Dream Log: Awkward Closeness With Bernie & AOC

I dreamed that Bernie and AOC, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, were a couple. (Only in the dream! In waking life, I have no reason to suspect they're a couple.)

I dreamed that they and I were sharing a small house near the corner of 17th and Laurel in the Fort Sanders area of Knoxville, Tennessee, or to put it more precisely: they were renting the house, and renting a small room to me. I felt very cramped, very uncomfortable. I felt like the 3 of us were always on top of each other. I wanted to move out.

In real life, I lived in the Fort Sanders area for a number of years. I've most recently seen Knoxville in 1992. In those days, Fort Sanders was a residential neighborhood which ran from 11th Street to 24th Street, and its southern boundary was Cumberland Avenue. On the other side of Cumberland from 11th to 17th, the campus of the University of Tennessee was across Cumberland from the Fort, and from 17th to 24th there was the Strip, which consisted of stores, restaurants and bars on both sides of Cumberland.

I imagine it's possible that the area has changed quite a bit since 1992, but in my dream, it hadn't changed much at all.

In my dream, I had been hired by the Sanders 2020 campaign in some unclear capacity. It was unclear to me: I didn't know what my job responsibilities were.

I was hauling a backpack up the hill from the Strip. It was full of chains whose links were an inch and a half long and a quarter-inch thick. The pack was very heavy. Besides being difficult to carry up the hill, it was so heavy that I was concerned that the straps on the backpack would break.

I was not at all certain whether Bernie and AOC would have considered me carrying that backpack up that hill to be a good use of my time as a campaign employee, or not. They could have said Yes, that's fine, or No, why the Hell is he doing this, or Why doesn't he have a motor vehicle to do this, or Why is he messing with the chains at all -- no conceivable answer would have surprised me, because I couldn't read Bernie or AOC, I couldn't tell what they thought or felt about me or anyone or anything else.

I finally got the pack all the way up the hill and into the house. My muscles were aching all over my body.

Besides the 3 of us who were living there, Bernie, AOC and I, many people were coming and going in the small house: other campaign workers, volunteers, reporters, people from the Democratic Party, and Other People.

I went to the kitchen to get a drink of water, and then I woke up, and got a drink of water irl.