Date: Sun, 1 Apr 2001 23:39:06 -0700 (PDT)
From: fuzzy and blue
To: a friend
Subject: happy very belated birthday

I meant to write you before the message was totally overdue, but on the East Coast it's April 2, so I guess that makes this really super-late. Anyway, happy 22. Dreamed about you last night, or at least you were in one of my dreams. It was one of those long wandering around all over the place dreams, or maybe several such dreams that made it hard to tell where one began and another ended, so I end up describing it in stream of consciousness.

First I was in a city (Amsterdam, I think) then a woodsy country full of old-fashioned and maybe magical people, or at the very least squishy grass that made it hard to push or pull the shopping cart that for some reason had to come with me on this part of the expedition.

You and I met in the city. We were awkward around each other. You had a friend with you; he seemed like a nice enough guy, kinda quiet (not [all proper nouns have been changed for privacy] too not-rail-thin, though all the other adjectives describe him okay). We all ended up trying to sleep in a very crowded room: you and your friend in very close quarters under a narrow bed (no room for me there), two adults and a little baby in the bed (no room for me there either), and I ended up in the corner somewhere? I'm not sure I ever went to sleep like the rest of you. It was clear getting my own room wasn't an option, maybe I was hiding with everyone, or something. (I've got ideas as to why I dreamed all this, but first the dream synopsis must continue.)

I think next I woke, and I was in my underwear, wandering around a department store where the salespeople seemed (as always in dreams) surprisingly nonplussed about my attire or lack thereof, but (this was the part that stuck out) peculiarly critical of what brand of unmentionables I wore, or their fashionability, or something. I climbed some stairs away from them and found myself entering an apartment, and it turned out some relatives of mine lived there, a youngish but older than me heterosexual couple, and they were going to help me out, so I could find... I don't even know who I was looking for, but it was definitely people; it wasn't you, and maybe I was lost in the city? I don't know. Anyway, they wrapped me in some blankets (at least two, thick ones that made it a little hard to move, but it was good to be warm; whenever I'm inexplicably naked in dreams---i.e. not for any immediately discernible reason, like bathing, swimming or sex --- I don't feel very exposed or embarrassed, but I'm almost always a little cold) and then we wandered around the city for some time, but eventually ended up in the forest. We came to a clearing I recognized, having been there before in my wanderings, and there were some nuns? fairies? friendly, definitely feminine-type people, who wanted to help but couldn't tell me/us where the people I was looking for had gone.

Then there was a subplot (subsequent, or interspersed with the big dream, or another dream, or whatever) about getting ready for a party for an older (my mom's age, maybe more) female relative or friend. Nothing too big, just making sure things were clean and there were enough coffee cups. That's all I can remember; after that I guess I woke up.

Analysis (just a teeny bit): This dream seems to encapsulate a lot of things going on in my life right now. As I sort of mentioned, I seem to have a lot of dreams about searching or being lost, I think, or maybe just wandering around, or maybe I'm just remembering lots of them now that I'm on the topic; there's a psychology term for that, it's a little like the idea of search image in the behavioral aspects of optimal foraging theory (mm ecology) but I digress. I suspect I dreamt about you because I'd been thinking I should write you for your birthday. Looking for stuff and/or being lost is probably a combination of trying my best to get out of college as intact as possible, in particular with regard to mental health, also looking for a place to live with Boy starting in May, and just a teeny bit thinking about getting a job, though that's low on the list of priorities at the moment: graduation and sanity come first.

The crowded bedroom may have been a reflection of the fact that not only were Boy and I crammed into my teeny twin extra long mattress last night after sharing a queensize two nights in a row, but a friend of ours who graduated two years back was in town visiting and sleeping on my floor (she'd had my bed till I came back yesterday night). Plus my bed is halfway under my desk, so it's a little crowded that way. The idea of hiding probably came from One Day Crossing, a short film I saw at the Newport Film Festival yesterday afternoon. It was about a Jewish family posing as Gentiles in Nazi-allied Hungary at the end of World War II, so that had a lot of hiding in it, as well as running around European city streets, so those images might well have filtered into my dream (which was dark and maybe even black and white, like the film, for that part of it).

That's all I can think of for now; hope it was at least a little interesting; I would've reciprocated more with the catching you up on what's going on in my life, but this ran kind of long. Off I go now to make last-minute preparations for a takehome exam due at 9 tomorrow morning. Again, happy birthday.

Hugs,

-fuzzy and blue

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