aqua fortis

Saturday, August 07, 2010

The Flashbacks, the Horrible Flashbacks

I had a bunch of weird and disturbing dreams last night. (Yep, it's gonna be one of THOSE posts.) In the one I remember most clearly, I was back in college as an undergraduate, and it was the first day of classes. I went to my first class, a morning class in a big lecture hall that looked like one of the auditoriums in the Berkeley Life Sciences Building. I hustled back to the dormitory dining hall for lunch and felt lucky that I made it--it was after 1:30 and they were getting ready to close. I grabbed a couple of unappetizing-looking slices of cold pizza and some sort of apple pastry that strongly resembled a McDonalds apple pie.

Then, as I sat down and started eating, I was suddenly outside in Sproul Plaza and realizing that I was supposed to be heading to another class that started at 2:00, and I was going to be late. There was no way I was going to be able to make it across campus in time. Maybe they wouldn't notice me walking in.

I checked my schedule printout and saw, to my horror, that this was actually the third class meeting because it was an "early start" class (whatever that means) and it had already started meeting a couple of weeks before. I was sure to be hopelessly behind, and I despairingly decided that I would have to drop the class. Then I noticed that the class didn't have anything to do with my major after all, and was on some trivial and unrelated subject. But I was still going to have to find another class to add to my schedule.

Then the dream changed to something I can't remember clearly now, but I know I was still on campus, and our friend Jess's wife Alyssa was there distributing beverages out of a padded cooler.

Then, later in the night/early morning, I dreamed that I was in a shiny metal rowboat trying to paddle upriver while avoiding all sorts of obstacles like rocks and rapids. Seems like a horribly belabored metaphor, doesn't it? I thought so, anyway. Eventually my boat arrived at a visitors' center alongside the river. I went in. My mom was there for some reason. Can't remember the rest.

Stupid stress dreams.

2 comments:

Sarah Stevenson said...

I also just now remembered a portion of a dream in which I was seriously boogieing down on a dance floor. I'm not sure why.

tanita✿davis said...

I STILL have the ones where I can't get a class I need, or I am late -- so, so late -- but I have a plate of food and don't want to walk in eating -- those are wrenching, for some reason, but really, school is the most intense time of one's life. It leaves ...marks.

What's funnier is that you retelling the dream sounds like your writing voice. You're beginning to dream like you write. Hah!