It's pretty exciting to have a double life: mysterious adventures that happen in the dark hours of the night, adventures so enthralling and so overpowering that you can't seem to shake them for days. The days when I wake up mid-dream are always days of deep contemplation and semi-detachment. Where did my mind take me? What was I doing there?
After a full week of healthy eating, exercising and adequate sleep, I've been dreaming myself worlds upon worlds. Dreams of lakes and brothers, of family and friends, of old ways and new lives and forks in the road.
I've moved back to the states to start a third degree and share a house with my best girlfriends in the mountains of Vermont. In this adventure, I felt both triumph and shame. Despite my parent's help and instruction, I grew distracted by my excitement and careless in my packing, forgetting the most essential item: my bed and mattress. Of course, I only came to realize this small detail at the end of a full day of unpacking, reuniting, rearranging and partying in my backyard Olympic sized pool with my new neighbors. I then proceeded to set up a living room in the pool, underwater.
I've also been to a wedding. Yotam and I were to be married in a world where my consciousness was somehow able to legitimize polygamy. Yotam had a second girlfriend: a cross between Karen, my co-worker, and Tamara, my old camp friend. He was to marry us both and I strangely agreed. We organized the celebration in the desert and invited friends and family. Although I didn't much participate in the wedding plans and felt uncomfortable with the entire charade. When the time came to tie the knot, I backed out, realizing that in the whirlwind I'd forgotten to invite my parents. I couldn't possibly go through with the wedding without my mother or father present. They would disown me.
After trying to explain my predicament to Yotam, the two of us were transported from our desert wedding ceremony to our bed, just for a flash-moment. Under the covers I held him, saying "Don't ever leave me" and he held me like we had the same skin, and I told him I loved him and squeezed his boyish torso.
Only this short emotional exchange did I head to the mall with a friend to look for a wedding dress. The entire endeavor was ridiculous. We went to cheap fashion stores and usurped dressing rooms from small Asian girls and young pre-adolescent blond teenagers trying on the tacky, unflattering, cheaply-made wedding gowns . One pulled a simple, tight white tunicy thing over her head. It had a clear-sequened band around the waist that ruined the design. Another threw on a different white gown that looked like a shiny white 50s cocktail dress. It had a red sash that could be tied around the waist for a splash of Christmas-y crimson. After throwing it off, she found a cream-colored wrap around halter-neck top that could potentially go over the dress and and some modern subtlety. It was awful.
Once I left the fitting rooms to wander around the stores, I realized that there was nothing for me there.
Then I woke up.
