This one even had fades and voice overs. 🙂
This is what I remember, but I know there are lots of things that I missed. I have bits and pieces,and isolated images that are too small to actually discribe, but this was the stuff that was so vivid.
The dream opens with a man and a woman driving down the road into a small town. They are on a wandering road trip, stopping when and where it pleases them. There is a fall carnival. They find a busy bed and breakfast to stay at, the hostess plump and friendly, smiling as she wipes wet hands on her apron. The clothing makes me think of the 50’s. The man looks a bit like Dustin Hoffman in his 30s. As the dream goes on, the townspeople enjoy their carnival, accepting the new arrivals into their fun. The man sometimes can’t see them for brief periods, which get longer as the dream goes along, until they are gone completely. When they first begin to fade for him, a girl shows up. She is probably 10, with long dark straight hair cut held back by a red headband, bangs across her forehead, wearing a red ruffled knee-grazing dress with tiny white dots, and white rickrack decorating the round collar, hem and long sleeve cuffs. She is wearing white knee socks and Mary Janes. The woman eventually fades out of the dream as well.
Voice Over: “A spontaneous game of stickball starts in the the small open space next to the forest.”
A brief image of the game, young boys with pink cheeks laughing and urging each other on the image fades out, the voices slower to go. The grassy lot is now empty, the leaves swirling behind the sign announcing the Chainsaw contest.
VO: “Messages scrawl themselves in childish hand across the billboard announcing the chainsaw contest: Good Luck Mom! We love you, Dad and Jimmy.”
The image centers on the still new looking billboard.
The town remained empty, desolate, as the fall carnival with its laughter, games, good natured competition all swirled busily through.
Now we are in the large kitchen in the bed and breakfast. It has a wide, open area for a dining table with a door leading to a back yard on the left. The row of windows on the next wall are curtained in yellow.
VO: “Her vision of the world did not change.”
The man (who was me) swirls the contents in the jar as he sees them: almost a full gallon of pickle juice gone slightly gray with age. The gray-green pickles are a sad, desiccated layer in the bottom 2 inches. “Do you know what is in the jar?” he asks/I ask.
“It is empty,” she replies, smiling sweetly at me. This is a game we play often.
The images follow the points of view of the two observers: we see the old pickles as he does, when she speaks the jar is indeed empty, and in fact very clean, no residue of any kind. Then we see the pickles as the town sees them: freshly canned cucumbers, dark skinned, pale green flesh sweet and crunchy in clear brine, the crinkle cut surfaces still attesting to the sharpness of the slicer.
We see her eating a chocolate covered doughnut with pink and while sprinkles, humming and tilting her head left and then right while she contemplates the placement of her next bite.
VO: “She doesn’t know where or how she found it. Only that she is happy.” The man meanwhile is relieved. She seems unconcerned that she cannot see any of the food he finds. She never mentions being hungry, so he supposes he should not worry so much, but it still seems strange. Her cheerful attitude never waivers, she does not appear to be suffering from lack of food.
Then the dog moved and I woke up.
Now I need to go shower and grocery shop. Happy weekend everyone!