Places you only know from dreams
Hey,
I know i have been inactive for a while now, but 2 days ago I got the "We miss you!" email and I tought "How could I forget about this!!".
So here I am again, active and all. And with a new discussion.
Did you ever woke up, thinking about your last dream. And you remeber being at a location, you can visualize the whole location but in your dream you one where at en particular piece of it.
Why is this? And am I the only one?
Grootie
The restaurant in the wheat field
There is a place I go to sometimes in my dreams. It's wierd because it blends a real place with a fantasy place. In my dream, I am in Weatherford, OK, a town I really did live in while going to high school. In my dream, I drive through Main Street (almost every small OK town has a Main Street drag) and as I head west on Main leaving town behind, I pass the delapidated parking lot and screen of the drive in movie theater, long ago closed, and go round a bend in the road heading out into the countryside.
It's a late spring or early summer day of full sun, and the weed and wheat fields I pass are are in rich hues of green, so far, all of this could be true. As I make that turn, to the left there's a restaurant in the middle of a wheat field, where, of course, there is not. This isn't just a restaurant, it's an outdoor cafe, very European chic, like a place in Italy, France, or maybe New Orlean's French Quarter. The cafe is a decked area in the wheat field with white metal tables and chairs, the kind of metal that forms a scrolling lace of leafy vines and flowers. In the center of the cafe courtyard, a two-tier blue tiled fountain softly splashes above the soft voices of the patrons and staff. The restaurant is busy, there's only one open table, but it is not noisy. There's an incredibly peaceful feeling to this place. I pull my car into a gravel parking lot and get out, walking through the waist-high wheat field to the restaurant's gate. I lift the latch and enter, walking open to the last open table and seating myself.
The waiter hands me a slim, attactive black folder with a menu inside. The patrons are all people I know in my dream, acquaintences I am comfortable with, smile at without any sense of social awkwardness. However, these are not people I've ever met in my waking life; they only exist and I only know them at this restaurant. There is no pressure to go over to any other table to say hello, everyone is sitting at their umbrella tables, drinking wine and water out of crystal glasses that sparkle in the sunlight, and dining.
I can hear the hushed clinks of silverware of the other diners as I open the menu and read the gold-scrolled listing on parchment without really focusing on the dishes or prices. I'm waiting. I look around and gradually realize my fellow diners are swiveled around, looking at me, waiting also. There is no fear, no judgment, no sense of anything being wrong. I'm just supposed to wait. Somehow, I know the rightness of it. The fountain bubbles. The soft breeze blows my hair and ruffles the edge of the white napkin in my lap. I sit, waiting for someone or something, and I filled with the sense of this peaceful, beautiful place. I'm not impatient. I like waiting here. The water is sparkling in the crystal goblet, and as I lift it and take a cool sip, I watch the brillinace of the sun refracting on the floating ice. I've come here many times to wait, but I never find out what or who I'm waiting for. Sometimes the weather varies; the sky gets cloudy, the wind picks up, whistling through the wheat sheaves, and a light rain falls. Goosebumps raise on my arms, but I'm not overly cold. No one leaves to seek shelter and the rain and breeze stay light and cool.
When I wake up, it's with a sense of vague longing, but also of the rightness in being there. This dream has always been vivid, rich with visual, aural, and other sensory detail. I've never ordered a meal, never so much as munched a breadstick. I've been to this restaurant about half dozen times in my adult dream life. Though I know it's not real, it is a real place to me, a place of great tranquility; where I never feel rushed, never feel hungry or overwarm in the sun or cold in the wind or rain, and never want to leave. I don't know if I'll ever find out who or what I'm waiting for when I go there, but maybe the waiting is enough.