I was walking in it again last night.  I’ve spent so much time in it now that I can almost draw you a complete set of floor plans.  I haven’t a clue what it means, other then what I already know about my hyper imaginative brain.

It’s an oldish rowhouse style house.  Not located here in Baltimore, but on some residential street of a town somewhere, possibly the main street.  The street has two-lanes, is tree lined and has on street parking.  But the house has a small driveway of crumbly asphalt and pebbles.  And it’s not attached to the homes on either side: it’s a stand-alone.  There is one like it a few blocks from where I live in Baltimore: an odd looking house that looks like it was meant to be part of a row and only one of them was built. 

It is narrow like a rowhouse, made of red brick and a stone basement.  It is two floors and a basement, which is only half underground in the front and walk-out in the back.  There is a small front porch that goes the entire width of the house.  The door is in the middle, between two tall windows.  There are stairs leading up to the porch on the side, not the front of the house.  There is a small grassy front lawn between the front of the house and the sidewalk.  You can’t see it from the front, but there is an odd little room jutting off the side of the basement, almost like an add-on.  The back yard is overgrown, but not hopeless.  The house needs some TLC, especially on the second floor, which is mostly vacant.  There is another odd little add-on room jutting off the back of the second floor.  There is a wooden shed of some kind in the back yard, right up against the rear property line.  I haven’t been in it yet.  The grassy-gravelly driveway goes all the way back to the ally behind the house.  There are trees lining it and an dilapidated wooden plank fence that blocks your view of the alley, except where the driveway pokes through.  You can drive all the way from the street out front to the alley in back…a straight shot, but bumpy.

The front door is made of wood and painted a dark green.  It has three small windows across the top and a simple brass door knocker.  Walking in, you find yourself in a room that goes almost the entire length of the house.  There is a kitchen along the left hand wall (as you walk in).  And oldish stove and sink and cabinets.  A row of small wooden framed windows runs over them, just high enough that you cannot look outside while you are working at the sink or stove, but enough of them that there is plenty of light to see by.  The floors are bare wood without even a few area rugs covering it.  There is a staircase in the middle of the room leading upstairs.  A couple small rooms in the back are for storage, and a small bathroom.

For some reason, the second floor spooks me.  Whenever I go up there I become very apprehensive.  Like the first floor, it is vacant.  There are two rooms in the front which I have yet to enter though the doors are open and they seem just as empty as the rest of the floor.  There is a large open area around the staircase.  In the back, is that odd little add-on room.  It is way more rickety then the rest of the house, and seems to have been slapped on by some previous owner who had little to no carpentry skills.  But it is the only room on that floor with anything going on inside of it.  You walk into it and find yourself in a room packed with tools.  Hand tools of all kinds are hanging from every available space on the walls.  There is a large table saw that seems ancient.  Likewise a band saw and both wood and metal lathes.  The floor is dark with soot and decades of grime.  There are only a couple of small windows letting light inside.  This was somebody’s workspace.  You can see parts of things that have been left uncompleted.  There is a doorway on the right, leading outside to what looks like a fire escape.  Next to the door, an ancient powerbox with switches and old style screw in fuses.  Old, cloth covered electrical wires run from the box, to various power tools, and bare overhead lights.

The basement is interesting.  Like the add-on room, it is full of tools.  But it seems more a storage area then a workshop.  There are old cardboard boxes full of parts for god knows what, and wooden shelves packed with…stuff…more small cardboard boxes full of hardware and small parts.  Metal poles go from the cement floor to the beams above to give the floor above support.  The sides of the basement are stone.  There is a doorway in the back leading out into the backyard.  But there is also a doorway in the right hand wall.  That door is always open.

Here’s were it gets really odd…at least so it seems to me.  That door should lead outside, since it’s against the right wall of the basement…but it doesn’t.  It leads instead to another room.  At first I didn’t know it was even there.  When I found it on one of my journeys through the house I was amazed.  Unlike the rest of the house, it seemed as if it was still being lived in.  Except it isn’t.  This is a house that I have bought in some strange recurring dreamscape I keep having.  That much I know.  The house is mine.  The previous owners are gone.  I’m not sure if I ever even met them but I think I didn’t.  I bought it from a real estate agent somewhere.  For some reason, this one room was never moved out of.  It was left as it was, almost as if the people who sold the house, whoever they were, didn’t even themselves know it was there.  I get the sense they never looked in the basement at all…or in that second floor workshop.

You walk through that door and find yourself in what looks like a middle aged man’s den.  It’s got a threadbare carpet, wooden paneling, and what looks like a small kitchenette in the back.  There is a fishtank on a stand against one wall, an old TV set sitting in a corner with a pair of rabbit ears on top.  There are a couple small book cases built into the walls with a few paperbacks and some magazines.  In the middle of the room is an old over-stuffed recliner chair, well broken in, that looks like it’s been there for decades, and, oddly, a small ottoman in front of it.  Next to the recliner is a small wire metal stand with a phone, an ashtray, an empty glass and a magazine.  There is a large window on the side opposite the door from the basement, and another door in the back leading out into the backyard.  Something that looks like an old space heater is under the window.  Next to it is a small table with a lamp on it.  Behind the TV set is a bookcase that has mostly a jumble of old knick-knacks on it, and a few books here and there that look as if they’ve never actually been read.

The room feels cozy, yet…weird.  Weird because it looks like its previous owner just got up and left and never came back and now I have acquired it just as it was.  The basement storage area and the second floor workshop have that same feeling too.  This room was somebody’s retreat from a hard days work, or maybe someplace they spent all their days in retirement.  Watching TV, reading the papers, fixing the random snack from the kitchenette and having the occasional smoke.  The phone is handy so either they had friends to talk to or just didn’t want to be bothered getting up to answer the phone.  I haven’t noticed if there is a remote.

I started having this recurring dreamhouse when I bought my little real-life rowhouse here in Baltimore’s Medfield neighborhood.  It couldn’t be more different.  For one thing, the dream house is a lot bigger.  For another, it’s way older.  My little rowhouse was built in 1953 and it’s only 1500 square feet.  At a guess, the recurring dream house is a 1920s artifact. 

Sometimes I don’t even have to visit the house for it to occupy my dreams.  Lately, my dreams about it are I’ve been in the middle of something and suddenly started worrying that I needed to go check on the house, because I hadn’t been there in a while.  In some of these dreams I’m still living in one of my old apartments and I’m doing this and that and suddenly I realize I haven’t checked on the house.  Sometimes the feeling rushes over me that if I don’t check on the house soon I might somehow loose possession of it.  Sometimes I find myself wondering what to do with the stuff in that odd basement room.  Actually, when that house enters a dream I’m having, I find myself wondering about what to do with that basement room frequently.  It’s very odd.

When I visit the house, I try to avoid going upstairs.  There is something about the upstairs part of that house, particularly in the front, not the back where the workshop is, that makes me very apprehensive.  I’m getting the creeps right now just recalling it.  The rest of the house doesn’t bother me so much, other then it clearly needs some TLC and I’m not sure I can fix it up all by myself.  But it seems like a cute house overall, with a lot of potential, and it has a nice yard around it with a really nice big old tree on the right hand side by the front near the street.  There’s a house something like it on Falls road a few blocks away.  One of these days I’ll post a picture of it so you can get an idea of what I’m talking about.

I’ve often heard of people having recurring dreams.  I have recurring dreamscapes.  This house is one of them that started happening recently.  I was there again last night…the first time in a while I’ve actually been in the house in one of my dreams about it.  I was checking the house over and wondering if I should get rid of any of the stuff in that basement room, or try to find its owner and see if he wants any of it.  Probably it was related to all the intensive house clearing I’m doing this week.  But when something keeps coming back in your dreams, you wonder what the significance of it is…if there isn’t something it’s trying to tell you.

Maybe I’m just a bit nuts.  You wonder sometimes about the line between creativity and craziness.  I have co-workers who insist they never dream.  I dream all the time, and most of it vividly.