mystery and intrigue!

I had a really somewhat delightful dream this morning, spanning a couple of snooze-button pushes. It's a bit hazy, but it was a very plot-twisty cloak-and-dagger sort of thing. In the beginning I think I was in a group setting, maybe a school dorm. I was going out to run some errands (for me and/or others, I'm not sure) and get something to eat. This took me to an old Asian neighborhood, very much like how I would picture an old city neighborhood in China: very narrow, warren-like streets really only suitable for pedestrians and bikes/carts.

I went into a business that seemed to be partly food-based and also a front for some other, slightly sinister enterprise. In the course of a short conversation with the people working in there, it became apparent that I had somehow been peripherally drawn into a conflict/intrigue involving a Korean group and a Chinese group. It was never clear who the groups were or what they stood for, respectively, but they were a combination of underground political movement and organized crime group.

I think I was involved on two levels: one was a specific job that I was requested to do (by what group or who, I have no idea, nor do I know what the job was), and the other was a growing journalistic/investigative curiosity and a desire to figure out what was going on and who was doing what. I got very excited indulging fantasies of "cracking" the case and "breaking" the story, and wondered how it could have taken me so long to realize that my true calling was as a spy (I was absolutely certain of that).

After leaving the Asian neighborhood, I found myself in an old apartment building, in a living room with people talking and coming and going. They were all young, and seemed to be radical underground political activists of some sort. I wasn't really involved, just there and observing (a sign that espionage was my true calling was my uncanny ability to not attract attention). The neatest part of the dream occurred during this mini-episode, and consisted partly of what was actually happening in front of me and partly of my mental images of things that had happened before that. I was watching a young man and simultaneously an image of another young man I had seen before. It slowly dawned on me that the two were the same person, but came across as completely different people through his ability to project a completely different persona just with a change in clothing, accessories, and hairstyle. It was a wonderful ah-ha moment, both because of his transformative skill and because of my delight in piecing together the fact that he was a double agent.

I arrived home ("home" being a neat old house where we apparently lived), and my husband was there puttering around in the kitchen*. I indicated to him that I needed some time to think, undisturbed, because I was on the verge of piecing together the various pieces of the puzzle to figure out exactly what was going on.

The whole thing had a wonderful atmosphere of intrigue, adventure, and danger, although the sense of danger was more enjoyable than scary. And the settings were very detailed and atmospheric too--if it were a movie I would have given a good rating to the props/costuming/cinematography people. My snooze button went off a couple of times, and each time I was determined to return to the story so I could see what was going to happen next (unfortunately I didn't ultimately figure out the mystery). The ironic part is that when watching movies involving organized crime and political intrigue, it takes a great deal of concentration for me to figure out what's going on.


*This is not someone who normally putters in the kitchen, so I don't know where that came from.

shoe dream

I had a shoe dream last night. The non-shoe-related part of the dream is pretty jumbled, but it involved my husband; me staying in my old room at my parents' house; some guy annoyingly coming on to me (I couldn't even tell if he was serious about it or just grabby, which made it even more annoying); getting a whole string of communications from a friend of mine in the form of a giant LED display on the wall of my erstwhile room (really, really neat-looking) and, later, lots of wadded-up pieces of paper with random thoughts written on them. It seemed like he was trying to communicate something important and needed serious advice or something, but what with Mr. Grabby and also trying to interact with my husband, I couldn't piece together the message. I didn't even have time to unwad all the pieces and put them in order, which was very frustrating.

Anyway, at some point I was in a large flea market/ antique mall of the type that's common where my parents live. I was trying to avoid Mr. Grabby, who was more or less sticking with my husband. There were some beautiful silk pajamas and silk tops made out of vintage fabric, and I would have liked to look at them closer and maybe try one on, but Mr. Grabby kept popping up and making annoying comments about how they would look on me. Throughout all this I kept getting pieces of paper from the friend (I'm not sure how they were delivered, I think at least some of the time random people would just slip them to me--he wasn't actually there at any point in the dream). The only really bright spot in the dream was a pair of shoes I saw and thought about buying. They were brown leather t-straps with big chunky high heels (shaped very much like these, except higher). There was a patch of brown suede on the toe, like these shoes {aside: isn't he cute?}, and the trim and t-strap were made of little interlocked pieces of metal. I thought that looked potentially uncomfortable and prone to breaking, although the shoes were clearly quite old and hadn't broken yet. In the end, I just wasn't sure I liked the suede patch, and I wanted to get away from Mr. Grabby, so I didn't buy them.

Pregnancy and a Crush: Happiness all around

So..I have had two dreams over the last two nights that I can actually remember! I haven't been remembering my dreams for awhile now, so remembering these dreams is great news to me :)

The first dream I had was about a friend that I work with. She was pregnant in the dream, almost 8 months, and glowing. Once I saw her, I remembered that I have never felt a baby kicking inside the womb. So I asked her if I could touch her belly to feel the baby kick, and she said yes. Once I touched her stomach, the baby stopped kicking. I kept waiting for it to kick again, but it didn't. I was still excited anyway with the opportunity to try to feel a baby kicking in it's mother's stomach. It was a happy dream.

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The second dream I had was a little more exciting. I was walking in a store and knelt down to look a product (which I don't know, because I only remember seeing the white florescent lights and being in the greeting card section). All of a sudden, a man with dark brown hair climbs over me and starts to kiss me. (It was like the kiss between Toby McGuire and Kirsten Dunst in one of the Spiderman movies, where he is upside down and she is right side up, and removes his mask and kisses him.) It was a awesome kiss and apparently, I recognized the man in the dream as a current crush, however, I never saw his face in the dream. When I woke up I knew he wasn't a mysterious or random stranger, but I didn't recognize who it was in the dream either. Suffice i to say, this was a dream that was hard to wake up from.

15th Floor

I dreamed that I, along with several people I know, was staying in a hotel. There were two plotlines happening simultaneously. First, there was a mystery about what was happening on the 15th floor. Every time one of us tried to take the elevator to the 15th floor something strange would happen to prevent us arriving. For example, we'd be splashed by water in the elevator. Once there was something black flapping around the elevator ceiling, which I captured only to discover that it was a swatch of black human hair.

Concurrently, a friend of mine (in real life) was making the rounds of the social network trying to explain her reasons for planning to commit suicide. She kept trying to tell us why she wanted to kill herself and we'd keep telling her not to. She'd try to explain to her husband over and over.

Anyway, eventually we caught the mysterious guy who appeared to have been creating all these strange things in the elevator. He was rather sheepish. When we all arrived on the 15th floor, it turned out that the mystery was a big electronics sale on the roof of the building and the mysterious guy had wanted it all to himself.

While we were walking around looking at the stalls and tents of electronics vendors, I noticed my friend and her husband arguing, he was pleading with her again, and she was pulling away. Just as I started walking toward them, she pulled her hand out of his and threw herself off the roof of the 15th floor. He fell to the ground sobbing, and I, along with other friends, restrained him from throwing himself after her. I was crying in the dream and woke myself up by making crying noises.