The Unfamiliar Within the Familiar

I have this recurring dream about being on the London Underground. I am on a train, when I look up at one of those little maps that they have above the seats, and I realise that I don’t recognise the name of this particular line. Furthermore, I don’t recognise the names of any of the stops. This is an entirely unfamiliar section of the tube system. But I live in London, I think to myself. I grew up here. I know this place inside out. How can there be a whole part of the Underground I’ve never heard of? I try to get off the train, but the doors won’t open. Or maybe they do open, and I find myself on the platform of a station I’ve never heard of. Signs pointing in all directions. Interchanges to yet more lines I’ve never heard of. Destinations that don’t mean anything to me. How do I escape all this and get back to the part of the Underground I know?

Another dream is where I cross a railway bridge that lies just down the road from my parents’ house. I’ve crossed this bridge loads of times, and I know that, in real life, it simply connects one road with another road. But in the dream it leads to a pool of water. A pool of water I never knew existed. Sometimes it leads to a sort of luscious Roman swimming bath complex; other times it leads to a beach. I never knew my parents lived so close to a beach, I think to myself. I lived in their house for twenty-seven years – how could I not have known this? How it is even possible? My parents live in London. But there we are. Cross the bridge, and the beach is right there.

The unfamiliar within the familiar. The darkness in the light. The light within the darkness. It’s all there. It’s all right there.

Joshua Seigal