Escher and the duck lobby

The cat is licking out the bowl that held my morning yogurt and I am contemplating the last dream I had before waking. I often dream about being inside houses, houses with rooms that keep opening into other rooms but from the outside look small and tidy -- sort of like the Winchester Mystery House but not as built-for-forgiveness-or-avoidance and neither so imposing nor ornate. This morning's dream, however, took place completely inside a conference hotel.

It was not an anxiety dream about an upcoming conference. I'm not going to MLA this year, and so my next conference is not for three months -- what's to worry?

This conference hotel had at least seven levels of stacked lobbies and mezzanines, and I spent the whole dream wandering through their late twenties faded gilt and corner armchairs. I ran into people I knew in the dream but who bore no resemblance to anyone I know outside the dream, the usual logic of dreams. Once, I had to -- in my slinky twenties evening gown -- climb over the thirties-looking cars in the parking ramp opening onto a lobby, in order to get to the other side. Once, I walked up a ramp between levels, watching through the intermittent doors other people I knew having a pleasant conversation while they walked up a parallel ramp. Once, I heard ducks.

Perhaps it's because the semester has ended and the immediate day-to-day claims of meetings and people in classes has abated. I can turn to the longer term projects I've been wanting to get (back) to, but perhaps it's just that my brain now has some energy simply to divert itself. But is my sense of self now shifting from the cozy private-ness of all those houses that I used to dream to the faded publicness of academic conference attendance?