Merry and I were in a large gym, watching a show take place around us. We stood in the middle while the performers circled the outside on rollerskates, singing and dancing. It was all very casual, and at one point when I was near a corner, they playfully grabbed on to me to make a swinging turn. I recognized someone from junior high among the performers named Brad, who had recently Facebooked me in real life. I briefly thought it was an odd career choice for him, but it looked like he was having fun.

Things quieted down gradually, while the room shrank and got darker. At each corner of the room was a short ottoman, each with a small pile of what looked like generic textbooks. The inside covers had those lines to fill in your name, and I guess it was some sort of record of who had lived in this room before. So we started filling in our names, and while nearly all of the performers left, one girl from my grad school days, Melissa, stayed behind. She was also signing the books, but something was odd. She kept following us and writing in the same books that we had just signed. I went back to look, and she was writing flirty messages to me! I got angry since she knew I was married, and walls sprang up to divide the room into an apartment. Melissa kept stalking us from room to room while we were trying to get ready for dinner, hiding behind the furniture. Finally, I cleared out the textbooks, which somehow "reset" the apartment and Melissa was gone too.

All this time, Merry had been cooking, and her brother had come for a visit (she only has one sister in real life). He was really upset with me because he thought I was taking advantage of Merry, making her do all the cooking and cleaning. I wanted to tell him that we take turns and keep it balanced, but somehow I could never find him. So while he was complaining to Merry, I was getting lost in the increasingly fuzzy-ing rooms. Terry, my sister-in-law, had also popped up in the apartment but was ignoring everyone. Finally, I resigned to lying on the couch and talking to Merry. She suddenly told me that she had gotten a roommate on Craigslist to help with the rent. I was furious since she hadn't asked me first! And in any case, I didn't think we needed it and I didn't want to lose our privacy. Fortunately I quickly though briefly realized that this was a dream and calmed down.

Next, I was on the banks of a very dream-like river, which I took to be some sort of video game fantasy land since it had invisible borders on either end. I was wearing a big watch that contained emulations of every single Nintendo game from every system through Gamecube, but only games up to N64 were working at the moment. I scrolled through a bunch of N64 games and started playing a couple of shoot-em-ups. Though it was fun, I realized that one of the extra functions of the watch was that I could spawn characters from the games into the river-world. I started materializing generic RPG-like town characters, duplicating some many times, though they all came out wearing modern t-shirts and jeans. One of them looked like Rich from my grad school lab. Initially, they wandered around aimlessly and sometimes fell into the river and disappeared. Before long, the place was fully populated and they had built tents and formed a little commune. I became the de facto president of this new society and people started coming to me for advice. One guy wanted to know if we could get cows. I was enjoying my new role, but it only lasted a short moment.

Next, I was watching a nature documentary. The voiceover was talking about African lions and other wildlife that were in the few places left without humans. He said "they have their own land for millions of miles around." The camera swooped dramatically around a pack of lions, and suddenly I was on a boat safari there and watching the scenery from the huge ship. I looked across the beautiful plains, but did see a nearby tiny village with a large dark brick church dominating the skyline. I briefly thought about how each day is lived simply by the locals, going from house to house and probably centralizing a lot of social interactions around the church. I looked to my right, in the shallow river we were on, and saw a line of locals running playfully about, laughing and kicking soccerballs while fishing for the night's meals. Even a couple of Westerners that looked like they were doing contracting work in the river were laughing along with the villagers. I pointed at the locals and said "that's real living." I was jealous of their freedom and simplicity and was on the verge of tears - of both joy at what I was seeing and sadness at not being able to have their experience.

posted by Larry at 9:29 AM