Social isolation dreams #2 and #3

Coronavirus stalks not only our days, but our nights too. Freud didn’t know the half of it.

#2  Because of the pandemic we’ve taken in a lodger. He’s called Benito Mussolini and though it clearly is him, in some sense, essentially he is a large pile of some dark olive green material, like an early type of polyurethane, with a smooth, globular surface, and looks rather like something sculpted by Rodin. He needs to go the loo, the one near our front door - though, strangely, on the opposite side of the house from where it usually is. Soon we begin to hear the sounds of Italian opera, which get louder and louder, hysterical and strangulated.

We look at each other. “He seems to be in pain. We’d better go and see if he’s all right”. We go in, and find that Mussolini has farted away the central part of his backside, which is dripping blood and poo, with wires and things sticking out. He appears to be distressed. We want to help but we can’t touch him because of the coronavirus. We bring him a few things and the next time we go in he has removed his buttocks, cleanly, much like a large bite out of an apple and the same colour too, leaving just a small central eye-shaped bright red hole.

#3 A series of instructional dreams the theme of which appears to be a requirement to get dissimilar items to fit together nicely into something aesthetically whole.

(1) pink pottery plantpots and cardboard boxes. Mm, this one’s difficult. Apart from the fact that the former can go into the latter, there’s no commonality.

(2) different building styles, including gothic and art deco. They fit together nicely into somewhere that might be Madrid or Manhattan.

(3) different musical instruments. The drummer says that his is the principal contribution to the band, but with patience he is persuaded to play with the others, and the end result is a balanced and credible song. “I used to be very successful” he says. He looks about 14 and resembles someone who was on “University Challenge” recently.