tiropita-induced dream
Yesterday I got really in the mood for Greek food, so we went out to dinner. Cute little Greek place in a strip mall right at Monaco & Evans. The owner came by and poured us some ouzo right after we sat down, nice touch. We got tiropita for a starter, Matt had the pastitsio and I got shrimp souvlaki, and then I had galaktoboureko and a Greek coffee (metrios) to finish off the meal. The only thing I didn't like about the meal was the veggie side dish, which tasted like a Greek version of the ratatouille my mom used to make. Despite liking veggies in general, I never liked her ratatouille. It was the one food of my childhood where she would say, "Just try a little, and if you don't like it you can spit it out." And I would always spit it out. All of those veggies (with the exception of egglplant, which is only good after you puree it into baba ghanouj) are fine taken separately, but put together they become nasty!
Well, I think it must be because of the Greek meal that I dreamt about Greece all night. It was a long, arduous dream. I was with a group on a trip in Athens, and my friend Chrysoula's family had moved to a different part of town than where they lived in 1990. Their new flat was a lot nicer, but not on a bus route at all, so every time I needed to go there I had to take a cab, and it was getting pretty expensive. Every time I went out, instead of taking just my day pack, I took this stupidly large external-frame backpack. Ostensibly this was because the daypack had a broken strap and a broken zipper, so using the huge pack was the only way I could carry the daypack around with me. It was very inconvenient though, because when I went out, I ended up taking everything I had with me with me, and the stuff I had with me was strange. A few mismatched pieces of clothing, my journal, some stuff for writing letters, toothpaste but no toothbrush, etc.
The other crappy part of the dream was that I realized my passport was missing, and I had no idea when it had gone missing. I didn't even remember packing it at all, and nobody had asked to see it at customs/immigration. I did have two extra passport photos with me, but no photocopy of my passport. (In real life, I always take two photocopies of my passport with me, so they can be in different bags should one get lost or stolen.) I didn't want to tell my friend I had lost my passport, but as the trip was drawing to a close I was going to have to fess up about it or I wouldn't be able to re-enter the U.S.
I spent a large chunk of time in the dream walking around between museums and hanging out in the park next to the church of St. Eustache (which is really at Les Halles in Paris). I had to run up many hills with a full backpack and my hamstrings were in so much pain that I started running up the hills backwards. I also got lost inside a really large shopping mall (which was really Tysons II in Virginia) and was being chased by some mall cops who thought I was a shoplifter because of my huge backpack. That Gomez song "See the World" was playing everywhere I went in the dream, and when I ran into my friend Andrew, he lectured me for a long time about something I couldn't understand, but he ended it with "It's the things that are given, not won, are the things that you earned."
I think the whole dream was about having a general dissatisfaction with life right now. Not "being where I want to be" with life, not feeling like I have the right tool-kit for what I want to do right now, missing out on adventure, being caught up in the rat-race, and taking certain things for granted.
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I just found out that I do not in fact have grad school tonight. Yay. That means I have >4 extra hours to get stuff done today. The pressure is off in a big way, whew. I only tackled about half my to-do list this weekend, so at least I'll be able to knock a handful of other things off it today.
See? Rat-race. Four-day weekend where I didn't do anything four-day-weekend-worthy. All I did was stress about a stupid, artificial to-do list that I imposed on myself :(
Well, I think it must be because of the Greek meal that I dreamt about Greece all night. It was a long, arduous dream. I was with a group on a trip in Athens, and my friend Chrysoula's family had moved to a different part of town than where they lived in 1990. Their new flat was a lot nicer, but not on a bus route at all, so every time I needed to go there I had to take a cab, and it was getting pretty expensive. Every time I went out, instead of taking just my day pack, I took this stupidly large external-frame backpack. Ostensibly this was because the daypack had a broken strap and a broken zipper, so using the huge pack was the only way I could carry the daypack around with me. It was very inconvenient though, because when I went out, I ended up taking everything I had with me with me, and the stuff I had with me was strange. A few mismatched pieces of clothing, my journal, some stuff for writing letters, toothpaste but no toothbrush, etc.
The other crappy part of the dream was that I realized my passport was missing, and I had no idea when it had gone missing. I didn't even remember packing it at all, and nobody had asked to see it at customs/immigration. I did have two extra passport photos with me, but no photocopy of my passport. (In real life, I always take two photocopies of my passport with me, so they can be in different bags should one get lost or stolen.) I didn't want to tell my friend I had lost my passport, but as the trip was drawing to a close I was going to have to fess up about it or I wouldn't be able to re-enter the U.S.
I spent a large chunk of time in the dream walking around between museums and hanging out in the park next to the church of St. Eustache (which is really at Les Halles in Paris). I had to run up many hills with a full backpack and my hamstrings were in so much pain that I started running up the hills backwards. I also got lost inside a really large shopping mall (which was really Tysons II in Virginia) and was being chased by some mall cops who thought I was a shoplifter because of my huge backpack. That Gomez song "See the World" was playing everywhere I went in the dream, and when I ran into my friend Andrew, he lectured me for a long time about something I couldn't understand, but he ended it with "It's the things that are given, not won, are the things that you earned."
I think the whole dream was about having a general dissatisfaction with life right now. Not "being where I want to be" with life, not feeling like I have the right tool-kit for what I want to do right now, missing out on adventure, being caught up in the rat-race, and taking certain things for granted.
*********
I just found out that I do not in fact have grad school tonight. Yay. That means I have >4 extra hours to get stuff done today. The pressure is off in a big way, whew. I only tackled about half my to-do list this weekend, so at least I'll be able to knock a handful of other things off it today.
See? Rat-race. Four-day weekend where I didn't do anything four-day-weekend-worthy. All I did was stress about a stupid, artificial to-do list that I imposed on myself :(