I’m finding documenting my dreams to be an interesting procedure. So many times I feel it’s kind of like trying to translate something from another language that doesn’t really have a direct translation. So much about dreams is hard to explain in real world terms. The internal dream logic that makes no sense out here, or the feelings or atmosphere.
In last night’s dream I encountered a person named Katie. This was no one real, but a fictitious dream persona who, in the dream, was someone I had met in England when I was still married and we were back there visiting my ex-wife, Jess’s family and friends. Katie was the roommate of one of Jess’s friends who we were visiting. I think Jess knew her in passing as well. When we had visited, she had hung out with us all as well and we had all got to know each other over the course of the evening.
Now cut to the present. I can’t remember if I was in England or if she was over here to begin with, but we had reunited to hang out and over the course of our evening, she had revealed that she had always found me really attractive and was very taken with me. The feeling now was mutual so there was smooching and holding her in my arms and general nice cuddliness. At one point she actually told me she loved me which surprised me, being that we really barely knew each other and I, in fact, told her that while I was definitely drawn to her, I didn’t really know her well enough to know or say that I loved her but it was all good and warm and fuzzy and happy (I’m pretty sure that part comes from the fact that I’m doing a scene from Manhattan for a UT class where there is a similar, though not identical exchange).
Then the dream cut to the next day. I was now at work (fictitious dream work, nothing from the real world) and someone had died suddenly. There was a funeral to take place that day and we were all preparing for it. There was a line of people in the hallway because for some reason, everyone going to the funeral had to meet here at the place I worked to fill out some paperwork or something. I knew Katie would be going to the funeral as well and now I was all nervous about seeing her. I didn’t know how to play it. I really wanted to see her but for some reason wasn’t sure how cool to play it. Like maybe she would be all cool and act like nothing had happened, or would be disinterested now. At one point I saw her in the line but pretended like I hadn’t seen her as I didn’t want to put her in a weird place or make her feel pressured so I figured I would give her the opportunity to approach me if she wanted.
I was wearing this really flashy, sparkly shirt that I have and thought that it probably wasn’t really appropriate for the funeral. Luckily I had another shirt that I changed into right there in the lobby. Then I noticed that the sleeve of my sparkly shirt had come all undone and the bottom half just sort of fell off leaving stringy strands dangling (much like the stage effect in the production of Spamalot I saw last night when the Black Knight’s arm got cut off and there were red strings hanging down, thus leading me to believe that’s the source for this particular dream ingredient). I was really bummed in dream, as I really loved this shirt.
I think it was around this point that I kind of half woke up and felt some sense of sadness that Katie wasn’t real. It took me a while to really wake up enough to discern what was real and what was dream and that I was feeling this sadness and why. I then went back to sleep and did some major catching up, sleeping almost 12 hours. I feel like there’s a tiny kernel of sadness that I will carry for the rest of the day from my whirlwind dream romance.