I’m Only Happy When It Rains

Dreams 10.29.12
What I remember about last night’s dream is that there were variations of a theme where a storm is coming, I am in the midst of it to see it hit and something about the storm turns out to be surprising and wondrous and I have a moment where I get lost in the beauty of it. I only remember pieces of some parts of the dream though.

I am walking through an old city with a group of people like a walking tour group. To be honest, the city looked like how Israel looks in movies. Or the city where the Disney cartoon Aladdin took place. The point is that the houses were sandy colored buildings with squarish holes in the walls for windows. (Sorry if this is totally ignorant of me.) The streets were narrow, some places covered in stone and the whole city was built on various hills so there were inclines and downhill areas on the path we walked along. The leader of the group mentioned that we should head back to a safe place because the storm was on its way. I paused to look out a “window” punched out of a wall that overlooked the city. In the distance there was a mountain so the city was at the foot of these hills.

I could see the dark storm clouds moving really quickly, rolling into the mountain, casting a shadow over the city below, drenching it in rain. Big but sparse droplets had already started falling where I stood. It was almost where I was.

Just beyond the clouds on the left, the sun was setting. It gave the edges of the storm a deep reddish orange glow. It also made the edges of the wet city seem like they were overlaid in gold. I took this in and thought about how amazing it looked. Just then the storm poured buckets of rain on me but I had a smile on my face, one that no one else could see or understand as I alone peered out this window.

In another part of the dream, I sat in the rear passenger seat of an SUV. I was on a road trip with 4 other people. The landscape outside the car was like many scenes that I think come from the movie Twister – vast expansive, moving grey skies and flat green fields. We were driving along the empty highways, very aware that storm clouds hung over us, gathering momentum.

At one point, we stopped at a three-way intersection because we could see a wall of what looked like mist (we knew it was rain) moving from the left of where we were to the right, so coming directly our way. It looked dense. We decided to just stop driving and sit through until it passed so we waited for about 10 seconds and just braced ourselves. It came so fast, it looked like there was a lot of force in the wind. We didn’t expect any windows to break but certainly thought the rain hitting the car would sound like loud thuds in the metal.

As the wall approached the howling sounds of the wind became terrifying. Everyone including me had our heads down, looking at the floor. When the wall of rain did “hit” the car, it was like it just caressed the vehicle and brushed right by us. The wind and sound of rain was still sounded really loud. I looked up and saw dense white streaks (the rain) in front of us.

However, when I looked to the right, down the road, there was a glow of white sunlight behind all the storm clouds and the rain droplets were back lit. I suddenly had this slow motion perspective of the water droplets that had just blown past us. They were like little strings of round micro-pearls, snaked into random configurations. I saw another cluster pass by just at the front of the car and followed it with my eyes. The cluster wiggled around and seemed to be “talking” to me, waving hello and goodbye.

I looked around the car at my colleagues/friends, whoever they were, still hunched over trying to hide from the storm. I looked back out through the front window assessing just how bad the wind and rain was. Then I decided it was actually pretty bad so I wasn’t about to walk around outside, nor should we continue the drive. However, it was too interesting, amazing and beautiful to miss. So I kept looking to the right towards the sunlight and the back lit rain, happy that I had a chance to see it.

Also at one point my dad was in the dream, don’t remember which part, telling me to just take care and be careful.

Lighting Display and Sweet Flute Music

Dreams 10.28.12
It was the middle of the night. I was walking outside in a big field away from a mansion towards a fountain / halloween / christmas display. The fountain was a semi circle, with a back wall. The wrong edge of the circle had posts with lights wrapped around it, trees and bushes and other decorations. The lights were on, a dim white color at the moment. I jumped into the into the pit of a fountain and started fiddling with some controls that were in one corner, hidden from plain view. I looked up out of the pit and there was someone up there helping me as I adjusted lighted decorations, cycling through different colors. I asked the person if it looked alright each time I changed it to a different color scheme and he/she gave me feedback. Finally I settled on a configuration and I think I climbed back out.

Later in the dream, I made an order to buy steel flute over the phone. Then I am walking down a street that went pretty steeply downhill. I was pulling a TV on a trolley, the kind they used to roll out in school to show an educational video in class. I see a shop up ahead and pulled over quickly to park the tv cart. I did a bad job because as I was going downhill, it gained momentum behind me and I had to turn it abruptly, then stop it, without having the tv flop over on the pavement.

I go inside the store to find the guy who I ordered the steel flute from. There were lots of people bargaining for small items. It was pretty hectic. I see a friend/cousin/sister also trying to bargain for something. The guy behind the counter was walking around with a furrow in his brow, annoyed and generally pretty inattentive to the customers trying to get his attention, haggling with him even whilst he did not respond. He walked over to my friend and ended up giving her a plastic flute. My friend opened it as I watched and it looked to have a pretty bad build quality. The guy was already slowly walking away. I was upset for my friend and upset for myself, knowing that I’d probably get a bum deal as well.

I hesitated for a moment then I dove across the counter and grabbed him by the collar to get his attention. I asked him where my steel flute was. Was it gonna be a piece of shit like the plastic one he just gave my friend? Then my friend/cousin plays the plastic flute and the music that came out of it was the sweetest sound I’ve heard. I let go of the guy embarrassed by my actions. He reaches to a shelf behind him and shoves a box with the steel flute in it into my hands. I reflexively palmed him the money that was promised over the phone – a small amount, like $10. I opened the box to see two halves of a flute packed in styrofoam that needed to be put together. Although it was packed in such a cheap way, I could somehow tell that the flute would still play wonderful music. The guy told me to leave right away, wthout giving me the “bundle” of extras we had agreed to on the phone. I felt it somewhat unfair but considering my horribly rude manner toward him, I conceded and left the store.