the old D is back.

The dream I just woke up from was...weird. No matter how many dreams are weird, I will continue to describe them as such, only because my best friends of words are "weird" and "funny." (So some of my applied vocabulary hasn't progressed since I was in elementary school...whatever.)

This is a long one...Sorry some of the details and order of events are foggy.

I'm in what looks like a large art classroom. Students are buying and receiving books and groceries. I don't need any books and the prices are a rip-off, so I'm not buying much if anything. I don't need groceries either. In the room there are large workshop-type tables, that all the students are lined up around sorting their purchases on. A young female student is next to me (I want to say it's Erika K. whose birthday I keep seeing on the Facebook homepage recently). She offers me a branch of grapes from her huge cluster. I like grapes, so I gladly receive her offer. After I take them, however, I worry that her generosity is out of pity, "I hope she didn't give them to me, because she thinks I'm too broke to buy anything. I have grapes at home."

I'm in a new room. It's smaller and there's a sectioned-off area where the TV is. There's some issue about choosing or looking for a movie that I'm having with the TV. I walk out the room which opens directly into the outdoors. There's some kind of BBQ picnic type of event going on outside. There's something about food, probably me not being able to eat hot dogs, if I remember any of it correctly.

From there in the picnic, I watch a projection of myself or someone take off flying on a skateboard and flying over and with a flock of birds and maybe some winged miniature horses (or maybe i just made that up now?). Anyways, I'm watching and admitting aloud that flying together as a flock does help you fly better, even when you're not a bird. At first, the projected character is flying over the flock, staying high in the air so as to stay *in* the air, and then it starts to fly with the flock, moving at angles downwards and at a lower elevation but staying together and still flying (not falling).

Then, I land in a new setting... There is a pretty lady on the sidewalk, outside of a shop, where she is meeting her date. He comes outside to see her, but the other employee in the shop is still in the store. Something interrupts the man and woman meeting. He goes back in or the man in the shop is talking to one of them. Anyways, there's some walking and segue into a new place.

I'm in what looks like or feels like a small, cozy, semi-old, off-white colored train station out of an early 80s TV show and I'm with a friend. He says a slang phrase that I have to ask the meaning of. He has a hard time believing that I have to ask. I say, "Dude, my parents are Taiwanese. I didn't grow up hearing slang in the home." He insists to not believe me, I keep explaining that I'm not the only one, that other people have the same experience. Some of us grew up with a different environment of language and vocabulary. I think my friend is Asian American, too, because I want to say "surely, you know what I'm talking about," until I remind myself that he apparently does not relate. For an example, I think of my friend JoH who points out sayings that she has never heard before (in waking life, it's this way, too). I tell him, "I honestly heard that for the first time." He doesn't at all show he understands and doesn't believe me. I'm frustrated and reaching my limit of insult/offense so I say, "You know what, I'm not going to sit here and argue with you trying to convince you of the fact that I don't know that slang or that I grew up differently...blahblahblah."

I'm walking walking walking...out of the station to the right, passing some odd toy-themed motor home-like thing. It's sunny outside. Someone is asking me about 90210, as I'm walking. I tell them I used to like that show when I was a child. I'm thinking about the show and going over it in my head, and say with certainty that I don't like the show anymore. I feel good about realizing the fact that we really do outgrow certain cultural products.

I'm passing by a Boston-ish urban area on my way to visit D (this initial is for a different person than the D in a previous post). It's darker now, turning to night. I've trekked a long way and when I get to D's place, I'm sorta ready to unwind. D's childhood best friend, J, is there, too. The first thing I notice is that D is excited about the new door for his bathroom. It's a worn, roughly painted green wooden door with a women's sign on it--obviously ripped off from somewhere. I want to comment, but wait to...The vibe in the room is comfortable, warm, and friendly. J seems to have changed a lot since I last saw him years ago. He seems more culturally sophisticated and is also gay now. I'm not at all thrown off by the change and if anything, feel immensely comfortable with it. D and J seem tight as can be. There's a twin-sized bed in the middle of one end of the room, where J is sitting in a chair, next to the bed. I am standing and thinking about plopping onto the bed. But I'm not sure if it's my designated sleeping spot, so I refrain from doing so. J is drinking wine, in a manner that makes him seem restrained yet comfortable with himself. I get the feeling that J may not only be gay, but also that D and J may be lovers. Somehow I know very vividly that they want me to take the twin bed so they can sleep together in the space next to the bed (there was like a diagram drawn by them in my head that indicated that they were to sleep together). When I lay down on the bed in total comfort, I express in total warmth and comfort, "I love you P." I am confused, because I don't know who P is. J is taken aback, "is she talking to me?" I feel confused about D and J, because they're supposed to be best friends, not lovers, and neither of them have explicitly explained that they are together. I'm unwound now, so I start up some conversation, asking D where the door is from? He tells me gladly that he stole it from some place. The connection of his stolen door to my women's bathroom sign days is clear. I used to (in waking life) rip off women's bathroom signs (not doors) with a former friend--one of those deviant, "acting out," subversive, aesthetic artsy bullshit adolescent things*. Afraid that I influenced D negatively, I try to find the right words, "D, I know I used to rip off women signs and may have ripped off a door myself before, but...I hope I didn't...put ideas in your head." He doesn't seem to hold me accountable. D is so happy and warm, and something in me thinks very fondly and gladly, "the old D is back."

After our door conversation, I remember that I always forget to bring gifts to my hosts and should have brought something. So, I head out to Trader Joe's, which is conveniently nearby, and I pick up a Charles Shaw, because obviously they drink wine.

*I obviously don't rip off anything anymore, no signs, no hot sauce bottles, or construction cones and barricades, (the other stuff I still feel guilty for so I'm not going to list them)--shit, I'm never going to be mayor. At any rate, the point is I don't condone stealing doors even in dreams, have a much greater respect for my life and for the world around me than years ago and seek better ways to navigate the establishment and to channel my energies than that of causing potential misdemeanors.