Well I have been meaning to post the past two days, because I've had really vivid and disturbing dreams that I've told some of you about, and now that, for the third night in a row, I've had more really vivid dreams, I thought I'd finally blog about it.
Since my time is really limited, I'm just going to briefly recap the first two nights.
Dream One
Two nights ago, when I was spending a really nice night with DC Guy after having seen Chorus Line (it was only so-so, but he LOVED it, so I pretended like it was really good until we got into substantive critiques over dinner), and eaten a nice meal at Sapa (which he shouldn't have let me pay for), I was all cuddled-up by DC Guy when I had the most awful Pookie-related dream.
I think it's because he text messaged me a few days ago (replying, of course, to an email I'd sent almost a month earlier), but really I don't feel bothered by what happened with him. It's a little disappointing, but it reflects much more on him than on me, so I don't let myself get too down or self-critical about it, and it's not something I've been mourning at all.
Anyway, the dream: I was living in Cairo in this gorgeous (seaside?) apartment with Shakira (the fact that a Cairo apartment could be by the sea, and Shakira could keep it clean, both would alert anyone to the fact that this is a DREAM), and I kept getting phone calls from friends in NYC telling me that they were spotting Pookie with a new guy. There was all this tension/hesitance/tragedy in their voices. It was really odd.
The call that I remember the most, which was the last one, was from Curie. I asked her if the new guy was better looking than I was, and she was like "well I only saw him for a minute, and it's hard to say..." and I was like "Curie, is he traditionally better looking than I am," and she said "yes." I hung up the phone and just fell to my knees in a ball on floor and was sobbing, feeling first like I wanted to immediately fly back to NYC and see it for myself, and then feeling like I just wanted to die...and then I woke up.
HOW MESSED UP IS THAT? I don't even think about him every day, and when I do, I'm certainly not worried that he's with someone else. If he had the ability to be with anyone, which I don't think he does (actually: I think he does, but I think he doesn't let himself use it), then I'd applaud the personal progress that would entail. What I think, though, is that anyone he's likely to be with at this point will just feed his old patterns and defense mechanisms, and I'm definitely NOT jealous of that.
Our hairdresser, who I introduced Pookie to as a Valentine's Day gift right when we first started dating, is always wanting to talk about him, telling me about how he doesn't want to be with me because he wants to screw around, and about how he has told him that he goes out and has sex etc. and the first time it happened (when I first came back to NYC) it kind of hurt, but now that Pookie (I really need to think of a new name for him) has proven to be a pretty disinterested party, it doesn't hurt at all. The last time I was getting my haircut I just said "well good for him!" and tried to make it as clear as possible that he was not something I wanted or needed to talk about.
When I woke up from my dream and felt DC Guy's arms around me, I remembered that I had a lot to be thankful for, and it's ok that Pookie is not one of them.
Dream Two
This dream was also highly stressful, but just sounds funny when I repeat it to people. Basically, I was a Supreme Court clerk for some judge that doesn't exist in real life, and although the dream started out with us going to stressful dinner meetings (and him warning me ahead of time that "New York shrimp is yellow in the middle, and the dipping bowl will be on the left side, so don't embarrass me" ... me telling him that I'm allergic to iodine, but I'd try) -- and there was a subplot about me really liking some red-headed guy (weird!) who was at the restaurant one of the nights, but I couldn't find his number for our date after that, and I was with a girlfriend who was always running late and was afraid we'd miss him -- but it then became a re-enactment of the Titanic.
All the justices and clerks were on a HUGE ship (like, bigger than any cruise ship I've seen) and we had to share quarters with them. My judge and I were trying to nap, but I was nervous and not happy with the sleeping arrangements, so I went up to the deck where we could exit to the shore where we were docked. Just as I was thinking of going onto shore, something happened with another ship that caused it to sink, and us to quickly realize (but only after we were already undocking) that we were going to sink, too. All the people on deck like I was were scrambling to get down the ramp and jump onto the shore before we'd sailed too far, but I was worried that all all the US Supreme Court judges would drown, below deck, and I was also worried that it would look really bad if, while the ship was sinking, I escaped without warning my judge. I was running around through all the chaos that you can imagine from the Titanic movie, trying to make my way back down to our quarters (which, incidentally, shared the same room number as my apartment number in real life -- 911), but I was so distraught and there was so much chaos, with people running the other way to get up and out of the ship and me running down, that I couldn't find the way to our quarters. Where the dream got really ridiculous was when I ran into the comic, Sinbad, and asked him to show me the way, which he did, at which point I woke up.
Dream Three
This was really two dreams, and they weren't that traumatic at all, but they were VERY involved. I think it's totally my fault, because before I went to sleep I was thinking about how my favourite psychic, Sylvia Brown, often explains that feeling you get when you wake up and your eyes are open but you are still caught a bit in the dream and are paralyzed, as you waking up before your spirit has returned from astral travel...she says that many people don't experience this, because often times when our spirit leaves our body it just boringly floats up to the ceiling and looks down at our sleeping bodies, below (which people do often remember). Anyway, before I slept, I was like "if you want to go somewhere, don't go someplace boring." Well I REALLY didn't, although I think the first part was the only real traveling, and the second part was a regular dream.
In the first part, I started off East of India, I think in Bangladesh, and I don't know why I was there, but I remember sort of flying over all this countryside really fast (like in a movie when you see, from the bottom of a plane, all the land speeding by underneath) and I landed in Afghanistan. I was really happy to be there, but I remember thinking that I had until the next day to get back, and really had a strong desire (my dream is so weird!) to go to Islamabad. Since I was only kind of part body and not really confined to regular physical constraints, I was able to kind of float across the border to Pakistan, at which point I think maybe I was dreaming and not astral traveling (not that it matters) because I sort of came back into my body in order to get some kind of travel visa. This was not a regular government visa place...picture the kind of chaos of booths and games and stuff at a carnival, except instead of ping-pong throwing and frog-flipping games it's government offices, and very rural Pakistanis with their livestock wandering around, etc.
I remember being sort of startled when the woman at the visa counter called me (because, to that point, I was not really a regular person, walking around) and I was quickly scanning the sign above her stall to see if any of the options applied to me. The had, oddly, a $4 1.5 day visa option, and I was asking her if I could get that, and if so, if the 1.5 days (it's sort of 1.5 days = 1.5 trips, so you can't move through multiple places during that period) would cover me getting to Islamabad through Rawalpindi and getting back to the airport (I was concerned that that would be 2 trips) and she said it was fine. I was shocked that it was so easy, especially since I obviously didn't have a passport with entry stamps to Pakistan OR Afghanistan, and it was kind of eerie, because she said to me "don't worry, you can go back tomorrow when you need to," but then she saw that I didn't have some kind of pre-visa "towns approval" thing that I needed at a different office, first, and was kind of disgusted by my unawareness of the bureaucratic process. When I was directed to the towns approval office, it was clear that I'd never get my approval and get back in time, so I was kind of worried at first about what I would do -- was I then stuck in Pakistan illegally? I started to get restless as things were getting chaotic in the dream, and I realized that I could try to fly back through Afghanistan, which is what I was doing when I woke up, except (exactly as I didn't want to happen, since I hate it!) I was really paralyzed and couldn't properly wake up. I was struggling not to fall back into the sleep, but I couldn't move my hands or feet and couldn't make a sound...as I started to return to awakeness I could wiggle my fingers and kind of make the feint long-vowel sounds that a deaf person would make, but it wasn't fun. I was like "ok when you go back to sleep, no more traveling, and if you do travel, don't wake up before your spirit is back" lol.
When I went back to sleep I had a fairly involved dream about being here at Columbia with a Japanese friend from Cairo during some huge festival. I'd just purchased a bike, and was cycling around everywhere even in the rain, and we had to keep going to different parties and events on campus, and even out to this gigantic water park (at night) that was more elaborate than any water park that exists in real life. I don't remember much of what this part of the dream really focused on (certainly the sub-plot about me not having a bike lock is not that important) but the bike did make it to the next travel episode.
In the next portion of my dream, my sister was traveling with me, and it was again weird because we were both kind of flying around not sure where we were going. We talked about maybe going to Turkey, or some other place, and after a series of events that I don't remember well, we kind of emerged in front of a non-existent in real life red palace that I recognized as being in Istanbul (here's where the dream is REALLY weird: I knew all the historical sites because I'd been there before, but it must have been in a prior dream, because these places don't exist in real life...the other weird thing is that in Istanbul they had a lot of relics related to the Virgin Mary, which doesn't make much sense, and which I'll describe more in a minute).
So my sister and I emerged in Istanbul, and I kind of remember the hotel where we were staying (that wasn't like a big Marriott or something, but was more traditional Turkish, and our mother may have been there) being two subway stops (again: not real Istanbul) from the historic sites.
We first went to a small structure outside the palace, at which point my sister was temporarily replaced by Curie, and I remembered as we were going in that, when I'd been there before, it was the site of a tile upon which Mary had supposedly given birth (I know this is weird!). I also remembered that I was sort of put-off by the way the Turkish government had arranged the tour of it. Well Curie and I originally went to a viewing station up above the tile, which was annoying because they'd put a rainbow glass filter between the viewing station and the tile, for effect, so when you looked down onto it the tile had a rainbow on top (very lame).
I remembered how to get down to the actual chamber where the tile was, and sure enough (as I'd remembered) it was awful what the Turkish government was allowing people to do -- they'd leased-out the space to Christian proselytizers who had the tile, which was actually a small tapestry, under a huge magnifying glass while they were playing horrible acoustic Christian music (the kind you'd have in a middle America church on Sunday) and talking about Christianity. They were basically trapping all the tourists into a sermon. I was shocked when they actually had Sarah and I touch the tapestry (thinking that they couldn't let all the tourists do that, and had no authority to permit it, when it's such an old piece of fabric), and then actually tried to sell us replica weavings in the same style! I noticed that the color scheme on the tapestry (brown, black, and red) was really unlikely to be what people actually wore 2000 years ago, and called them out on it. They then tried to say that Mary was actually part of a Bacchus-worshiping sex cult that did wear the outrageously-coloured garments, at which point Curie and I told them we thought it was a ridiculous thesis to assert that Mary, at 14, would have been part of a Bacchic cult, and we left.
My sister was then back, and we were debating where to go next in the palace. Since I'd been there before and knew the signage inside wasn't very good, I kept offering to get on my bike (I told you it would return!) and go back to the hotel and get our Lonely Planet book (which, while flying over, we obviously didn't bring with us). She insisted that I didn't need to, and while we were standing at the entrance to the palace I got a call from the friend who took me to Montreal in August (who, in real life, has been to Turkey countless times). Apparently I'd double-booked, and agreed to meet him in Turkey if we were there at the same time. I was dreading seeing him, and just wanted to be with my sister because we have SO much fun, anything but being with her would be second best, and as I was so focused on a plan to get rid of him, I totally forgot that she was waiting for me! At one point I was like "WHERE IS MY SISTER?" and he was like "I guess you left her at the entrance to the hotel." I ran back, and she was a little mad, but understood when I explained that I was so fixated on brushing him off that I'd forgotten to go back and get her.
My sister and I then began our tour of the palace, which had its own museum (including a rotating modern art collection), and I remembered the layout of the entire museum, and even recognized part of the permanent collection. I was explaining to my sister how they rotate everything around and where my favourite artist's stuff was (this woman who did a lot of great paintings with roses in them, but not as the central focus) and then I woke up!
Well this took me nearly an hour to type so I hope you have read this far lol.
Dreams are crazy, aren't they?
VC
PS: I just remembered, when I started to edit this for spelling errors, that before Curie and I left the place with Mary's tapestry I wrote a letter to the Turkish government saying how awful I thought it was that they were permitting Christian groups to rent out the place and do what they were with the tile (pretending it was a tapestry, Bacchus, the rainbow, etc.) and I remember when I handed it to Curie and she saw how strongly-worded it was she was like "god help us" lol, and it was as if she was one of the people who read the letter I wrote in real life to Cairo's Grand Hyatt about the gym, because she made a reference to it. She didn't get, at first, that we had to protest to the Turkish government, though, because it was they who were turning a profit by renting the space out to the proselytizing group!
