Last night’s dream.
I ran into Beau (Missed Connections Guy) and he said he was going to be racing in Daytona (he’s a sound mixer on big budget movies and also races BMW’s professionally in real life). In my dream world, Daytona was in CA and not too far, so he said I should come by and check it out. So I went with my mom, my aunt Jodie and Michael. It was a huge event, with different races, some serious, some not. As we were leaving in the car, they were doing an old car race, with old school Fords vs Amish horse buggies. It was a ridiculous sight so I took Jodie’s Nikon and was taking pictures. A black BMW drove by and my mom said, “There goes Julia’s boyfriend,” but she said it in Chinese meaning, “the guy Julia knows who is the reason we’re here.” I looked up and sure enough, it was Beau with a girl in the passenger seat. “Every time Julia’s seen him, he’s been with a different girl,” my mom told Jodie. I remembered I’d told her that he seems to have an open arrangement, sleeping with a lot of girls in rotation who all seem to know each other and accept it. It’s why I’ve always been kind of wary of him.
We went home and I went back to “Seattle,” which was like a giant campus. I lived in Apt #4700 on the fourth floor of this huge complex of interlinked buildings (think a college dorm complex in the shape of a honeycomb). Laura, this girl I went to college with, had come to visit me, but in this dream we were closer friends than we were in real life. We were on this hill overlooking the sound, throwing a ball around. There was a Celebrity cruise ship docked at the port below. There were people below, in particular, a tall guy in a white shirt with a woman. The guy moved in a very familiar way but I didn’t think much of it, didn’t want to think too much of it, so I kept talking to Laura, even though the back of my neck and ears were tingling. I kept telling myself it wasn’t possible. Then they started walking up the hill, and a familiar voice said, “Hello Julia.” It was Christian. I was flabbergasted. “What the f–what are you doing here?” He got me again! He said he hadn’t come on the ship, he was en route from a vacation in Hawaii, and I melted, saying, “Isn’t Hawaii amazing? I’ve been trying to make my way there.” The girl he was with, his girlfriend, was friendly but quiet and never introduced. I introduced him to Laura, and Laura knew right away who he was because she knew the back story. So we walked around, and he wanted all of us to go back to my place, but then I remembered how messy my place was. I definitely hadn’t made my bed and since no one ever visited me, I’d given up on keeping it tidy. I told him I wish he’d visited months ago, when I was still keeping it neat. We got to our lobby, and I asked if they would hang out in the lounge on my floor and give me 5 minutes to clean up the place. He said he didn’t care, but I insisted. So as we waited for the elevator, I asked what his girlfriend’s name was. Hannah, he said, but like HanNAH. I said, “Accent on the 2nd syllable?” And he said, “More like one and a half,” sounding mildly irritated, not from the pronunciation but more that we were talking about it. I told him that’s the exact name and pronunciation that Rie wants to name her daughter if she has one. We got to the lounge and I asked them to give me 5 minutes, and went off, but for some reason, we’d entered through a different entrance, so I was lost. The room numbers were in the 10000’s, and I realized I was in the wrong area of the honeycomb. I had to leave the building again to try to get my bearings on the complex, and for the first time, I realized that the buildings featured an inner open square with a giant, elaborate statue of black as big as the building built into one of its angles, like an Egyptian god, whose name was Om. I just looked it up, and there is no god named Om…Om (Ohm) is the measurement of electrical impedance symbolized by the symbol omega, or the Hindu symbol of the Absolute. I remember looking up, seeing the statue, the biggest, most breathtaking structure blotting out the sun, and being struck with absolute awe. Humans built that.
I had to get to my apartment quickly because I knew my friends would get impatient, but I couldn’t seem to walk fast. I found I could walk faster turning around and walking backwards, but then I couldn’t see where I was going. I woke up as I was trying to get back to my place, trying to get there on feet that couldn’t cover ground quick enough, and being completely lost.