Brits in drag

I don't have time right now to describe the other night's extremely trippy dream featuring a gigantic moth man (yes!), or the movie/crime mystery dream loosely inspired by The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. In the interest of not falling behind again, though, here is last night's dream.

I was in school, although "school" was vaguely defined and included some of my coworkers* in vague capacities as fellow students and/or instructors. We were supposed to be putting together a paper/presentation, and the first group was going to start presenting later that day. Of course I still hadn't even settled on a topic. I had been fairly sure of a topic I can't remember now, involving serving food as part of the presentation. Then I decided that a topic involving Japan and serving sushi (which I'm not an expert on) would be better.

I was feeling okay about my presentation (although I didn't have any material), until I started to deal with the sushi-making. I looked at my raw materials (leftover long-grain rice with bits of carrot), and realized that it was all wrong and I would never be able to pull things together. After some desperate thinking [during which there was a mini subplot in which a boy I had a crush on in elementary school was now divorced with a kid or two and expressing interest, which was kind of flattering even though I thought he might just be looking for childcare], I came up with an idea. My topic would be "why do men in drag feature so prominently in British sketch-type comedies?"**

I thought this was a great topic because it was something I was personally curious about, but I had the wind taken out of my sails when I asked around and none of my fellow students had even seen Monty Python (not that I'm a huge Monty Python fan, but I figured everyone would at least know that reference). I then started doubting once again my choice of subjects, which brought on a full-blown crisis regarding inability to focus and commit to a decision. I hate it when my subconscious has to bring up and rub in these real-life character flaws.



*I've been having an inordinate, and annoying, number of coworker dream sightings.
**Prompted, no doubt, by my recent viewing of said British sketch-type comedy.

Hit and Run?

I dreamed that I was walking through a very large, circular (or spiral) parking garage. It was very white, all the walls anyway. Sort of Guggenheim museum-like. I was looking for my car and I wanted to go home. The parking spaces were semi-full. Somehow I was surprised, but happy, about this because it meant that I could find my car more easily.

I found my car, started it up, and started to pull forward to leave my parking space. Somehow, though, I managed to crash into a snazzy red sports car quite hard, considering that I had been going very slowly. I could even hear the sound of tinkling as the headlight covers were shattered. I reversed away from the red car and sat in my car thinking hard. Should I write a note to leave on the red car, apologizing and leaving my insurance information? Or should I just take off, run away? I was leaning strongly to the second option because somehow I knew that if I admitted guilt, my life would never be the same again.

I had almost decided to leave when I noticed a small family. The garage had been totally empty, but now a family was there. I wondered if they'd give me away. I woke up before I decided what to do.

waffling and unproductivity

I had an alarmingly moral-of-the-story dream the other night. In the dream I was quite a bit younger than I actually am, and I had an internship/entry level job at a magazine. I'm not sure what sort of magazine it was, but I think it was a "women's" magazine that had a mix of fashion/fluff and actual substantial articles.

The editor of the magazine [why was I being directly supervised by the actual editor?] wasn't very clear about what she actually wanted me to do. She showed me several different articles, both from her magazine and other magazines, hinting at each turn that she'd like me to do a similar article. I was confused and felt like I should come up with the Best of all those ideas, and also felt like, if she hadn't specifically told me yet to write a specific article, I could just wait for her to tell me.

That wasn't the best course of action. One day she called me in and asked me where my article was. I started hemming and hawing and babbling about how I wasn't sure which one she wanted and that I had therefore waited; and that I now saw the error of my ways and realized that I should have just started on one of them instead of being paralyzed by indecision and a lack of direction. I begged her to give me another chance because I had learned some initiative and decision from this experience.

I'm not sure I like these transparently moralistic dreams.

Oh, and to make it worse, I wasn't the only intern there. There were several other girls marching purposefully around and apparently writing actual articles while I waffled. They all had an air of put-togetherness, potential, and authority.