Day 29

Day 29 – Moving Day! The subletter moves in this afternoon. My cat’s getting relocated to my folk’s house where she and I will hang until I fly out in a few days.

Last night I dreamed that my lover invited me to a party, but when I showed up everyone at the party belonged to some old, elite club that spanned generations and shunned anyone new, especially brunettes. Everything I said was wrong. I used the wrong utensils and drank too much wine so that it turned my mouth purple. Instead of defending me, my lover turned against me, he said he never really knew me, but now that he did, I should leave.

Walking home, in the dream, feeling dejected and lost, a limousine pulled over. The driver told me to get in. Steve Martin was sitting inside and said he was taking me as his date to the old elites’ dinner, which he happened to be on his way to, where he planned to deliver a big f*ck you speech to the old guard. Together we’d usher in a new era of humor, spontaneity, free thinking, and democracy.

Of course this dream was about worrying I’ll feel out place. Of course, “brunette” means Jew. Of course, this dream was about Germany.

Last night, before I went to bed and dreamed the dream, my sister and I sat at Edendale’s crowded back patio, sipping cocktails. I said, “imagine everyone here speaking German.”

I’d experienced vertigo at a restaurant earlier. It was a cozy, softly lit little space; the last place one would expect to feel suddenly like they were side-swiped by a truck. My sister had gone to the bathroom and came back to find me sitting stiff in my chair, clutching the edges of seat so I didn’t go tumbling onto the ground. I’ve never had vertigo before. I didn’t know it feels like your brain is doing somersaults in your skull.

This morning, I settled into my meditation as usual, focused on envisioning what feels good and right. I never hear any voices from god while meditating, and I try my best to quiet my own thoughts, but an a few occasions a song streams through the silence.

The first time it happened, it was the line from a Yo La Tengo song, which was a surprise since I haven’t listened to them in like 10 years. In my quieted mind, the voice broke through and said, “you can have it all.” Awesome, I thought. A few nights later I went out to dinner with a friend that I hadn’t seen in since graduating college. In talking about her new life (she’d made some big changes recently) she said, “you don’t realize it, but you can have it all. I tell all the women I work with because it still blows my mind, but you really can.”

A few days after that I was working in a cafe and another song from the same Yo La Tengo album came on, so I googled it because I couldn’t remember the album’s title. It’s called, And Then Nothing Turned Itself Inside-Out. Man, I thought. Nothing’s a waste, everything’s a sign. The opposite, inside-out side of nothing is everything; you can have it all.

Getting back to this morning, I told myself I’d hold off on analyzing my dream until I was done meditating. I had just woken up, was still stuck in the emotions of it, struggling to extradite myself from the reality of that world and settle into this one. I sat down, found my position, breathed a few times in and out to begin my meditation practice, and then the song, The Place Where You Belong rang through the empty quiet.

Behind my closed eyes I had been picturing where I was going. It was more than Berlin. The place where you belong.

My friends’ band, Lemonade, covers the original Shai jam, and I like their version more. In fact, I fucking love it.