Dawn treader dream

I had a really vivid dream last night involving my late friend Corby. Since he passed away in 2018, he’s shown up in my dreams a few times, but as far as I remember he was alive in those dreams. In this dream he was a ghost, and he knew it and I knew it.

Corby ran his family’s bookstore, Dawn Treader Books. It’s still going strong under really great new management. I was just in there last month on my last visit to Michigan for Pete’s wedding. So I think the version I was working with in my dream was pretty current.

I don’t know how I found myself there, but I was having a hard time finding what I was looking for. That happened the last time I was there, but I know that feeling comes from the fact that for two decades of my life, I’d see Corby when I walked in and that still feels like how it should be. I left, but then realized I had left my 90’s-style cellphone there. When I walked back in, a huge group of students in white shirts was collecting on the landing of the stairs at the entrance. With dream logic, the more there were, the bigger the landing got. I asked the person working the counter what was going on and they said that they were from a class at the art college very similar to the one that Martha is teaching right now, and that in a minute their professor would get there and they’d teach their class in the store. It felt strange and new and like I didn’t belong.

While I stood there thinking, Corby just walked up, writing either a price or a duplicate card for the paperback he had in his hand. He looked like he did when he was in better health. Unlike other dreams, I was shocked to see him. He said something like “Surprised to see me?” In other dreams, it made sense at first to see him, and the realization that he was gone only set in later, or after I woke up. But this dream mostly felt like it would to suddenly see a younger Corby standing there in real life. I put it together and said “They can’t see you, can they?” He shook his head and pointed towards the back of the store.

I threaded my way through the students and followed him while we walked through the rows of books. I told him how good it was to see him, and asked what it was like to be dead. I don’t think I asked what it was like to be a ghost – I think we understood a difference between those things in the dream. Corby was dead, but that was something he could experience, and he was letting me see him.

He thought for a moment. Taking a beat to think real hard before talking was a classic Corby gesture. He was always much more taciturn than me, which was almost unfairly charming when it combined with his excellent sense of humor. “Ok it’s like this,” he said. “When you were in Glasgow” – here he pronounced it with a comical Scottish accent, “did you ever have to go out in the rain with a cold?”

“Definitely. Lots of times, probably.”

“It’s not, like, something you’d do if you didn’t have to, but something about it can be really nice, right? Like a certain kind of comfortable that you can’t feel otherwise.”

I wasn’t used to Corby talking so specifically about feelings and sensations, but I really got what he was saying. I knew exactly that feeling. “Yeah!”

He said, “It’s like that, but you can choose what kind of cold you have.”

I don’t remember what else we talked about, but the whole time, I felt so strongly like I was talking to Corby, and not what I was thinking about Corby. My memory is very spatial, and I think in a literal sense, my memory of the bookstore is filled with ghosts of conversations with Corby, and it feels good to realize that that well isn’t dry, that my mind can reach back and grab onto that feeling so completely. When he had to go, I told him how much I missed him, and how good it was to have known him. How he would have loved to meet Martha. I find myself having a lot of dreams lately where I get a chance to say the things I wish I could say to people in my past. Maybe that’s a middle-age thing, mabe that’s a 2024 thing, or maybe it’s just happening. In any case, I’m going to be holding on to that feeling, firmly but lightly, of catching up with Corby in Dawn Treader Books today as M and I host about 15 people for Friendsgiving.