I dreamed a dream

In the dream, I was standing outside of a large theater, in a large lobby area, which was extremely long and rectangular in shape. The lobby area was devoid of people, and I believe the carpet was red, though the details of dreams are often only dreams of the waking. My son, or a boy very much like him, with red-gold curly hair was weaving and bobbing around my legs.

Inside the theater, for suddenly my brain panned there, accomplishing the sort of bird's eye view that is only possible in literature or fantasy, or I suppose surveillance, to be in a place that one is not. Inside the theater, about 2/3 of the way up was my wife, sitting forward watching whatever it was that they were playing. In the row behind her and three seats down was another woman whom I had once loved. And behind her by two rows and two seats further to the right was a woman who I had only recently met. The three of them were all sitting in the theater waiting or watching the film or symphony or ballet or whatever was on.

Outside, I continued talking to the man, though I don't remember any details of the conversation. We could have been talking about the theater or the show or tax write offs. When the conversation was finished I noticed that my son was missing. The lobby was nearly empty, a few people stood at the extreme edges of the library, in small conversation circles, and he was not weaving between their legs. I ran or walked quickly to the edges of the lobby, pulling aside chairs and curtains, frantically looking for him. I didn't find him.

Suddenly, in the logic of the dream, I was transported back home. At home, which was not my current home, but a second story apartment with two bedrooms and a long window in the living room that looked out over both the city and an empty black night simultaneously. There I told my wife that I'd lost Julian, and we frantically started searching the house for him as though the space of the theater was transposed upon our house. The search grew more frantic, though I don't remember any of the physical details of where we looked and how. However, at some point it became clear that he was gone.

We decided to call 9-1-1. And I was thinking in the living room about my very sweet boy, how nothing yet had happened to change him, and I was thinking that I desperately wanted to find him before that changed. He'd only been gone a day or an evening, we needed to find him soon.

In the morning, over breakfast, I told everyone about my dream. My daughter kept wanting me to tell the dream as though it might have some logic. The song, Lost in My Mind, came on from a CD that I'd made. Listening after a while, my daughter asked if the singer had gotten lost in his mind just like I had lost Julian in my mind. And I thought how perfect a description that was: that he had gotten lost in my mind, slipping away on the slim dark threads of dreams.