Warren Contacts a Childhood Friend About Homework
Trip Start
Sep 19, 2007
1
27
77
Trip End
Jan 25, 2008
Mali - Burkina Faso Border Station,
Burkina Faso
Wednesday, November 21, 2007
Background
This day we left Djenne in the morning for the ferry across the river and a long drive through quintessentially African scenery of dry scrubby savannah with baobab trees populated by pastoralist tribes. We were processed out of Mali and arrived at the Burkina Faso border post on the other side of a wide no-man's land just as it was closing. The border guards agreed to process our visas that night and allowed us to camp at the border. We didn't have a campfire that night but Murray did some drumming, and upon the insistence of others, I reluctantly sang "The Star Spangled Banner" and "God Bless America".
The Dream
My first of two unrelated dreams of the night was somewhat vague
I Looked For Karen At Her House
. I had a clear mission in the dream but the sequence of events was unclear and it seemed to lack action. In my dream I was concerned about my high school grades and a deadline I missed in school a very long time ago. I didn't know what the homework assignment was that I missed and needed to contact my high school friend Karen, except that I didn't know where to find Karen. The dream involved numerous attempts to contact Karen. I went back to Yonkers and went to her house. I went to Cross County Center, the main shopping center in town, and to Yonkers Raceway to look for her because I thought she might work at one of them. I went back to Lincoln High School and wandered around Yonkers to see if might run in to someone who knew her.
While I was doing this I was also returning back and forth to my house to water the lawn. It was the house I used to own in Colorado with a terraced backyard. I was very stressed about the lawn getting enough water and not drying out, so I left the sprinklers on for one return trip to Yonkers to look for Karen. When I got back the yard had turned into a jungle because I left the water on too long. The bushes and weeds had grown ten feet tall and the neighbors were complaining. I got a sickle from the garage and began hacking a trail through my backyard jungle which was now infested with snakes.
I don't recall what else happened but think I gave up on all counts
Karen Might Work At The Shopping Center
. My second dream was also somewhat vague. In my dream I was in Alexandria, Egypt on a main road on which the trolley line runs a couple blocks inland from the waterfront. I looked into a few restaurants and went into a fiteer parlor, essentially the Alexandrian version of a pizza joint. I would best describe fiteer as Egyptian calzone, a flaky folded over pizza with a thin crisp crust and various ingredients. I had the one with cheese, egg, and basturma (Egyptian cured beef quite like pastrami). I was alone the whole time, ate my fiteer, and walked to the waterfront. I sat in the sun in front of the new library of Alexandria.
Analysis
My first dream was a variation on the same theme of many dreams I have vaguely been able to recall for much of my life. These dreams usually relate to being in school again, either grade school or college, and somehow missing a deadline, missing a test, failing a class, or not getting credit for work, etc. I suppose these are typical concerns of a conscientious student, but they still seem to weigh on my mind now fifteen years after I finished graduate school let alone college or grade school. I certainly experience other work related nightmares but as best as I can recall they never had to do with missing deadlines
I Also Looked For Karen At Yonkers Raceway
. I guess I'm just a big nerd. Karen, the girl I needed to contact for the homework assignment in my dream, was a good friend through grade school and in almost every class of mine from fourth grade through graduating from high school. I did not keep in touch with her after I went away to college.
When I owned a house and particularly for the nearly three years I was an absentee landlord, the condition of my high-maintenance yard was something that frequently weighed on my mind. Now after three years of freedom from property worries, my yard responsibilities still come back to haunt me in my dreams much the way school concerns still do. So perhaps it's fitting that the disparate concerns from different eras became assimilated into one dream.
Alexandria? Fiteer? Where did those come from? I went to Alexandria only once when I was Egypt and think that may have been the only time I ever ate fiteer. Perhaps Egypt relates to my yard worries, because I still owned the house with the worrisome yard when I worked there and the community association frequently sent my property manager letters complaining about the condition of my yard.
