dreams

For the past two or three weeks I've been having a lot of dreams in my sleep. S attributes it to the quietness of this village town. And quite right too, for the house is situated off the main road, and there's hardly any traffic or noise. It's also been a time of solitude. Days would pass without my knowing, without my stepping out of the house, and without my seeing another human being. Every morning after breakfast I'd read or write through the day. And soon it'd be time for dinner, which would be a quiet but nice enough do, a steak or a roast meat and potatoes, sometimes pasta, and usually with a bottle of wine, and coffee and chocolates afterwards. Then I'd sink into the couch to watch a DVD, and then I'd go to bed. When I finally switch off the lights after a bit of bedside reading, it's complete silence, complete darkness, and soon I'd be deep in sleep.

There's something about this present that keeps taking me back to a particular time when I was still in Singapore. During that period, my day would begin at 5 in the morning, and after a thorough day of teaching, I would, once or twice a week, arrive at S's house just in time to do dinner, the day's sweat and grime and satisfaction still sticking onto my shirt. Dinner'd be exactly the same stuff, a steak or a roast meat and potatoes, sometimes pasta, and usually with a bottle of wine too, and coffee and chocolates afterwards. Except there wouldn't be time for a DVD, for I'd be quite drunk and utterly exhausted by then, and many times I fell asleep on S's couch while the coffee was being made. Then, I'd wake up just in time to catch the last bus back, and get some sleep for the next day of school.

Those were happy times, one of my happiest, though it contained one of my saddest too, and that's why it was such a shuddering experience a few evenings ago when I put on a certain Vivaldi, one I kept playing during those times, and every hour came rushing back. And it's this past two weeks' combination of hermitude and deja vu that I began to miss teaching, and to wonder if I would've been happier staying on to teach and making it my lifelong vocation, instead of packing all up and leaving. And it's probably all these peacefulness and solitude and reminiscing - very conducive to tender emotional states - that brought the dreams. They came with all the weird scenes that dreams come with, but in those scenes would turn up my family, my best friends, teaching, and students, each taking a turn, like a revolving tableau vivant.

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