Outside the party

Last night's dream was a bit disconnected. Or maybe it was actually several separate dreams. In this dream, I actually was writing a description of a dream! This blog is really on my mind!

*****

I don't remember much of the first one. I was in a video rental store picking up some videos. Some guys were there sort of harassing/flirting with me. They were there to get pornographic videos. I don't remember if I was shopping in the porn or regular section.
-----
My boyfriend D and I are in Japan. We are all packed and ready to leave to return home. We either are in the airport, or getting ready to go to the airport. I think, "By eleven o'clock tonight, we'll be home in our own apartment in our own bed." My Japanese college and friend B is there. I ask her how long it would have taken to sail to Europe [apparently our apartment is in "Europe" in this dream] hundreds of years ago, and she replies uncertainly "One thousand [or was it fifty thousand?] weeks." Even in the dream, that estimate seems high to me.
-----
I am sitting at table outside a diner-- or, actually, it's more like a hot dog stand. From my position behind the side entrance I can see into the restaurant through its glass door. The interior is very white and fluorescent, with lots of metal and Formica. A bunch of people, some of whom I seem to know, are inside having a great time. It's a party atmosphere in there. There is another outdoor table right in front of the restaurant. I can see it ahead of me and to my left. A handsome guy is sitting at that table, facing in toward the glass front of the restaurant. He is broody in a "Breakfast Club"-y kind of way. I am interested in him. [I don't recall if he was someone I actually knew in the context of the dream, or just an appealing stranger.]

At the table I am writing with a blue ballpoint pen on a piece of ruled notebook paper. The surface of the table is not smooth; it's like cement or a school desk that has had a hundred sets of initials carved in it. It is annoying to write on. I was writing a dream account. It was about something that starts without consciousness (like pre-birth?) and then becomes aware. The only exact phrase I remember writing was "normal maturation cycle." I was going to write "normal maturation process," but I had used "process" in the previous sentence, so I specifically stopped and thought to come up with a different word. The pen is becoming leaky. The point is becoming increasingly coated in thick, gooey ink.

*****

I really barely remember the first dream; I don't have a clear impression of it. The second dream I find interesting because it is the second or third dream I have had involving an airport in the last few months. B's appearance is no surprise, as I was just talking to her at work yesterday. She showed me a picture of her brother, a musician; she mentioned that he is about the same size as she is and he sometimes wears women's clothes because they fit him well. Since B is Japanese, setting the dream in Japan could be another reference to her.

The last dream is the most interesting to me, for a number of reasons. In "lucid dreaming" circles, the appearance of text is supposed to serve as a "reality test": in dreams, text may appear strange, including weird characters or being unintelligible. That certainly didn't hold in this case; I had no trouble writing (except for the poor table surface), and could read and apprehend my writing clearly.

The concept I was writing about is not so clear. Reflecting on it after waking, I was reminded of the description of the Dark Passenger in the third Dexter book, Dexter in the Dark. The book describes this entity that exists seemingly from the beginning of creation and gradually becomes aware of itself and of its abilities to interact with the world.

It seems that I am very much on the outside looking in in this dream. I believe my placement at a remove from from both the party in the diner and from the appealing young man at the other table is a representation of my recent, somewhat reluctant (and still not 100% firm), decision to become a writer, a decision of which this very blog is the first product. I always believed I would be some kind of performing artist: a musician, a comic, an actress. As my life advances and doors close, all of these professions become less and less plausible. In the last few months, I have considered writing as an alternative. Choosing to write has some advantages: it is still in the artistic realm, even if not as sexy as being a performer; it doesn't cost anything; and I have enough proficiency with language that with practise I could become good at it. But the writer is observer rather than actor. (At least, the kind I would be is. No Kerouac, no Hemingway, no Hunter S Thompson, I.) He sits apart from the world, and creates a copy of it in his prose. He fantasises a rich, exciting life, but realises his fantasies only on the page. This dream shows I am still clinging to my hopes of joining the wild party, of meeting the handsome stranger, even as I embark upon the path of writer.