I went to bed last night following a meditation prepared for me by Althea. I do not remember what happened after I completed the introductory steps, but here is the dream from which I awakened this morning:
I am a middle or high school student in small-town America. I don't recognize the town, or the time, or any of the people, or even myself, but it seems to be after 1960.
I am riding my bike around with a friend in some kind of town square. The street is red brick. An older man is sitting at a table with an older woman. Her back is to me. He is smoking a cigarette, looks blue-collar, thick sandy gray hair combed back, heavy-lidded blue eyes, sallow complexion, probably looks older than he is.
He has an avuncular energy to me. I feel as if I have a new-found freedom around him, as though he once used to take care of me or at least had me on a tighter leash. I ride in circles farther and farther away from him, and he just smokes his cigarette, gazing off into the distance. Finally I stop before him and ask him for permission to go off on my own. He says yes, and that I am now past the age where he can tell me what to do.
"There are three ages a woman passes where she can't be told what to do anymore," he says. "Those are 18, 21, and 30." All of a sudden my lucid self jumps in and I feel very old but not necessarily more empowered... in fact my lucid self wonders, "Well why do I feel newly empowered just now, when I'm already past all those three ages?"
But in the dream I am someone else, of a much younger age.
I ride away down the small town streets, which all seem to be brick-paved. I find a hall/restaurant, also made of brick, and somehow get my bicycle down some steps and into the back door of the building. I am now riding my bike down a carpeted hall. Some middle-aged men come out into the hall en route to somewhere else but don't seem too fazed by my presence. When I exit the building I see it adjoins to an eatery and my lucid mind kicks in again and wonders what I am doing in such a tiny town.
Just when I think that there is no one in this town except older folk, I pass by a sad-looking storefront for a place that sells exercise equipment. I find that for some odd reason related to not having enough funds, the graduating high school class's graduation party and/or ceremony will be cancelled. So the townspeople and local businesses are trying to do something to make it better for the kids. This storefront has a live model in a 70s or 80s style powder blue leotard with matching headband advertising a raffle that will grant some lucky winner a pair of five-pound dumbbells, a free aerobics class, etc. I understand the profits will go toward the high school seniors.
Then all of a sudden I am in one of the high school senior girl's bedrooms. She is making a personal video about what's happening with the graduation party debacle. Something has been rehearsed -- a skit or a dance of some sort. She is dressed like it could be the mid 70s to early 80s. I am watching her create the video.
Apparently, I am a friend of hers but I don't feel like I'm part of the class; maybe I'm only in my junior year. But my lucid mind keeps kicking in, taking note of how I'm not 'me,' the strange time and place in which the dream is occurring, and I sporadically feel strange to be participating in it.
At the very end of her skit, she goes off script -- messes up a final pose actually, and I find the blooper hilarious. I laugh and laugh ... and in real life, I wake up laughing.
