Last night in my dreams we came upon a book store that wasn’t there before. Instead of a door, the whole front swung open. We entered because we like book stores and because it was the only store open. In my dream, we were in St. Louis. Inside, we found that every book was by the same author; an older woman with a penchant for bunnies. We were about to leave when one of the ancient shopkeepers pointed out that there was a basement, and we might find something to our liking there. We decended again and again, finding floors below (maybe eight, maybe 18) with antiques, or were they simply furnishings from another time? Someone said, “You know what this is, don’t you? It’s the area’s largest bomb shelter.” And so it seemed, as there were accomodations for all, basement upon basement with shag rugs, couches and hanging lamps.
Upon waking, I couldn’t place the dream, didn’t know where these thoughts could have come from, then I recalled drifting to sleep, thinking of Steven Fitzpatrick Smith and his thoughts on thermonuclear war.
“When I was a kid,” he said, “I was terrified of being nuked by the Russians.”
Absolutely! We all were (remember that?) and our entertainment reflected it. We watched Red Dawn and Wargames (do you want to play a game?), listened to Russians and 99 Luftballoons and waited for this feeling they called the Cold War to go away. Well it did, finally, and was replaced by a different kind of war. The dream, and trying to recapture what the Cold War felt like took me back to an era that could not have anticipated this post-9/11 existence.
In the bookstore/shelter (interesting analogy, given how I feel about books and reading) there were many people who had been there as long as the furnishings, browsing and worrying for generations.
