Recurring Dreams

I have a handful of dreams that keep coming back...the courtroom, the sunscreen....and now, add the trip to Prague. It's not a BAD dream, just confusing. Now that it's started returning to my nocturnal naps, I thought I'd vent a bit and get it out there. And Farrago, if his sounds familiar, it's because this is the narration I sent you the first time I had it nearly a year ago. Each time, I get no new detail, but none fades either. It's bizarre to me.

In my dream, I was in Prague for work. This is odd because I've never been to Prague, nor have I studied it to know anything about it. When my flight got delayed. I agreed to take a bump to the next day, because I could visit the city on my own...I walk out of the airport and I'm in the middle of a city that looks, sounds, and smells like London, but I know in my dream that it's still Prague. So I start walking.

I visited museums, I walked by the river, I ate lunch, and then I remembered my friend Ed. Ed works for a university, but in my dream he worked for an investment firm, and for some reason I knew exactly which building was his. I walked to it and got on the elevator, hitting the button for the top floor (again, I somehow just knew it). The elevator was small - only held about 8-10 at a time, and was mirrored. This kind of detail never survives in my mind after a dream, even after I've had it a few times. Anyway, back to the story - I had plenty of time to examine those mirrors because I never made it to the top floor. Everytime someone got on, the elevator would go to their floor next, but never to mine. So I rode the elevator....up to 5 , down to 1, up to 3, up to 4, up to 8, down to 4 down to 1...but never to 9, where I needed to go.

On one of the rides, a little red-haired girl got on the elevator. I say girl, but she was my age or so...just looked younger. She had short curly hair cut to her chin that was frizzing out everywhere, with dangle earrings sticking out from under the hair, and wore a denim jacket over a purple shirt, black pants and shoes. She started talking to me, and we struck up a conversation as we rode this elevator. She asked where I was from, what I was doing in town, et cetera.

"You know this elevator will never go to the ninth floor. It's just not programmed that way. You need to take the stairs if you want to get there," she said.

I looked at my watch. It was 3 minutes till 6, and Ed got off work at 6pm. "There's no way I'll make it and I don't know how else to get in touch with him," I said.

"Well, you're welcome to come and hang with us at my place," she offered. So we got off the elevator the next time it hit the ground floor, and started walking toward the underground. We took the train and got off at Dalrymple Place (I have no idea what that is, but I remember the name. It has no meaning in my life....except another piece of insane detail!) and came up on the corner of something that looked like a quaint town square. The buildings were old and crumbling, no neon signs or updated store fronts, all stacked one right next to each other and they bordered a "town square" of sorts, except the square wasn't populated...it was a grassy field that covered the train exchange below.

The girl whose name I never caught despite all my details in the dream told me to stop gawking and grabbed my hand to pull me directly across the grassy field on a diagonal. We ran all the way and stopped facing a row of storefronts...

"This one's my house. C'mon in" It was a pub. One large room where crowds of people packed tables in the front, but as we moved to the back, we passed a kitchen and then the decor changed to a more modern home kind of thing. Another woman was already there. The girl from the elevator offered me a drink. I asked what the local specialty was, and she pulled out a six pack of a grape cooler. "Best thing out of Prague in years," she said. The bottles were small - about the size of an aluminum can. I can still see the design on the bottles - purple label with gold filigree, written in Czech so I don't quite know what the name was. She popped the top and offered me one - it tasted like Grape Nehi. The three of us finished the six pack, then her friend left without having too much to say.

Elevator Girl said, "Lets get out of here - it gets kinda loud at night and you didn't come here to watch men smoke cigars" so we went on a tour of her part of town. The buildings were pretty at night, lit to accentuate the stonework and the gables. She pointed out all sorts of architecture and historical places - the kind of tour you'd never get from the guidebook. We stopped on a bridge over a stream and talked to some of her friends, then they went on and she decided to stay. I thanked her for the tour, and she started talking. Philosophizing is more the term...I don't recall it all but she ended with...

"Sometimes it takes going places you've never been before to see your own life in a different light."

And with that she kissed me. I was surprised, but I let her, and when we were done, she said, "Thank you - I've always wanted to kiss an American redhead. Too bad you can't stay - I think we'd have great fun"

We started walking back to her house like nothing had happened. We walked into the pub again, and that's when I woke up.

Strange. And it keeps coming back.