The Infinitely Creative Subconscious

I had the most incredibly odd and fascinating dream last night, and I just had to get it all written down before it escapes me. Later I think I will turn it into a short story.

First, I was walking across campus - a very common activity in my life! - going from some place to another place, and texting Nikki. She was at her jazz camp, which she is in real life, but in the dream the camp was being held on the UW campus. She was telling me where her rehearsal was being held, and I realized the building was one I happened to just be walking by, and I was about to tell her this via text, but then got distracted and just waved to her through the window instead.

Then the dream changed, and I was in a dark street in a city - I'm not sure which one, but it may have still been Seattle. I was working with a bunch of people on this decorating job, not unlike the party decorating the catering company I work for does. I did get the impression we were getting ready for some fancy party to come through and we needed to make the location look nice. Most of the people were people from my graduating class of high school, rather than the people I work with in catering. One guy that was a fellow musician stood out, otherwise the rest were just my classmates. I knew they were my classmates in the dream, but the dream didn't sort out names, other than Stephen, the singer.

Another, and I think the most fascinating, character was this one I completely dreamed up. He was an African-American guy, similar in appearance to a very forward stranger I met at a transit center (that's a whole other story!) and wearing a knit cap, a puffy coat, and carrying two or three suitcases. He was around my age, and had big dreams of marketing research, and throughout the time we were working the decorating job, this guy followed us around and chatted with us, often asking offbeat questions or telling stories. He had the most interesting way of talking, a way I never would have made up on purpose. He kept using the phrase "Is that a verb for you?" meaning essentially "do you feel that?" or "does that resonate with you?" For instance, he was telling us about the research he wanted to do in New Orleans about how all the disasters were affecting their nightlife, and when he talked about a certain street (it had a name or a nickname, but I don't remember it) getting flooded and shutting down the nightclubs, he asked if hearing about it in terms of percentages of clubs closed, record breaking events, or personal stories "were most a verb for us." He also just refered to New Orleans as "N.O." and assumed we understood. I think some of us thought of somewhere in Canada, although I'm not sure why. Maybe he was from Canada but wanted to travel to New Orleans.

Meanwhile, we continued with our decorating job. I came across something that looked like a cathedral, full of beautiful rows of seats and swings, with vines of morning glories entwined around the ropes that dangled the swings. Many of the seats and swings were covered with white sheets, and we knew somehow that whoever was wrapping the flowers around them wasn't done yet, and that they would be back, some day in the future, to finish their work. We wanted to take some of the morning glories for our decorations, but couldn't bear to steal them, so we carried on the decorations without them. Somehow I knew that the hall was to be dedicated to some great professor or teacher. I thought back to high school about my favorite English teacher, Mr. V., and thought that there should be a grand lecture hall built in his honor.

Then the dream changed again, and I was in the kitchen back at catering, but it didn't look quite the same as it is in real life, and the people weren't the same. Neither was the food. Usually we wrap to-go sandwiches in clear compostable plastic, but we were wrapping burgers and hoagies in foil, and most of the people were, for some unexplainable reason, from the cast of Glee. Not the actors. The characters. I was at the same time part of this episode in the early season in which the characters all worked in the kitchen, and reminiscing with Nikki about when that episode had aired. I particularly remember Brittney and Mr. Schuster being there. A friend of mine from my youth group was also there, and she only smiled at me, which seemed strange, but I didn't pay too much mind to it. I was too enthralled in my job, and getting finished, and enjoying what I was doing, chatting with the characters.

Again the dream changed completely, and I was in an apartment in Seattle somewhere, in the last week of Spring quarter, realizing how much time had flown - my last final was the next day, which was also the day my lease was up and I was supposed to move out. I had all of a day to pack! My apartment was on the first floor, and I went up to the balcony of the second floor (don't know why) and found Thuy and Joel there. This part is very interesting. Almost every dream about her that I've had since she disappeared has been essentially the same, save the setting. Every time, she reaches out to me somehow, tells me there's been some terrible misunderstanding - it's never clear what the misunderstanding was - and that everything's going to go back to normal now. And I buy it, every time. And every time, I wake up and think, "Bullsh*t!" No "misunderstanding" could possibly make it okay, and that recurring dream is getting just plain annoying. So unrealistic.

But back to this dream. This time, I was only talking to Joel, who looked a little different in the dream than he really does. I don't really remember what we were talking about. I more remember just watching Thuy to see how uncomfortable she was that I was standing there, casually talking to her husband, and acting like nothing was wrong at all. Eventually we went inside, and Joel and I continued to talk about whatever, and I continued to watch her squirm, feeling rather amused. She eventually and gradually started talking to me, too, both of us now completely ignoring the whole history between us. I wanted to work up the nerve to casually ask her, "So... what happened?" so I could finally hear her side of the story, but I figured that would blow it and she would just throw me out, so I never asked. I did learn that their lease expired the same day as mine, and we both had to move out the next day, but that's the only part of the conversation that really stood out.

Later on we went back outside, and there was a courtyard full of tomato plants outside the apartment building. I was looking at the courtyard, trying to think of how to explain its layout to my mom. I may have tried to text it to her or something. And, for some reason, we had to reorganize these tomato plants before we could move. I started trying to move some of them around, which proved to be really difficult, and there were spiderwebs between the plants. I ran into one of them, and had the wonderful luck of hitting one with a spider still in it. Moreover, a spider that had just caught a fly. The spider and the fly had landed on my shoulder, and the fly buzzing in my ear was what made me realize they were there, and I flicked them off and screeched before carrying on moving the tomato plants.

Strangely, I believe that was the end of it.