When you take away options, stranger things happen.

That’s the quote that came at the end and the takeaway from my dream earlier this morning that ended about two minutes ago. It involved several different scenes, this dream, but ultimately it seemed to be about making a person more deperate as he was hounded and accused and victimized by the people around him, the people closest to him; except for his parents. Though even them too as he could detect they expected absolutely nothing out of him anymore except survival. And at times, they thought perhaps that too was making his life worse.

It involved a grown man being late for school and classes; but miles upon miles to walk.

This man, this person constantly assailed, nevertheless walked by both a grimy, oiled quarter on the ground, then a shinier nickel a little farther up the hill, knowing kids who walked the same path would get more joy out of the discovery.

It involved me, or someone I thought for awhile was me, sitting in a car with my laptop, the one I currently own, the one I’m currently typing into. Someone else had carried it, walking away from the house, still typing away. And the WiFi had lasted an extraordinarily long time but at the corner, it ended and the guy carrying the laptop had to turn around. But, in the nature of dreams, with seamless yet also abrupt merge, it was me, suddenly in the car, in front of a strange house, with the plug cord snaking out across the sidewalk but only because it was snagged on something in the round-top cement wall. It seemed I was doing some kind of surveillance, discovery for someone else. It felt like it was on the right side of the law, or at least the right side of justice, trying to find the truth no one else was looking for.

Trying to return someone’s options.

It involved a hippy looking guy in a nice car, a Skylark or an Oldsmobile of some kind pulling into a parking spce in front of me, only then to imediately pull out again, or start to before seeing me walk behind him. I said something mildly uncomplimentary to him, but only mildly, after all he had stopped without me having to shout.

My brother walked out of jail, with two swollen bumps on his side, near his hips. He was shirtless. There was another bump on his forehead and a cut on his lower face. Except it was my face. Except I knew it was my brother. And I knew he wanted to tell me what had happened to my glasses, which were supposed to be on his face. No, my face.

He was about 10 people back in a very narrow corridor. I, he, was about a head taller than everyone else, as we often are, and people were being released. He’d only been there overnight, or maybe a couple of days. There was only doubt, I thought in my dream, because the cuts seemed to be fresh but healed as if they had happened a little while ago. But as he walked through it was my face and he walked past me with a small smile, ready to explain but knowing now wasn’t the best place. He stopped a little farther on as I let him walk past me and seemed to either insert or take something from a column in the wall.

There was tension in the city, though I don’t know where, and something was about to happen. But then I woke up, so it didn’t.