Wall Dreams

Last night I dreamed any number of strange things, but one of the strangest was this:

I dreamed, first, that all the wallpaper was off my dining room walls, and I had nothing but white, bare plaster.

And it seemed that I could perceive something behind the plaster, between the studs, in one corner of the room. There were some people there with me, and one of them, a woman who reminded me of my mother, told me, "You have pregnant women in your walls."

Though unexpected, this didn't seem alarming or uncanny at all. It evoked no echoes of poor injured girls murred up behind stone and mortar in old Gothic tragedies. No, I was brought to understand it was a rare but natural development in old houses, a chemical effect resulting from age and plaster and the stuff that falls down inside stud and lath walls. Totally to be expected.

But then it seemed that time went by, and the pregnant women in my wall did what pregnant women do: They got bigger and bigger. There were three of them behind the plaster, standing in a row between the studs, facing outwards, arms down to their sides. I could now clearly see their full breasts, their fecund bellies with navels like demitasse cups, telegraphing through the white wall surface, pushing it out into the room.

I couldn't take the situation for granted anymore. Whatever they were, human or dryad, however they had come to be there, these women would soon give birth, and how could they, how could there ever be room for them and their babies, trapped inside my wall? They had to be set free!

"We have to cut open the wall!" I said to the people with me. One man produced a large carving knife, but I said, "No, don't use that! You might hurt the women, and anyway, if they saw it, it would frighten them and maybe affect the babies."

So I got a small paring knife instead and started to work, carefully carving chunks of plaster away. The dream changed then, or my dog barked and woke me up, so I never got to see what the women looked like, or to learn what became of them or their babies.

I have no idea with this means. That I'm thinking about the built-in cabinet my POs-1 took out fifteen-twenty years ago? That I'm over-obsessing about wallpaper choices? Or that, seeing how I settled on the paper I want for my dining room wallpaper five years ago, I'm excited but a little apprehensive now the time has come actually to order it?

Or maybe it just means I should watch what I eat before I go to bed!