magnificent people

I don't often remember dreams, but when I do, they're either bizarre, or they're about random people I know or have known in real life.  The acquaintances that I remember from my dreams are usually people I think about in a certain way.

They are the people that I wish I had known better, the ones that stood out in some way.  Perhaps they were (and hopefully still are) particularly articulate, accomplished, or self-aware.  Often they seemed to possess some kind of wisdom.  They are magnificent specimens of the human race.

I don't usually like to talk about my admiration for these people because it could easily be taken the wrong way, but I'd be remiss if I didn't admit that I do love them in the agape sense of the word.  I've recently realized, however, that the problem isn't in feeling this divine-type love for people.  Rather, it's in not feeling it for everyone else.

It's easy to love beauty, be it physical or intellectual.  It is much harder to cultivate love for people that are boring in some sense.  It's also easy to love from afar; when you interact more closely with people, you see the dirt under their fingernails.  From there, it's easy to put them in a box with everyone else who has dirt under their fingernails.

I have no solution for now, but I think this realization it helpful in itself.  At the very least, this awareness can be used to help transfer some of my respect from the magnificent people to the mundane.

these dreams

'Nother dream last night.  Strange since I usually remember my dreams so rarely.

I was floating down a river with a galfriend in one fo those big yellow rafts, us laying down parallel to each other, our heads a little propped up.  I know Nathaniel is walking around the dry way, up in the rocky Moab-ish hills, which takes longer.  I was spending time with my galpal.  We float fairly quickly past a water-bottomed gorge--the river we're on feeling more like a themepark ride or a mountain road, set up higher, so we're looking down.  There, close to us at the start of the gorge (rock on the other side of us) are two people in a swan boat which is actually a very calm swan, getting ready to launch.  Further up is a blue motor boat with nobody in it, just floating along, and next to that passes a swam, much more active that the one with people on it, ruffling its feathers and all, and the same size as the motor boat, aka HUGE.  We pass that, me thinking that it was a bit odd, and then on our right appears an even bigger valley, basically a big plain with some grasses.  It ends with me feeling like we'll meet N soon.

I think there were more adventures that my galfriend and I had before the swans, but I don't remember them.

I think this dream was caused at least in part by my internal tension regarding how to allocate my time between friends, family, and N.  I'll work on it with time, I guess.

strange things

I had a bizarre dream last night: I was a student in an elementary school bungalow.  Into the room (disrupting class, which seemed to be quiet study time) comes a salesman, selling medicine potions a la a mash between Dr. Terminus from Pete's Dragon and Alfredo Aldarisio from Pushing Daisies.  He's friendly in a non-creepy way, but I'm deeply afraid of him.  I am the only one bold enough to call him out as a quack, and I do so repeatedly with the intent to expel him.  I eventually spew language so venomous that he is offended and leaves.  Then, burdened with incredible guilt, I go to the young teacher--who quietly sat down for all of this, ignoring the situation--and apologize, with a mild undertone that I was sorry for interrupting class, not for kicking the salesman out.  She said, "You better be," and rather harshly made me apologize to everyone in the class, but with the emphasis the other way around--that it was wrong to kick out the salesman.  Meanwhile, the salesman lurks sadly off in the distance, outside the classroom.  I sink into my seat, which turns into the front passenger seat of a car.  The salesman returns to the classroom, which becomes the car at the same time, and he sits in the back seat moping.  The teacher gets in the drivers seat, who I think wants me to apologize to the salesman, but then I have a sudden awareness that they are friends, carpool buddies, and possibly romantically involved.  I start to speak and the dream ends.

This was so strange to me because other than watching Pushing Daisies this weekend, I don't think I've had any recent events that correspond to elements of the dream.  I think it's interesting to note that in the dream I'm deeply afraid of even nice non-creepy people who want me to buy stuff from or give money to them, which is fairly true in real life, and even more so when it comes to creepy people.   Frugality gone phobia?