I dreamed about the NY Ren Faire again last night.
To be sure, this wasn’t the first time. I’ve dreamt about Faire periodically in the years since I left it.
What’s interesting to me is that my “mental map” of the Ren Faire in my dreams has slowly changed over the years. The layout changes: a new building here, a new path there, a fountain when there was none before. In a subsequent dream, whether months or years later, these new features remained. While my booth faded away, there was still a space beside Sally’s booth that I could always return to.
(In a couple of dreams the Faire turned out to be a front end to Disneyland, but let’s discount those.)
Last night, my dreams took me to the latest iteration of my imaginary Faire.
I didn’t recognize anyone. Some people vaguely seemed to recognize me, but it always turned out that they were addressing someone else.
Went I went to find Mystic’s Way, it was gone.
This was enough of a shock that I woke up. As I emerged from the haze of dreaming into the waking world (as usual, Tinkerbell did not show up), something occurred to me:
This year, 2023, marks a threshold. The length of time since I worked at the Faire now equals the amount of time I worked there: 14 years.
I’ve got back three or four times as a patron. In recent years, I’ve had to miss it due to health and personal issues.
Will I return this year? Probably not. For me, the pandemic is not yet over.
It’s so strange to me that my dream mind is drifting away from something that was a crucial part of my life for so long.