Reawaken my dream life

It was fun to hear everyone’s interpretations. Hopefully I’ll be getting more sleep soon so I can remember my dreams more often!

(Maybe it’s partly due to the medication I’ve been taking for nausea, which is also a sleep aid.)

Last night I dreamed I was at the library in Amsterdam. I was looking for a specific book about feminism, but I couldn’t remember enough Dutch to understand the labels on the shelves, let alone the titles of the books. (Don’t ask me what I was going to do with the book once I found it!) I was sure that it would all come back to me if I wandered around the library long enough.

I bumped into Margarita (a former coworker of mine in real life). It seemed like a strange coincidence to meet her there. As it turns out, she was getting an advanced design degree at a University in Amsterdam. So was I, in fact. We would be classmates.

I also bumped into Dan (a “not-quite-divorced-yet” guy I dated briefly in real life, in my early 20s. I only had to make that mistake once!). I avoided him.

I don’t remember much more than that… but I’m grateful to be remembering my dreams more clearly lately.

I discover that I have a short wooden pencil embedded in the skin of each forearm. There must have been some pencils in my bed that I laid on top of. They must have pressed into my skin so hard, for so long, that the skin just grew over them. I take them out and there are two pencil-shaped indentations that remain in my arms.

I have been assigned to take part in three different productions. After finishing my first two, I rush to the third. It’s Shakespeare’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream.” I play the part of “Wall.” Everyone else there seems to have been focusing on this production all day—they apparently weren’t assigned to other productions also. But I guess I have a small part so I don’t need as much time to rehearse. I get someone to give me their script. I am nervous about finding my lines and learning them in time.

The script is actually a giant heavy hardbound book with all of Shakespeare’s works in it. I flip through and find “Midsummer Night’s Dream.” The I notice that the play within a play is alphabetized in the book as if it’s a separate work. That’s the part I need. I can’t remember the exact name of it. Maybe it’s “The Beautiful Tradgedy of Pyramus and Thisbe”... or “The Wonderful Horrible Tale of Pyramus and Thisbe”? Finally I find it. Then I notice I am to perform a long soliloquoy, and it’s yet ANOTHER layer: a play within a play within a play. The script just refers me to yet another work when it gets to that point. I’m having trouble keeping track of it all, saving three different spots in the script. Each time I find one, I seem to lose another.

His family is comprised of an anonymous wife and large group of tween and teen kids (not his real-life family). They are all wearing identical glasses with giant ugly black frames. “They aren’t a bad looking family, aside from the glasses,” I think to myself.

Woody Allen invites us to come stay with them at their chalet in Germany. He calls it Penzlauerberg (which in real life is the name of a song by the band Beirut). I am surprised that they are being so generous with us. Then I remember seeing postings on Craigslist advertising Woody Allen’s chalet in Germany… and then later finding out that it was some kind of scam; it wasn’t really their family place at all, it was actually a cheezy resort owned by some friend of his and he was just lending his name to the endeavor to get it more press.

I am bored by my partner’s long conversation with Woody Allen, and I look out the window. I notice that the river is flooding and has covered the road outside with several feet of rushing water. I see a staircase floating by; apparently it has washed off of the outside of someone’s house. I go outside to check out the flooding, and step into the water. (The entire area isn’t covered with water; It’s more like the road has turned into a river.) It’s fun to walk along the road with the water rushing against my legs. Everything looks different and magical under several feet of rushing water. But when I get near the lake the road becomes steeper and the water washes me away; I can’t stop and I am swept into the lake.

I go back to our room and tell everyone my story of being swept into the lake. I am wet but unharmed and the whole thing seems funny to me.