usually the places don't exist

Sometimes in dreams, I book tickets or make plans for trips, usually under spurious circumstances. Months later, it will be time to take whatever trip has been planned, though it usually comes as a surprise.

Last night, we* went to Paris to visit Richard and Barb, who’d managed to set up a house with lots of crooked angles and winding staircases, even though we only left them in Raleigh a few days ago. This trip – I vaguely remember – was the result of a dream where someone’s sister convinced us we should really go to Paris soon. I don’t know whose sister she is, or maybe only know her and not the person she’s related to. She was supposed to meet us when we got there, but didn’t show. So, we visited Richard and Barb instead.

The Paris in my dreams isn’t anything like the real one – it’s maybe a Paris of the Future (like a House of the Future, or a Car of the Future). You arrive on a multi-tiered track of trains. There are freestanding glass elevators shooting skyward all over the place. All the buildings have architecture that’s new rather than old. Excellent shops are rumored to exist, but we can never seem to find them.

In this particular dream, we’d forgotten we were to go there until someone reminded us the night before (it wasn’t the sister). We dashed and took the type of airplane in my dreams – more of a rotating lounge with mood lighting. It turned out that because of the hurry, I’d forgotten to tell the people at work. The dream was situated in real time (they aren’t always) and so my Monday morning meeting was going to be a shambles and no one would understand why I hadn’t shown up (the discovery that I’d been in Paris would be disastrous – it’s a completely unacceptable reason to miss a meeting without warning!); I was worried I’d lose my job. But there are no phones in the Paris of the future. None that we could afford to use.

It cast a cloud over the first couple of days of our stay. As did waiting for someone’s sister to show up, and the fact I’d forgotten to bring the sparkly pink shampoo.

I call it: reality intrudes.

* The use of we here always indicates Christopher and me, unless otherwise noted.

worm ""Won't Be Home," Old 97's

namecheck Clint "Trapped in a Car" Hadden