashville boss and his wife, who are probably in their 50s. Alas, it was not to be. The young man in the dream was Kyle N., one of my wife's former students. He's a nice guy; we've played poker a few times. He wasn't born yet in the 1970s. I didn't recognize the actress who knew my wife.

The actors "broke character" because I happened across a retrospective about the Carol Burnett Show on PBS last night. No cast ever broke character more than that bunch.

Dream 3: It's Nice, But

Lately I've enjoyed flipping through a fascinating book called "Washington, D.C. Past & Present" by Peter R. Penczer (Oneonta Press, Arlington, Virginia, 1998). Mr Penczer found 127 old photographs of the District of Columbia and environs, and painstakingly took modern (1990s) photographs from the same vantage point(s). He used computer technology to crop his new photos as closely as possible to the originals. I'm sure that the row of Victorian town homes across the river in this dream resemble many of the the stately 19th century homes and businesses which were demolished in D.C. in the 20th Century. Some made way for worthy projects; others were razed for monstrosities, such as the F.B.I. building.

I'm sure that the gulf and the river boundary have a profound meaning, but I don't know what it is. An unbridgeable chasm between the present and and a more appealing past, perhaps?