Dream - Oh how high the shadow grows

On Saturday morning, September 20, 2008, I had a dream that included a naked man, a black dog, and a song with the words "Oh how high the shadow grows."

In the dream, I was in a large open mall-like area, mostly empty of people, though there were a few. Colors were pale and there seemed a starkness about everything. I was doing something before this, but I'm not sure what now. Going back and forth from the house to there was part of it. Inside the mall there was a small stairway against a wall leading to a small platform that had some low stucco walls around part of it. A door was in the wall at the platform, and maybe a window by it, though it might have had blinds or a curtain or some other covering obscuring the view to the inside.

I went up and down the stairs to the landing a few times, spending part of the time on the landing partly laying down. I seemed to be at least partly trying to hide from people, hide from being bothered by them, though for a while I called out to someone in the mall, a relative I think, maybe my mother. I held a small conversation then, but I wanted to be left alone so I could rest.

At some point some dogs came up, a large black one and two smaller pale ones, one them smaller than the other, generally all of them spaniel types I think, more or less. I was a little concerned sometimes about the big dog, though I felt also that it would probably be alright. I reached out to the big black dog and scratched and rubbed his head between his ears, first on one side and then the other. His snout was very big and his head was small, and I wondered about the size of his brain. Before, things had had a strange quality, like I was looking on the scene without my glasses. Things were much more blurry now, though, and the big dog became especially blurry. It was hard sometimes to see it much beyond its head, and its head seemed to fade at the edges into a blackness that surrounded it and that it seemed to carry with it. I worried a little bit about getting my hands dirty, touching the dog, but it seemed a necessary thing and I didn't worry too much about it. I was very tired and it was hard to move and hard to see and I wanted to rest.

I saw a man down in the mall who was just partly dressed, maybe naked at times. I'm not sure how he got that way. He was wandering around, staggering, bumping into the walls sometimes, a time or two going up and getting briefly in a niche in the wall, partly hiding, partly just resting. I was irritated that he should show up at the mall looking like that, and I went down and I guess basically harassed him for a while, knocking him about a bit, then I carried him up the stairs to the landing and put him down behind the low wall, partly hiding him. He was completely naked now. I think I might have had a part in making him naked. He was mostly out of it by this point, barely conscious.

There was some small bit of clothing on the landing, very thin material, like a piece of a Halloween costume. It was colored maybe a pale red or purple, and gathered in to a long piece of elastic, like maybe a waistband or headband, like it was either some brief shorts or some kind of turban or other headgear. I wasn't sure what to do with it. He was laying on his side partly curled up, his back to the mall. I think I finally just draped it on his shoulders.

I worried about leaving him there, but it seemed better to leave him there than down in the mall the way he was. I worried if I left him up there, though, that people who might be looking for him, maybe friends or family members, wouldn't be able to find him. He was sticking out a little past the edge of the wall, though, his rear and some of his legs. I think I might have intentionally arranged it that way so that people looking for him had a better chance of finding him, while at the same time giving him a little privacy by having him up above the mall and mostly hidden. I went down the stairs then, brushing a little against him as I went, which disturbed me.

I went home then and laid down in bed. Some people occasionally talked to me and to themselves from the hallway. They were hard to hear and sounded faint and far away. I wanted to drift off into the gray softness behind and around me. The dogs came back, coming down the hall. I scratched and rubbed behind the ears of the big black dog, as before. His head seemed even smaller than before but his snout was as big or bigger than ever, and I wondered some more about the size of his brain. He was even harder to see than before, with a deeper blackness surrounding him. I was talking to someone in the hall, a couple of people.

I started singing in a sharp, clear, somewhat high voice, "Oh how high the shadow grows, the plant life of your widow, black lace curtains brought you near, from out the plate glass window". It was a song from long ago and I wondered who had sung it. Then I somehow moved to the computer room and was sitting down, seeming to move through the wall there as the view shifted, still singing I think.

I was still looking out toward the hall, but now it became more distant and had changed to a large room, almost a stage. It had a very low wall and a huge room-spanning sheet of glass. Behind the glass a large group of people were moving, leaving, going from left to right. They were mostly young and were of a range of heights but none were very tall. One of them was talking to me. I was having trouble hearing, the voice sounded faint and far away. Sometimes it seemed to be someone in the middle and sometimes it seemed to be someone toward the left side.

I said something and then the person laughed, and looking back and forth I finally determined that the person was indeed on the left. It was a young girl. She laughed and said, "Don't you recognize me, I'm [the name of my little sister, who is now in her mid-forties]".


Later that day, I was thinking about the dream and the song and realized that I had it wrong in the dream, that it was "Oh how high the scaffold grows" not "Oh how high the shadow grows", and that I have it on an old Elton John 8-track tape. The rest of the song in the dream was accurate, as near as I can remember.

"Don't you recognize me, I'm [my sister's name]," was similar to something she actually said in early January 2008, when I couldn't recognize her voice on a cellphone that greatly distorted it. Also, one time when she was young she was in the second story of the Sears at Los Arcos Mall, and I was shopping there, looking at the trinkets on some shelves out in the floor, trying to find something for my aunt I think, and maybe my grandmother. I heard two or three young people, early teens probably, perhaps 10 or 15 feet away, giggling about something. It irritated me, as they were sort of looking in my direction and I thought there was a possibility that they could be giggling about me for some reason, though I didn't know why. Later at home I found out that one of them was her, and they were apparently giggling because I didn't know she was there. I hadn't bothered to take a good look at them, so I hadn't known one of them was her.