Gratitude 103

I have just had a wonderful time in bed.  Oh, Gentle Reader, put please, do, do get your little mind out of the gutter.  I slept alone last night, as I always do.  But I had the most incredible dream and I would like to share it with you:

I was on my way home from a long trip somewhere.  It turned out that my home was full of bookshelves all crammed with old and secondhand books.  My apartment had been transformed into a large antiquarian bookstore.  And there were people there.  Dozens of strangers, all looking at my books.  The place suddenly was bigger, like a really big warehouse-size bookstore.  There was also art on the walls in between bookshelves.  I went from group to group throughout the space and made the same basic announcement, welcoming them, thanking them for their interest in my place, and also advising them that this is my private home, but they are all welcome to keep returning to look at and buy books at their pleasure.  I stepped outside and saw two slightly immature scarlet ibises (they weren't quite fully red, showing a bit of mottled plumage.  It was nighttime and I was somewhere in the south part of the city.  I looked up at the sky and saw thousands of stars, like the Milky Way, but bigger and brighter stars and I commented to someone that it's unusual to see so many stars from the city.  Then I saw the constellation Orion.  I returned inside my apartment and talked with more customers.  Then I saw the two scarlet ibises indoors.  Knowing that I would be soon receiving visitors every day because of the books I felt a small sense of dread for fear of exhausting myself.  There appeared to be someone there, a man, offering to help me.

I have no idea what this dream is about.  It feels very positive and all the images (I just did some research) are favourable omens.  Apart from all that, I really don't know.  I am really grateful for dreams, for what they tell us, and for what they don't tell us, for the sense of mystery and wonder they hold us in because the language of dreams remains largely indecipherable. 

I dream frequently and vividly.  In my dreams I often meet people I have never known.  Often we appear to be working on projects together, or we are offering one another support and friendship.  I believe that in many cases these are real people whom I haven't met and that others are people who once were alive and have passed to the other side.  I have written elsewhere, I believe about the Mexican doctor, a woman, I saw and spoke with in a dream.  She told me her name and when I looked her up on YouTube, there she was giving a presentation at a conference.

I will conclude with this little gem I had when I was twenty-one.  I was lying down for a rest on a Sunday afternoon.  I fell asleep then had a dream that my mother, in the next room was giving birth to a new baby.  I saw her that evening for dinner.  She told me that she had a dream while taking a nap earlier in the day.  She was giving birth.  I asked her what time the dream.  It corresponded perfectly with the time of my nap while I was dreaming the same thing.  Of course I told her about it, and of course we were both simply amazed!