Saturday, eh? Well that’s come around fast. It’s been a good week I think, and happy to have had a full week “up” which feels nice. Whether that’s just at random or a partial result of paying attention every day I’m unsure – major observer bias here. Whichever it is – those ideas, or the gentle return of spring (my beloved lilac tree in the garden is winding itself up for a beautiful floral display), or who knows what – it feels like the first time in a few months that I’ve been unambiguously “not down” for this long. I naturally bounce up and down, but this is nice.
The strange dreams are persisting though, and I expect that is a consequence of remembering having remembered them. It’s not historically been a great road to go down, but I am curious about where they’re headed, so for now I’ll continue to keep track:
I’m exploring a strange little shopping mall with an odd and unlikely assortment of my family members. From the outside it looks like a little ye olde shoppe shopfront like you might find in Chester or Lincoln, but once inside it’s dozens of little craft shops/restaurants/craft experiences. At one point we’re trying to sit and eat in a pub that’s laid out like it’s in a hideous food court, and our dog keeps running off into the kitchen. That causes some alarm because the kitchen is filled with naked chefs, another of the experiences on offer. They don’t care about the dog, but they do wander around naked for a while before returning to the kitchen.
Later, we’ve found somewhere that sells big chunks of raw reindeer meat. In the absence of a bag we stuff it all into my father’s dramatic stoma in his side – just pack the raw meat in there. The void is from having a kidney removed, apparently. I wander off, visiting a clothes shop which only sells clothes I’ve previously owned. We’re running out of time, but it would be great to find a loo before we leave. I head off in the direction I think is right, ignoring my family’s calls behind me to take a different turn. I’m fairly sure I’ve found that naked kitchen again, but the door leads out into the street. It’s the middle of the evening and people are queuing to get into a fancy-looking bar. I’m right at the front of that queue. A young woman asks me how old I am. I reply, “44”. Her boyfriend says “bullshit” disgustedly, but before I can contest that they’ve let me through.
I’m back in the same complex, and follow a sign which may or may not have said anything useful. Now I find myself in a crowd of people stripped down to swimming trunks and swimming costumes. As we descend endless metal staircases, the audio from a video ad plays constantly, introducing a famous photographer and his favoured model. She’s saying “I never needed to see on a photo shoot before, so it didn’t really bother me.” On the big screens we can see her posing underwater, with incredible lighting. In the ad “he went in there, just in a cage”. The stairs lead us out from under that screen and there are a few moments of darkness and a rising sense of anticipation. The next doorway leads to a big open space, all in the darkness and we leap into the water. It’s a huge, almost completely dark whirlpool-style swimming pool, but fast, and warm. It’s utterly euphoric being whisked along, miraculously missing bumping into anyone because there are hundreds in here. At the edges of the pool it gets really fast and I swim out to the very edge where I can jump out of the water, run along the rocky shelves around the edge and leap back in from very high up. It’s great!
There is a small ledge for getting out of the pool. It leads to an open alleyway with doors down one side and a railing in the middle. I find clothes somewhere and follow the alley. At the end, there’s a wide space where people are industriously engaged in traditional woodcrafts – no modern tools. One guy appears to be pulling a stump out of the ground with a knife and long piece of rope. He tells someone else he expects to be done in about four hours and I’m appalled at the wasted effort. I walk past the tree he’s leaning on, and I’m back in the street outside the odd shopping complex.
I suppose it’s nice to have a rich sleeping environment, even if it’s one I felt I had to make a lot of choices in about direction and time. I feel quite cleanly awake now though, even if I’ve woken up rather earlier (before 9!) than I’d like at the weekend. It’s almost as if I’ve been awake for hours and am only just noticing. Onwards.
