Rats

I dreamed I was a student or teacher, and had a bucket of rats that were tame and very good pets, as good or better than dogs. They had various patterns to their coats, more like hamsters.

I passed them around to the class, who petted them. I talked about the book “Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of Nimh.”

I remember we had several hamsters when I was growing up. When I was 13, for my science fair, my dad bought thirty white Sprague-Dawley rats for me to keep in the bathroom, to do an experiment about whether their learning would transfer from one maze to another, versus just the specific maze experience.

I was supposed to pet all the rats every day so that the experiment wasn’t confounded by anxiety towards humans.

I didn’t have much experience raising rodents. In their aquarium cage, they knocked over the water dish. Some of the rats got dehydrated, probably died, and were cannibalized by their fellows. I found bones and a tail.

I was horrified. Did I tell my Dad? I don’t remember. But I avoided them. My Dad got mad at me for not socializing them enough, but it was traumatizing.

I got a “Superior” ribbon for the science fair, but wasn’t selected for the State finals.

The dream probably springs from an insight I had yesterday, that I needed to be a super scientist to make up for my failings as a kid to my Dad. I’m a physician repeating my final year of residency, studying for my boards, which I’ve failed twice already. I’ve been pretty depressed for a few years now, and the dynamic with my Dad weighs on me, though he’s pretty supportive now.

The dream was probably some wish fulfillment, about how, since I didn’t socialize the rats, the experiment failed, so now I was making sure all the dream rats were socialized.

The Golden Boy

Scion, old money

Finds me on a couch, says we

Should eat at the school

Of culinary

Arts nearby. No longer mad

At me; my anger

Evaporated.

I am having cocktails for

Breakfast again. The

Mirror shows my face,

Sun burnt. We chat about crowds,

Anxiety and

Vaccines, descending

By elevator through the

Thronging masses. He

Sees my face under

The mask, and he is friendly

This time, we are friends.

Dreams in the Night

The bright boy with problems got separated from his group. He’s alone in a dark tunnel in the frozen winter. I don my winter gear and proceed into the tunnel to attempt a rescue without scaring him off.

The girl is the daughter of the sister, not the mother. The sister warms to her daughter.

Young lovers laugh. The father returns to put an end to what he thinks is mockery, but is actually not about him at all. He drives a nail into the young man’s back though his shoulder armor.

I think of what a relief it would be to have a nail driven into my back.

Lucidity

Sometimes I wonder

How the fuck this all happened.

My life. All the shit.

The good, the bad, the

Strange. It is as unreal to

Me as sci-fi is.

Whose dream am I? Do

I dare to wake? When will I

Lose the thread and fall?