D R E A M S

Strangest one in a long time. Epic as well.

It begins with finding out I'm to go on a trip. I have short notice and pack quickly. Before I know it, I'm on a plane. Like in a film, I just get a couple images of being at the airport, then falling asleep on the plane.

I wake up and find myself in Dubai (someone mentioned going to Dubai at the shop yesterday, I believe). Since I've never been there, or seen many pictures, I'm sure it looks nothing like Dubai. It turns out that after we land the plane, we have to also take a boat to where we're going. I think Dubai is totally landlocked in reality, but in my dream, we take a huge cruise-like luxury boat to where we're going. The voyage is eventful, but I don't remember much of it now. I remember during the cruise that we pass many other boats of differing levels of luxury. A huge line of them. And someone hands me a card that says "A gift for our christian guests,". I remember being momentarily taken aback that they assume a westerner is christian, but then I think it might be worse to believe in no god than to merely be christian and not muslim. The card showed the long line of boats. It was like multiple pages and I kept turning the pages and there were more boats of different types and I look up and pretty much see the same boats in reality, not drawn. At the end it said something, but I can't remember it now, unfortunately. I also remember walking through parts of the boat, including through an indoor pool area. It's very much a party atmosphere, much more debaucherous and decadent than one would expect.

We arrive at our destination and I begin walking around. I realize that in my haste I've forgotten my camera. I see many wonderful things...archictecture, people, landscape. I mention wishing I had a camera to someone (I don't recognize anyone in this dream), and they're sympathetic. I wake up for a moment, fall back asleep, remember again I forgot my camera and then think, "I can't take pictures of my dream anyway."

As I navigate the landscape it's very much like navigating through a video game or something. I move very liquidly and don't fatigue. I find myself walking anywhere I like without much direction (kind of like second life) and actually entering buildings that are not clearly marked even if they resemble a private residence.

One such building I enter and there are people inside and they only take minor notice of me. There are people in several rooms. In one room I encounter a musical instrument. It is a string instrument, shaped like a short, squat guitar. It has 5 tuning keys to adjust the strings. But I notice there are two strings for each key, giving it 10 strings. But then I notice that in the base of the instrument, there are interlocking rotating mechanisms. Imagine almost puzzle pieces that spin. I reach out and flip one of the puzzle pieces. It spins and makes a very eastern-sounding musical tone. I spin a couple other pieces and the sound is very beautiful and complicated for absently "strumming" it. If you run your fingers over an inert guitar's strings, for example, it makes a not-terrible noise, but it makes a noise that is pretty much facile, sonically, as one would expect.

A guy enters the room and picks up the instrument and begins playing it and he makes a very complicated song and I think he talks about the instrument, but I don't remember now. He may also ask what I'm doing in Dubai.

Much later, after I've woken and fallen back to sleep a number of times. I find myself at a bar and there are these three young guys who are drunk and rowdy. They look a little like club kids, but they're not quite so done up. Like off-duty club kids (one of them has several pearl facial peircings, which might have been my only clue, but I just got the sense in general). Anyway, two of them gang up on the third and they sort of fight but no one is taking them seriously. Indeed, they're so drunk, they don't seem like they could really do much damage - they're pretty much stumbling and pushing one another. A nearby woman says something about how this is foreplay, pretty much and sure enough one of the guys grabs the other and starts kissing him and basically a mini-porno begins.

Brian posted at 6:26 AM.