I had a dream ...

... and it was a weird one last night. Not that many of my dreams are "normal," mind you. It's in dreams, you know, that we learn that chronology is a lie--at least in my dreams. People and places from all over my life congregate and do weird stuff. And I (usually just standing there, observing) see nothing amiss.

My "teacher" dreams are a little different. They generally feature a very inept me in a classroom packed with students from 1966 to 2011 (the span of my career)--mixed together with people I've never seen before. All misbehaving--sometimes egregiously. While I fail to control them.

Okay ... last night ...

I was in a classroom (I was not the teacher--whew!). I seemed to be the age I am now. I was observing. I recognized no one--though they all appeared to be high school--or even college--students.

The class was working on novels and stories about Sherlock Holmes--pieces written after Arthur Conan Doyle's death. (You Holmes fans know that there are countless tales about him in other people's work--novels, stories, screenplays, etc.)

Anyway, I was looking at a list of modern Holmes novels (one of the students showed it to me--not sure why), and I noticed that it did not include ...? did not include ...? did not include ...?

But I could remember neither the title of the novel nor the author I wanted to tell them about.

I knew that it was the woman who'd written Ahab's Wife; or, The Star-Gazer, a 1999 novel I'd read back when it came out (hey, Melville fans had to read it, right?), and I'd subsequently read her earlier books, and a few afterwards. Though I no longer read her.

In 2001 I’d taught a little class about her and her book at our local library.

In 2003 Joyce and I had driven up to a Cleveland bookstore (its name is escaping me) for a reading and signing. I took all of her books, which she graciously signed. (In my dream I could see those books on our shelf—but could not make out the titles—or the author’s name.)

Now here’s the weird part. My conscious brain intruded a moment into my unconsciousness. And it said this to the students in the classroom I was in: “I’m going to wake up soon, and when I do, I will get the name and tell you.”

They all looked at me as if they thought all this made perfect sense!

And I woke up. Remembered the writer’s name: Sena Jeter Naslund.

But could not remember the name of her Sherlock Holmes book.

All of this occurred about, oh, 2:30 a.m.

I was afraid I was going to forget it all, but I was too whacked out to turn on a light, find a pencil, write it down. So ... I trusted my memory.

Which is usually a grievous error.

But, miracle of miracles, I did remember, and checked it all out this morning.

The name of the novel was Sherlock in Love (1993), and in our stuffed filing cabinets I found a fat folder of Naslund material, including a bunch of 35mm slides I’d used that day at the old Hudson Library—and my notes for the session that occurred on April 21, 2001, 10:00 a.m.

A lot of the slides were of Nantucket Island (setting for much of the Ahab novel), which Joyce and I had visited in March 2001 so that I could see what she was writing about. (We had a beautiful couple of days there, by the way.)

I also found the notes I’d taken on her Sherlock novel. The first sentence is this: “Sherlock was dead, to begin with” (3). (Is Dickens smiling or preparing a lawsuit?) Watson tells us he’s working on a bio of his departed friend and colleague. We learn about his love interest, which turns out to be a sister he didn’t know about. (Yikes!)

It’s a lot more complicated, but I don’t feel like explaining it all. Read the book. It’s fun.

So ... what does all of this mean? Not a lot. But here’s a few ideas.

• I keep a lot of old stuff around the house.
• My memory is betraying me.
• Some of my dreams are fun—and frustrating at the same time.

And I’ll depart with this—and try to keep it out of your mind the rest of the day! You won’t succeed if you try.

At the end of Ahab’s Wife, Ishmael, the sole survivor of Moby-Dick’s attack, shows up in Nantucket, and he and Ahab’s wife/widow ... do it.