Busy... Busy... Busy

I really dislike this time of the year. I am really really busy because I have to wrap up some of the projects from the teams. And they have this pattern of coming in all at once :( However, amazingly this year, I am having lots of dreams at this point in time. I don't know why this is happening. Perhaps well, when I am super stressed... strange things just pop up in my dreams. Or it could be the alignment of the stars and planets as some believe. Well, whatever it is, I'd like to be able to remember some of the more interesting dreams, but well, I can't because they fade almost as soon as I am awake.

There is a particular dream I have that is recurring. I think I had it before many many years ago, but I am having it again. It's all about trying to take the right bus. In this dream, I am trying to get to the school at which I currently have some part-time lecturing classes. It seems I am in Singapore of the 1950s when there was still a lot of uncleared forested jungle or in some place in South America. I am standing along a country road looking at passing buses, to see if I can catch a ride to the school. There are no buildings around and I see vegetation and far hills, and blue skies. And always, when I do flag down and get on a bus, I ask the bus driver if the bus gets to the school. The bus driver will then say that he is not sure about the place I am trying to get to. Perhaps he is unfamiliar with the location.

In trepidation, I sit on the bus, hoping the bus will get there. Then, as I am about to lose all hope, the bus turns a bend on a very heavily forested road and there the school is. The bus driver then either says I am super luckily or says he's been messin' around with me all this time :(

In every recurring dream of this pattern, the school in the dream always looks like it is made of ancient stone and covered with creeping jungle foliage. Or it looks like some colonial or old 1930s structure whose walls have faded to a hard grey speckled with black and white fungal growths and covered with jungle creepers. It seems like a very old place, but the students are always around the late teen to young adult years. When I get to the class I am supposed to go to, I always think I'm late, but the students tell me that everything is okay and they even invite me to a kind of rough, rooftop eating place. This eating place always serves some kind of grilled/fried sausages or meat. The food is reminiscent of a very oily and salty British-style breakfast of fried bacon, sausages or egg.

The eatery is always a rough, unsophisticated place that is on the top of one of the 3 storied buildings. It is connected to other eateries on other rooftops with rickety footholds. The place itself is outdoor and the rooftop looks as if it is made of some kind of very old concrete, so old it is spotted with green algae, and black places.

The students built up a small cooking fire on which they roasted some meat. One of them had a dog, a white toy poodle or terrier type, which rolled so near the fire, I was worried it was going to turn into barbecued dog! But the students laughed as it rolled in the hot fat that dripped from the fire. They said it would be okay, but I highly doubted them.

From there the scene would change as I made my way off the rooftop, a little put off by the scene of a little dog rolling near the embers. I knew they had somehow got the dog to do that, but I didn't know how it could willingly, even playfully roll itself through what amount to hot fat. :( When I went down to the ground floor, I think I arrived at the administration area. It was crowded, old and decaying. There was a reception window with a small ledge-like counter. It seemed as though many people were trying to speak to someone in the school's administration, and they loitered around that small window, trying to stick their hands across the counter.

At this point, I'll usually wander around this crowded area and would sometimes meet someone I have not seen in years. In this version of the dream, I saw a guy I haven't seen in ages. He is an acquaintance who is quite a pretender and who fabricates lies about himself as easily as he breathes. I have learned never to believe in a single thing he says. We met this time in the dream, and there was none of tension that built up in the last days when I saw him. He brought me to one side and showed me a comic. He said he drew it after a story I had written long ago.

After that, the scene morphs into some kind of fantastic fantasy novel. I recognize it as a story I wrote in the distant past, it seems familiar and I know all the main players in this tale, but the truth is, I have never written this particular story at all in this lifetime. :P

Was this a flashback to an earlier lifetime? Or is it something in my subconscious that are meshed with random images? I can't tell. Sometimes, I would like it if I could dream of my past life as it was, without the bias of interpretation from my experience in this lifetime. But I wonder, would I actually be able to understand what I see? It could consist of scenes so alien that there might be no modern interpretation of whatever transpired in some faraway time.