Mexican Cantina & Optic Nerves

I woke up around 6:30 this morning from a very vivid, very bizarre dream. The alligator dream doesn't come close to this one. As I told Ryan this morning the dream not only takes the cake for wierdest dream I've ever had - it made the cake then baked the cake before it took the cake.

Here is what I wrote down this morning while it was fresh in my head.

My friend Jenn invited me to go to dinner with her at this place she really liked in South Park (almost an up & coming area of South Seattle) so I met up with her at her at her employer's house, Mike and Haley, for whom she is a nanny. Jenn and Haley were out of sorts and the boys, Everett and Alex, were not at the house – odd because they were not with either parent or the nanny. Jenn and Haley are talking about Mike who is not home. It turns out Mike is a serial killer but he only kills female family members and hides the bodies somewhere and stacks them all together. I don't think this is news to Jenn or Haley but it is certainly news to me. Everyone thought it would be a good idea for us to leave before Mike came home so we wouldn’t slip and let on that we knew. Haley wasn’t going to join us for dinner for some reason.

Standing in the kitchen we heard tires in the drive so Jenn and I ran out the back door to Mike’s other car that was in the back with Haley’s car; they let Jenn use their vehicles and tonight was no exception. Jenn unlocked the car and we jumped in just before he pulled around the corner. Mike pulled up next to us on the passenger side and Jenn unrolled my window to say bye to Mike and to thank him for letting us use his car.

Our drive from Olympia, where Mike and Haley live, to the dive we ate at in South Park must have been uneventful because it wasn’t part and parcel with the rest of the weirdness. (I don't know why I went from Seattle to Olympia to meet Jenn just to go back to Seattle for dinner).

Jenn parked Mike's car in a sketchy neighborhood that you could see was on its way up. People were making improvements to their homes and yards. That made me feel a little safer. Unfortunately we had to leave the quasi safety of that neighborhood and cross a road that may as well have been the proverbial tracks to the "other side".

It was like a movie: Jen and I standing on the side of road looking across at the restaurant she wanted me to try. By that time it was dark out and the dive was dimly lit. More sketchiness was to be had in the form of pedestrians walking by and hassling us.

We made it safely into the restaurant which was busy. The floors were dirt and sloped and the furniture was cheap lawn furniture - like the ugly plastic chairs we have in our own back yard. It was like we were in a Mexican Cantina – although in Mexico they would at least have concrete floors that are level.

Jenn sees a friend we are meeting – unbeknownst to me – who is sitting there waiting for us. The friend is enjoying a cigarette and there was another woman – another friend of Jenn’s – who tells smoking lady that I’m pregnant so the woman politely put out her cigarette on the dirt floor.

We eat a delicious meal which I was not at all afraid to eat, oddly enough. The place was empty by the time we were done; not even an employee was left in the building. Jenn pulled out Mike’s car keys and was playing with them - she was testing the car alarm function and discovered that the alarm was broken. She pushed a button that normally made a sound regardless of the distance from the car. I thought it would be wise if we grabbed some umbrellas in the lost and found near the door. They were the really long ones with metal tips. Who knew Seattleites can’t hold onto an umbrella at a small Mexican cantina?

Our route back to the car looked nothing like the way we went in. We had to climb a huge set of stairs that you find all over Seattle neighborhoods that give easy access through a hilly neighborhood. I noticed someone in the shadows trying to hide on the side of the stairs, pressed back into the shrubs and blackberries. I think he had a dog with him, too. It was the dog that gave him away.

By this time I have Kea, my yellow lab, with me. She is, of course, excited to see another dog. Maybe she gave it away that someone was up there. I don’t remember who yelled at who first – I think I yelled at the shadowy figure. Sure we probably could have gone around and not used the stairs or used a cell phone to call a cab or the police to find the shadowy figure but no - the dream must go on. I tell the shadowy man we are armed and that he should leave us alone.

Shadowy figure then steps out to become slightly less shadowy under a street light. He calls me by name. He knows me? Do I know him? He sounded disappointed and a little angry with me. For those of you who watch the TV show Lost he is the guy that kidnaps Kate and holds her at gunpoint in the jungle and tells Jack, Sawyer and Sayid that there is a line here that they should not cross.

Somehow he gets me and throws me in the ocean. The dream does not end here. Here is where it gets weird. Shadowy figure man raised me – in the ocean. This all slowly comes back to me as I swim around under the water and don’t drown or die from hypothermia.

The rest of the dream must be a flashback to my time before I left life unda da sea…

I recall swimming under a small boat – like a row boat. I think they caught me and that was how I was taken from the ocean. Maybe my first step in coming to terms with where I was and who I was, was remembering how I was taken from my ‘home’ in the first place.

Next I was in some sort of school. It looked like normal school but it was under water of course. In science class there was a boy I had a crush on who obviously liked me too because he made some presents for me… optic nerves and eyeballs. First he showed me the optic nerves he made for me then the eyeballs. I said, “This is the most romantic thing anyone has ever done for me!” Odd. I was looking at the optic nerves and the eyeballs because I already had my own set. Still, I used his nerves and eyeballs.

With my new optic nerves and eyeballs we went to the movies. In the dream I am watching it in third person if that makes sense. I was in the theater with my boy crush-nerve-eyeball-making-friend and a bunch of other classmates and you see the approach to the theater – kind of Finding Nemo style. It was dark ‘outside’ of the theater and you could see the pulsating, glowing light from the screen. It was a rocky cave and with the light coming out of the theater; you could see the marine plant life moving with the current. The movie was a Johnny Dep flick for those of you interested, I think it was Finding Neverland.

Then I woke up. That was the end of the dream.

I would really like to know how my subconsicous pieced that one together. Really. I can put a few pieces fo the puzzle together.

Jenn - I was thinking about her at work the other day

Mexican Cantina - Pregnant food craving, perhaps? I did have a delicious Taco Time burrito today for lunch.

Nerves & Eyeballs - My friend Nicole and her husband Matt are optometrists who write a killer blog that I check every day in hopes that they posted yet another great essay on... anything, Jelly Tots or Oppression in Palestine.

Johnny Dep - Ryan and I watched a show that is looking for the best look alikes and one person looked just like Johnny Dep as Captain Jack Sparrow - am I nuts that I think he's hot as Captain Sparrow? (I can say this, Ryan told me the other day he thought the checker at the Red Apple Market was really cute). Even Steven.

Living in the ocean - I dream of swimming under water like most people dream about flying.

What I would like to know is how my subconscious wove it all together.