literature-inspired, and annoying

I had the most vexing dream this morning. To begin with, I kept almost waking up, thinking it must be time to get up, getting frustrated because I was wasting my precious last few minutes of sleep, and going back to sleep only to return to the very same dream cycling over again.

Obviously influenced by yesterday's reading material, I was dreaming that I was a secretary in a southern African country (although I don't think I had completely morphed into Mma Makutsi). I kept receiving a cc'd memo from some guy, and I couldn't figure out whether he was sending me the same one over and over, or whether these were all irritatingly similar and equally inconsequential. I never grasped the subject of the memo(s), just that the guy was copying me on all of them to cover himself somehow. I resented being involved in whatever he was trying to drag me into, and I also didn't like the impression I had that he was somehow attracted to me (what is with this theme?). All in all, it was one of my most annoying dreams in recent memory.

Classic Group Trip

I had what I might call the Classic Group Trip Dream last night (as opposed to all those dreams where being on a group trip is just one background fact among many). I was on a trip to India with some random dream people and some random real-life past and present acquaintances. We were crowded (very crowded!) into an older van with a dark red interior, going very slowly through some kind of border crossing or checkpoint. I was extremely uncomfortable because we were so crammed in, and I turned to the guy next to me, a rather prim Indian guy who was the de facto group leader and asked him if it would be okay if I put my feet up on the dash to give myself some more room. He was shocked--shocked!--that I would suggest such a thing, and said that he couldn't countenance it because the van belonged to a couple he knew. He then (possibly hoping to soften the blow of refusal?) added that the couple were originally from Mali but were now running a church in the U.S. for Indians. I responded enthusiastically that I was very interested in Mali, grasping at straws to both diffuse my apparent brazen disrespect for their dashboard and to distract myself from boredom and physical discomfort with the odd coincidence of West Africans running an Indian church in the U.S.

There was an unsettling subplot after that in which I was suddenly saddled with the responsibility of looking after several small children, who kept wandering away (I had to sternly warn one of them about the dangers of wandering off down an alley).

fires, group trips, and Southern Cooking

I was on a [wait for it!] group trip, and we were all staying in a high-rise hotel. There didn't seem to be any staff or even any guests not in our group, although I didn't find that strange. It was at night, and we were all just kind of hanging around waiting for something when someone noticed smoke wafting in from a distant part of the hotel. It was decided that we had exactly an hour to get out of the hotel, and that we would meet outside at the end of the hour. No one seemed very worried about it; everyone I saw was going on with their hanging-out activities until near the end of the hour.

When the time was almost up, everyone started running around and heading for the elevators (it didn't occur to anyone in the dream that we shouldn't be taking elevators in a burning building). I started grabbing random items: purse, a change or two of clothing. I was trying to figure out which would be the most useful clothing items to take with me, and my hands were getting full. I also took my childhood stuffed Curious George, although, vexingly, there were suddenly two of him and I couldn't figure out which one was the "real" Curious George. About then I realized that I could have easily used the hour to pack up all my stuff and just taken it all with me instead of risking it burning up. For some reason I had been under the impression that we were supposed to take only what we could grab at the last minute, to make it more of an Emergency Scenario. I was vaguely resentful that I hadn't thought of it, and I wondered if everyone else had packed their bags, or if they were just doing last-minute grabbing too. I was getting ready to be resentful of everyone who had packed, because they hadn't been coerced by an inaccurate impression of what the "authorities" wanted them to do and would not only not lose any possessions but would also be cool and put-together instead of dropping things out of too-full hands.

After that I was in a gym-type building, for some kind of vaguely Adventist meeting. People were sitting on rows of chairs, and vaguely Afro-Caribbean food was being served: some kind of beans and rice, really delicious fried lumps of mashed plantain, and some kind of whole-wheat-looking cookies or biscuits that were in a messy state of tabletop preparation. My mother (?) said, "That's Southern Cooking!", which kind of embarassed me.

As I was standing there contemplating the food, an African guy who had a crush on me* walked past and touched my hair, then continued on to sit with a very kind- and meek-looking wife and cute little son. I was mortified that a married man with a child not only had a thing for me but was expressing it somewhat openly in a public setting (his wife didn't see it). Then an ex-boyfriend showed up beside me and hinted somewhat snarkily that since I was looking at the cookies, the mess would soon disappear because I would consume everything, crumbs and all.

*I don't know how I knew he had a thing for me, it was just an established fact.