re-occurring goatee

at one point i was presented with the question, "what are your dreams usually about?" i didn't think i had a reoccurring motif to my dreams until a couple of days ago.

my dreams are often about a goal i have that i can't quite seem to achieve. usually it's some place i'm trying to go, sometimes it's something i'm trying to get done. many times it involves meeting or helping someone. and in these dreams something keeps coming up that doesn't quite allow me to get there. the situations will change so much as to be, well, you know how dreams are, non-sequitur even. people from unrelated social spheres and times in my life pop in and introduce new plots that twist every which way. somehow i manage to follow along each and every turn, stories and people accumulating, but still in the back of my dream-self's mind i have this small awareness that i still have that task i need to accomplish; i just have all these other, also important things to do first too. sometimes it gets to where i can't remember why i need to do the deed or get to the place, but i always remember that i still need to.

does that make sense? here's an example. the other night i dreamed that i was trying to meet suzanne for lunch. that's because the next day i was actually supposed to meet her for lunch in real life. i set out from a building of some sort on foot. along the way i ran into some college students whom i treated as my old college friends in the dream but in real life i could not name them. they decided to join me; they all wanted lunch. you can walk with me if you want, but i'm eating with suzanne, i announced. friends brought friends. then one steered the group toward another friend's apartment. while i waited somewhere by a low, moss-covered brick wall, i ran into jen, who was a roommate of mine for a brief stint in '96. we needed to catch up because she had had a baby and was pregnant again, belly rounding out her blue and steele blue and slate grey crocheted sweater in a very reasonable manner, at least in my opinion. i was talking to her, thinking that i need to get to suzanne but i need to catch up with jen, and people were asking, "so, where are we going?". i got on the cell phone and called someone else i needed to call. we are eating at castellano's (no such place i know of). it's tapas. and i felt it was somewhere east and south, and i had to drive to get there. but there was a casa gallardo's at the mall, where they all wanted to go (there used to be one in real life, but it closed). it went on.

so that's what i mean. many times i will share the dreams that affect me most with suzanne, who usually assigns a meaning to them. i wouldn't say that i believe in the accuracy of dream interpretation but i am afraid that hers have all been or come true. i have not yet, however, alerted her to the presence of this pattern in my dreams. i don't know that it is a good theme to have.