Dreams of Heterodox Podcasters

Installment 2: Jesse and Katie at the lake

Photo by Tanel August Lind on Unsplash

It’s now a series! Turns out I’m not the only one for whom heterodox podcasters show up in dreams. Below is one from a listener named Tim, who lives in Toronto.

I posted the first installment on Feb 5 with my dream about Glenn Loury. Lots of dreams are being shared in the comments, but feel free share them with me via email me, too, and maybe I’ll feature them here. Anonymously, of course.

Dream Installment 2: Jesse and Katie at the lake

Dreamer: “Tim from Toronto”

Key elements: beach, lake Jesse Singal, Katie Herzog, cottage, anti-Semitism, guilt

A bit of background: My family has been going to a small beach community for several generations. Summers were always happy, growing up, because we'd spend them there. The streets are hard-packed sandy gravel. There are no streetlights. Everyone walks or rides an old rattling bicycle. No cars are allowed in during the summer. This past year, my 82-year-old father sold our cottage. His mobility is declining, and the place is so isolated, if there was a medical emergency, he would not likely survive it. My sister and I live in other provinces; we're unable to take over the upkeep of the cottage.

So. Recently, I dreamed I was up at the lake during the summer, walking around on one of those warm evenings at dusk. It's the sort of community where it's common to run into friends and just stand in the road talking to them. And that's what happened when I bumped into Katie Herzog and Jesse Singal. Jesse was very friendly, while Katie was civil; she just wanted to spend time with Jesse (no solidarity with the gays, I guess). They were going to a party at someone's cottage and invited me along. Other than the meeting, there were no events in the dream. It was all vibe. A warm gathering with friendly strangers.

I woke up feeling a bit wistful, but then I suddenly felt guilty because I hadn't told Jesse about the anti-Semitic history of that community. In the 1930s, a Jewish family had been looking for a cottage to purchase there and someone wrote a letter to the editor protesting the potential integration. I remember one of the lines was, "We don't want them here with their Coney Island ways." That stain has (rightfully) haunted the beach ever since. The guilt feelings, though, were to do with having Jesse there without informing him of the place, as though had he known, he might not have shown up in the dream. Anyway, I had a coffee and breakfast and forgot about it.