Allow me to preface this post by stating that I have dreams with people I haven’t actually MET but know through other means pretty regularly, usually when I’ve been doing a lot with them. A prime (pardon the pun) example would be dreaming that the Decepticons were spying on our apartment after watching the entirety of seasons one and two on DVD, followed by reading up on the full Transformers Metaverse history. What makes the dream in this post a bit more unique is that I HADN’T done any overload prior. In fact it had been quite some time since I’d even read his blog, let alone any of his work.

So, about a week ago, I had a particularly vivid dream. I was travelling with Mickey, and we were in a grocery store somewhere in the northern midwest (I’d say either Minnesota, Wisconsin, or possibly the Upper Peninsula of Michigan), and while leaving the store, ran into Neil Gaiman. Mickey had run back inside to get something, and so I struck up a conversation with Neil in order to stall him, because I knew that Mickey would want a chance to talk to him as well.

The conversation continues, and one or two other people join in (talking about the nature of dreams and the impact they have on reality), until finally Neil simply has to get back to his office, which is in the shopping plaza across the street, in a converted storefront. He invites me to swing by later to finish the conversation, and to bring my wife (since Mickey had still not come out of the store).

So a brief time passes, and Mickey and I head over to the “office”. It looks like it was originally a diner, then a storefront, until finally it was renovated into an informal office space (roughened pine clapboarding, and a turquoise metal door with a rounded top on the exterior, and a cozy, warmly lit timber frame building inside with lots of bookshelves). We head through the front foyer, and go into the back, which is filled with interesting, creative people doing interesting, creative things (a basic recording space is to one side, with someone laying in a track on guitar as we pass by), and several people are embroiled in various philosophical and theological debates (but no politics, as is declared in an old fashioned sign tacked over the doorsill), and everyone is quite friendly. We ask several people where Neil is, and are pointed further and further into the building, until finally we come to the kitchen, where he’s frying some eggs and talking to someone who may or may not have been Tori Amos.

He turns and sees us, and I introduce Mickey (who has met him before, but not so informally), and we dive right back into the conversation we’d been having. Sounds start to mute, and I start drifting out of the dream… and wake up. It was very vivid, and I told Mickey about it right away, because I thought she would be amused. Then I went back to bed, and didn’t think anything more about it.

Today, I was reading a few backposts of Neil’s blog, and came across his July 17th post, in which he mentioned that a good number of his friends had vivid dreams involving Neil, all about a week ago. Kinda freaky, but cool at the same time.