Carabas

Recent dreams included an appearance from Inanna and Dumuzi.

Today's:

Avoiding direct sunlight, I made my way into a bar where I'm surprised to find a certain man - I'll refer to him as my friend. That's a lie, but it entertains me and disturbs him when I adopt a friendly attitude. I sit down and address him by name, and say, "I thought you were going back to Australia."

"This is Australia," he says.

That explains a lot. My aim is terrible, but at least I've got him to serve as a guide now. But to my surprise, he's not at all impressed by seeing me here. I'd really expected more of a reaction. We talk at cross purposes for a while, until he says that he'd thought I'd disappeared with yadda yadda event - I realize he believes he's talking with the hallucinatory version of me who'd been with him for a while. I'm surprised that lasted so long, it wasn't intended to. I explain to my friend that I'm not his hallucination, I'm the real thing. He doesn't seem to believe me.

I sit down at the bar and wait for him to come around, and watch the sun go down through the window. A woman comes over and sits down next to me - on the bar itself, not a stool. We explain pleasantries, and she says a few things that don't make much sense to me until I recognize this as the opening moves of a mating ritual. I start to tell her that I appreciate the intention but our species aren't compatible in that way - and now my friend's hurrying me out the door. Oh good, it seems he's accepted that other people can see me.

In the parking lot outside the bar, I stop and stare at the stars. I'm absolutely in awe of them. I call my friend by name, and ask him, "What am I looking at?" Seeing them in this unfamiliar arrangement is astonishing. He doesn't seem impressed by them, and I can't figure out why - this arrangement must be the one he grew up with, the one he spent so much time trying to get back to, so he should appreciate it. Seeing them through an atmosphere creates such an amazing effect. There are a few wisps of cloud adding to the view - and for a moment a patch of stars appears to be moving, but then I realize there's a children's toy floating above our heads in the shape of a translucent butterfly, distorting the view. I look down at the kids - they're looking at the toy, not the stars. My friend is trying to hurry me along through the parking lot, and I try to impress upon him how moving this is. "Do you know how long it's been since I've been down to earth? Any earth?" He remembers, he was there, and he is not interested in reminiscing.

Short note from an earlier dream today: reading a description of "laurel leaves, called apollon," in which the author acknowledges that they cause strife but states that it's merely like the rebelliousness of an adolescent, and that they are indisputably sacred to Apollo.