In my dreams I went to Igor's house

I didn't give Igor time to ask me how I was. I jumped right in. I had things to discuss and only 50 minutes to do it in.

"I dreamt about you last night," I told him as if I was telling him I had a present for him.
"It's about time," he laughed gleefully.
"I knew you'd love it that I dreamt about you. "
He laughed his Igor laugh.
"And, even when I don't dream about you somehow you make it all about you. Maybe, because this one is about you, you will say it is really about my mother." I said jokingly even as I knew that he has read "Wit and the unconscious" by Freud and that meant he knew there was truth to my joke.
"Go ahead", he instructed me.

"I am driving around Valencia. I am on the back side of Magic Mountain. It is a side that I have never seen before. I didn't even know it existed. I drive up to your house, to the back of the house. I go into an apartment attached to the house, a big white two-story house. I walk into the apartment and I go out through the front door down the stairs. From the stairs I can see you through a window. You are building a wooden weight bench. There is wood all over the office. It is a mess. I see you lying on the wooden bench, so as to test it. I laugh. Something about this strikes me funny. It doesn't seem like you, woodworking and weightlifting. I realize that my session is soon and I wonder how you will clean it all up before my session begins.

I enter your home, where your office is. I lie on a couch in your office. This couch is right up against a wall made of windows. Your in a chair right behind me, you are so close. There is no evidence of the weight bench or the mess or the wood that had cluttered your office just moments ago as this is a different room. You tell me in a curt way to never go through the apartment again. You tell me that it was your office but you had given it to your wife for a photographic studio(I got an image in my mind that your wife looks like Shohreh Aghdashloo who played the wife of Ben Kinsley in the House of Sand and Fog). I got upset by the way you said that to me. It seems parental and sharp."

"I got up and walked out of your office. I leave expecting you will walk after me and try and stop me. But you don't. I stand in an anteroom and look at papers on a desk. I see a condolence card laying on top of a stack of papers. I think that this means that a professor that we both know has died. I go into a waiting room and put on my white Converse tennis shoes on my bare feet and I wait for you to come and get me. I see you walk into the room where you had been constructing the weight bench. You come out of the room and stand in the anteroom. You say to me "I am not a behavioral therapist. I cannot deal with your behavior."

He loved the "I am not a behavioral therapist. I cannot deal with your behavior" line.
"I am funny in your dream." Igor said.
"I made you that way." I explained so as to remind him that it was my psyche and not his that made the joke.

Igor said excitedly, "You are quite intuitive. "
I wondered what I got right. Is he really married to Shoreh?
"I used to be very into weight lifting when I was young. It was my hobby."
"Oh", I answered unimpressed by my intuition.

"And, wood, you like wood very much. Don't you?" Igor asked.
"Yeah, trees. I love trees. To be at home I have to have trees."
"Trees and space and room to create" he paused as if he was trying to make sense of it but it instead sounded like poetry.
Finally finishing the sentence, "... these are the things you want", he asked.
"I do." I answered

"So, what do you see in this dream? Igor asked me mining for more material.
"I see that I have gotten to a new place. I am on the other side of where I was. I have made a new discovery. I am in a place that I didn't even know existed."
"Magic Mountain" Igor laughed. "You know, I have been there. It hasn't been for a lot of years. But I have been there. There are some terrifying rides there."
I create a picture in my head of Igor in his black turtleneck, wool trousers and Gucci loafers standing in line to ride the Colossus. It is an image even more humorous than imagining him as a young gym rat.

"There is a lot about closeness and distance in this dream. In the dream I am now close to you. You no longer have to drive to Beverly Hills. I have come to you. I am where you live."
He said it in such a way that it seemed the symbolism of this ought to be obvious only I didn't get it.

"And you are close to me in the office. Extremely close to me. Everything feels close in this office. The window, the couch, the chair and you." I said as a means of amplifying the closeness theme.
"At first I am very close to you and then I say something wrong and the closeness is lost and then there is distance between us," he reiterated.

My mind wandered, "I go through the apartment and you are in the house and you don't want me in the apartment. Jeeze, I wonder what that is about? You want me in a house, where the roots are; where the wood is. You want me to be in a permanent place."
"It is not the house I want for you. What I want for you is to be free of the ideal that one place exists that is going to be without challenges, grief, and loss " he explained.
I uh-huhed him. I wanted to get back to the dream and away from previously discussed material, the clock was ticking.

We both quietly searched our minds for more meaning. The more we worked at it the more confused I found myself.
"And," Igor reminded me, "you call it an apartment not a guest house. An apartment is something temporary, transitory, something you are going through and yet it is a longer stay than a guest house. Then, after you go through the "apartment" you come down to where I am in the house....you have quickly gone through the transitional into the rooted."
He could see in my avoidance of eye contact that I had nothing to add to that.

"The house has two stories. What are the stories of the house?" Igor asked.
Again I had no answer. It was only while driving home that the "two stories" of the house came to mind. The two stories are: my infertility story and my mother story and the attached apartment is "Thursday's with Igor." The attached apartment is the studio where I am developing, editing, working on creating something new. It is not a place to stay. It is a place where I spend 50 minutes a week working and then I leave.

My mind moved to the homonym of the dream, "There is the weight room and the waiting room. You are in the weight room. You are where the heavy lifting happens. You are building a place where that can happen. I am waiting for you to come get me."
Igor answered, "But, I don't. Rather I come from the weight room into the waiting room and reproach you when it is you who should have reproached me."
I am not sure what he means. Why should I have reproached him? For making me wait?

Igor offered,"It seems to me that this dream is indicating a movement towards a very positive masculine. This is a balanced masculine. And, the wife, tell me about her?"
"She is really beautiful. Have you seen "the House of Sand and Fog?" I ask.
"No."
"You should. It is a beautiful film and it is loaded with stuff about the significance of house on identity. I think you'd like it. " I suggest.
"Anyways, the woman who plays Ben Kinsley's wife is really beautiful and in the dream she is your wife. Well done, you." I congratulate him.
"There is space for both my "wife" and I to create in this house. Often in a marriage there isn't enough space for what is required to be truly creative. But, this inner masculine and feminine have room to create."
"They do."
Hearing this I realize how I have so much space in my life here in Valencia for writing. I have never had as much space for it. Even when I had my Virgina Wolf room of my own in Lake Bluff I did not have the emotional space or creative energy I have had since living here. I hated to admit it so I didn't.

"And, the death of the professor?" he asked.
"Well, in the dream, I assume the condolences card is about him as he has been so sick. You know, this professor, he wouldn't know me if he saw me but when I heard he was sick I was truly sad. He is this great mix of intellect and feeling. So often one is lost at the expense of another."
"....a kind of death?" Igor asked.
"I guess." It seemed like a bit if a reach but I could see what he was saying.

"How about the shoes?"
"Um, uh......well, they are Converse, they are shoes I would never wear to see you. They feel too casual. I would never wear them here. And, if I was barefoot I guess the shoes were making it possible for me to go outside."
I imagined myself trying to get those shoes on. I always have a hard time getting them on and they are not very comfortable. I didn't share those associations with him. I wondered why not.
Perhaps I am willing to show him a part of myself that up until now didn't feel good enough.

"This" Igor said, "Has been a very illuminating dream."
I was happy to hear that he thought so only I still felt a bit in the dark.

As I drove home I wondered how you get to the other side of the mountain and what was there. There has to be another side. There is another side to everything. I looked it up on a map and it seems that there is nothing on the other side of the Magic Mountain. Isn't there a song about a bear and a mountain and how there was nothing there on the other side? Maybe I should tell Igor about there being nothing there and about the bear song. But as he seems to know very little about popular culture I would likely have to sing him the whole song and letting him hear my voice would be worse than letting him see my Converse. Oh, "converse", now I get it.

Converse(1):
intr. verb:

1. To engage in a spoken exchange of thoughts, ideas, or feelings; talk.
2. Archaic. To be familiar; associate.

noun:

1. Spoken interchange of thoughts and feelings; conversation.
2. Obsolete. Social interaction.

Converse (2)

adjective:

1. Reversed in order, relation, or action.

noun:

1. Something that has been reversed; an opposite.
2. Logic. A proposition obtained by conversion.