nov 07 going to chile with vampires

Jenny G. bought me a $111.00 ticket to Tenerife Chile [I know Tenerife is off the coast of Africa]. She was going with her boyfriend. They were driving a semi there.  I was about to climb in and they turned to me and showed me their teeth which were vampire fangs. They said they were vampires.  A person behind me said she or he wouldn’t go with vampires and left.

I thought about it and remembered that vampires, once bitten, never recover from it. You only have one chance; if you’re bitten you’re done for.  I also thought that maybe it was just folklore.  I got in, thinking I’d just ask them about it.  I was a little worried, but felt I was doing the right thing by not pre-judging them. 

I looked at a map for Tenerife, and realized that it looked wrong.  It looked like South America ended much farther north than it should.  Chile was colored peach.  I pointed out that South America should go farther, that Tierra del Fuego would be way over there.  As we looked the line blurred and disappeared and the peach-color bled to the edge of the  page. We were relieved. I said “look, now the map is right.”

We got to Chile and went into a hotel.  I wondered if I’d be in a room with Jenny and if I had to worry about being bitten.  I though being a vampire would be like being addicted to something and how that wouldn’t be a good thing to get that first bite. We wandered around and other tourists said that all there was around here was bars.  I tried to remember Spanish and couldn’t think of one word. The tourist said it doesn’t matter because this was a tourist place.

This one stumps me. Jenny is a time stamp for the present, but I barely know her. She recently gave me a crocheted gift. This is the second recent dream about south america, and Tiera del Fuego has always been a place I’d like to visit. South is not a direction I’m attracted to. I usually want to go north, or waaaay south. But it isn’t important because I’m just a tourist.

Vampires are dangerous, and I think I was pretty cogent in my thoughts in the dream: an addiction, a thing you do once and can’t turn back, and yet something that could well be a lot of hype. After all, the vampires never did hurt me.

$111? A specific amount.

nov 07 Allie dies twice

I was hiking up a steep slope with Allie. She suddenly died, lying in a small patch of snow.

I was living with Gertie in a dorm-like setting. She came to me at 7:30 and said to hurry up because breakfast was being served.  IT was a special occasion.  I had to scramble to get ready and then when I was walking there with all the others I realized that since it was 7:30 I should be at the post office.  I said  so to a woman in flared black pants and she said it was O.K. because the boss said we should let our clerks run the office.  I said I don’t have one, and wo wants their crummy hot dogs? I went to work.

There M.W. had re-arranged the office to great effect.  Now the office was huge, and I had a private office in the back. There wer lots of people there working, and M. was now Chief of the Fire Department because Steve was gone.  Betty was there to do a stamp count but she kept dawdling.  I told her that I’d do all the other owrk but she needed to get to that count. Frustrated.

Back at the dorm it was now more of a hospital setting. Something about fold-up beds.  Something about trying to walk past a patient being inserted into a scanner.  Later I was in my room, in bed, and Allie was sleeping on top of me.  She died and I held on to her for a long time.  Very sad. Then she was underneath me, and I rolled off of her and resuscitated her.

The steep slope and Allie dying point to very heavy, sad stuff. The interaction with people, crowds, and co-workers is usually about my interaction with society, or how I feel about fitting in. At least I now have a private office, and at least Margie was helping out. People in my dreams usually don’t help or even harm…they’re usually too self-absorbed.

Fixing cars

I saw Steve N. in his shop.  I was driving my old Vanagon.  I was trying to park in a parking lot, choosing a shady site.  Each time I pulled into a spot I’d see a tiny sign saying the slot was reserved for someone else.  Frustrated.  Found Steve working on cars on one corner of the lot.  He sayid I could park there.  We have to move a lot of tools to make room.

He said “take the moped” and I realized that that would make sense.  I say now that I have my van I can put the moped in it.  But that means I have to first drive back to Neihart.  Frustrated.

Shopping in albertson’s, supposedly just for last minute things, but then find I’m getting a lot.  Especially hyaluronic acid. For gout.  I as a clerk for DNA – for gout – and she shows me a small wheelbarrow. Seh’s upset with me for not wanting the wheel barrow, and I’m upset because it isn’t DNA. Another clerk leads me into a repair area because a guy who works back there really knows the store.

I see five or six horses lined up.

I hear a sharp sound and out of the corner of my eye I see a big buck bolt away. I’m startled awake

The repeated frustration has to do with things going on in my life now, as does the medicine for gout – my arthritis is getting worse and my doctor recently recommended a new medication.  Once again, however, I’m surprised that I pulled “hyaluronic acid” out of my hat, as that is a substance found in connective tissue, and is implicated in both arthritis and gout. go figure.

Steve N., my old van, and fixing cars are all time markers. There isn’t enough content here to suggest what I was dealing with from that time in my life.

It is interesting that one can startle oneself awake.

In Ecuador

I had travelled to Ecuador and was staying with a middle-aged couple.  The woman was exceptionally beautiful, but had an almost permanent scowl.  She was always angry.  The man was a bit pendantic and dictatorial, but kind.  On my third day in their house I felt that it was time to go out and see things.  I needed to change money and realized I only had three twenty dollar bills, a five a ten and an assortment of valueless foreign currancies.  I had an out-dated guidebook that said the exchange rate was 10,000 rials to the dollar.

I noticed on the third night that we weren’t drinking beer.  I didn’t really mind.  The couple had settled in and were sitting quietly drinking tea.  I left the house and cautiously walked toward town.  I kept turning around to see the perspective so I’d recognize it on the way back.  I was aware that I didn’t speak Spanish and knew nothing about the town.  I came to an open area at the top of a hill and saw a magnificent view of a dry, ochre and red mountain.  I saw a woman walking up the hill in a turqoise  sheath skirt.  A man on a bicycle was coming from behind me, heading down hill, and he called out to her in English. He was carrying a pipe with a little flame burning in it.  I realized he must be an expatriate living there.  Their conversation suggested that she was a lawyer working on a case in which some people had disappeared.

Later I was at a school of some sort, in a class on public speaking.  The assignment was to deliver an impromptu motivational talk.  Two men went before me.  The first gave an unremarkable performance and the second gave a long, rambling tirade that was self-absorbed and stupidly florid.

I was next, and I planned to base my talk on an essay I had [actually, in walking life] written for This I Believe.  I recalled the opening, which is based on “Sticks and stones my break my bones…”.  I was just ready to go, when it was decided to break for lunch

I found a brick building that struck me as particularly beautiful.  In it was a cafe, but they seemed not to be serving food.  Downstairs there was a cafeteria, and they had burgers and greens and onions.  I took a burger, peeled the chees off it and the server took the burger off the bun and put it back on the grill.  I replaced it with a fish patty.

There are a lot of symbols of moving into new territory. The Ecuadoran couple are aspects of me – I have been beautiful but unhappy, and I have been very controlling of myself – that I’m grateful to because they served me well, but I’m moving on.  The school, public speaking are also symbols of new beginnings.

I’m always surprised when very specific information or knowledge from my waking life turns up in detail in my dreams. I really wrote that essay, and it really began with sticks and stones.

In the past few months I’ve been struck also by dreams in which I really enjoy or admire something. I wonder if this is a reflection of learning to accept myself and be less judgemental.