Long ago readers

When you write a blog that has very few readers (as I do), you remember just about everyone who has ever posted a comment. My second reader (Lane was my first) was A. I got hooked on her blog, too. She had a delightful penchant for posting whimsical lists. That was supplemented with adoration for Rufus Wainwright and Napoleon Dynamite, and she described the life of her eccentric (but endearing) family and friends in a way that made her fondness for them apparent. Ph will remember her, as we were all mutual readers.

Last year sometime her blog went silent, and I've never seen her in my or Ph's comments since. A few months ago, I took down my own links over there, since the site was blowing tumbleweeds and comment spammers. And while I sometimes fretted that perhaps something awful had happened, I realized that was something that would have to stay a mystery. I let it pass from my thoughts.

Then last night, I had the strangest dream. I was walking in a pastoral setting, and I met a sheep farmer in a field named Angus, Agris, or something. Very Scottish fellow... with a tartan patterned kilt. I just remember my farmer's name started with an A, that's all. When I got home from my walk, I somehow found out that the Scottish farmer was 'A', my old reader.

Now, you have to write your dreams down or narrate them aloud if you want to remember them, and I didn't... so it gets sketchy at this point... but I'll try to recall.

I had to tell 'A' something; I'd learned something she needed to know. (Now that I knew who he was, even in a dream, I knew A was not a he.) Anyway, I had to find her and tell her, I just knew it was urgent. So I went back out to the field, which was just an empty field now... the farm house was gone, there were no mules or sheep, just blowing grass. On the ground was a newspaper clipping. On the left hand side was a picture of the Scottish farmer (who confusingly, was still a he.) I tried and tried to read the article in the clipping.

You can't read in dreams, I told myself. I taught myself how to lucid dream when I was a kid, so I am usually somewhat aware that I am dreaming. So using lucid techniques, I strained and strained to read the article. I woke up just as I began to make out the first letter of the article.

It is very strange to have a blogger be in a dream. To tell you the truth, I'm kind of weirded out to even write about it, but it seemed significant somehow. Wherever she is out there, I hope she's OK.