Δαφνη Ευτυχια Αρθουρος

Was jarred out of a dream so suddenly that it felt as though I'd wrenched my back jerking awake. But I'm not sure why that point in the dream would've woken me (I hadn't reached a "this got too confusing to continue" point, nor a "I've rewound and replayed this bit too many times to not realize it's a dream" situation, which seem to be the usual things that wake me mid-dream), and I can't figure out why it was so sudden that my back hurt afterwards.

The dream was set in one of those places with self-contradictory descriptions ... like it was largely based on The Key School but larger, so it was more like a college campus or a small college town. There were a bar, a movie theatre, a decorative canal, apartments, restaurants ... and the parking lot past the Grey House, the path in front of the Science Barn, the bamboo patch (size and shape same as when I was in high school), etc., all somehow fit together in dream-geometry. It was a bright afternoon close to Hallowe'en. And this was somewhere in Pennsylvania, either western or central, instead of Annapolis.

I don't clearly remember the bit of the dream before I ran into the young woman I recognized from one previous dream but who wasn't anyone I know in real life. She looks an awful lot like gelfjenn -- as cute, almost as pretty -- but isn't her. I met her for the first time in that other dream (uh, a couple of weeks ago?) and had a real conversation with her for the first time in this one. In the previous (barely remembered at all) dream, I was very attracted to her but afraid of seeming too forward, so I only got as far as smiling at her and trying to look friendly; I may have also said "hello", but that'd be about it. In this dream I ran into her on the sidewalk outside the theatre (I think I'd just finished watching a movie with friends), and somehow managed to strike up a conversation.

She revealed that she was interested in me, and would like to get to know me better, and suggested we hang out for part of the afternoon. For reasons I don't remember now, we got into her car, itself a curious dream-amalgam: The car was a dark blue coupe with lines that suggested 1960s or early 1970s American manufacture, with vent windows on the doors so that the main windows were rectangular, unlike current cars, but the vent windows rolled down like the main windows, instead of pivoting like all the vent windows I remember from real cars of that time. The rear window was dramatically curved so that it wrapped forward at the ends, and the rear side windows (which didn't roll down) had curved roof windows over them like on an Oldmobile Vista Cruiser (no skylight in the middle of the roof, just the skinny bits on either side of the back). The dashboard made me think Chevrolet for some reason, the right-side back-seat window was broken -- but broken the way thick plastic would break, not glass -- and the car was pretty full of aluminium soft-drink cans, snack-food wrappers, and miscellaneous papers.

We drove a very short distance (I guess she needed to move her car to a different parking lot, rather than our needing the car to cover a distance too far to walk?) and did something that made me ask whether we'd get in trouble, but I don't remember what. Going in the wrong entrance to the lot or something, I dunno. We somehow had time to talk a lot in that very brief drive, got to know each other better, and she indicated interest in a proper date and possibly having me over to her apartment. I figured I had better mention being polyamorous before things got any farther. The news that I already had other lovers did give her pause, but didn't put her off entirely; she still wanted to get to know me better while sorting out how she felt. She asked me questions about polyamory and about my lovers and whether seeing her that night would cause problems with them, and I answered. (The answers were close to those I'd give in real life, but rather simplified into more convenience ... like, in the dream I just knew whether either of my existing lovers would be upset or not, without having to talk to them about the possibility of my getting involved with somebody new and finding out how they felt.)

We walked as we talked ... and I slipped and fell into the "canal" (which as I noted above seemed mostly decorative; it had concrete walls and floor, and the water was less clear than a swimming pool but contained far less sediment than any canal I've seen in real life, and it was only about six feet deep, at least at its indoor terminus next to the restaurant/bar). I wasn't carrying my purse (odd; but hey, dream) but I was holding my sunglasses in a glasses-case, and something else (cell phone ear bud, coiled up?). As I fell, I tried to fling both of those away from the water, but missed. I was able to catch the second object as it sank, but spent the next twenty minutes or so standing in the canal trying to find my sunglasses. Somebody else came over from a floating table where they'd been drinking with a group, and helped me search, while the woman I'd been talking to stood on the edge. I worried that looking so foolish would dampen my chances with her, but she seemed to think my mishap was cute or something. When we finally found my glasses, I climbed out of the canal and we walked through the bar and out to a sidewalk as I shook water off my sunglasses --

And that's when I woke so suddenly.

I fell asleep again after about half an hour, but woke again three hours after that from yet another dream. In this one I was much younger, a teenaged performer travelling with an entourage, checking into a hotel. My ... manager? tutor? somebody ... had a room across the hall, and for some reason my wardrobe person and all my clothing were in a different hotel. I woke as I was washing the few clothes I had with me in the bathroom. I think I was wherever I was for some sort of competition.

So here I am, awake, feeling like I haven't slept anywhere near enough, with my upper back really tight, wondering what -- if anything -- these dreams mean. And wondering who that woman is who has appeared in two dreams now and looks so much like gelfjenn, and whether she's going to be a recurring character in future dreams.