Working out dreams as usual

How many epiphanies can I really hope for in a few days? I was talking to Lillian last night about Barcelona for the first time, albeit in a dream that felt sincerely real. This excited me, I felt full of fascinating experiences and moments. But as I began to express the first event I stopped myself- it struck me as something I'd actually seen on tv and I corrected myself. (How odd.) As I reminisced I was handling a basket full of shells that must have spent years in the sun, they were intensely white and pocked. I knew that a woman had gathered all the shells into the basket for some purpose and I was sorting them. A large conch shell close to me suddenly seemed stuck to my arm and I realized it had a creature still living in it. I felt she had made a mistake, that nothing in the basket should still have living creatures in it and I was a little disturbed by it. All the while I was telling Lillian about coming across this field of brilliant white conch shells that I had stumbled across, just glowing in the high sunlight. She knew the field I was talking about she had seen it too. (Was that dream no more than a few seconds long? Perhaps... Maybe that is why details seem fuzzy and incomplete with blank spaces inbetween.) I remember walking across the field of shells, taking it in slowly, full of amazement.

I'm struck by the sun-bleached old shells, a whole field of them. Something that still has a remnant of it's original beauty but that is dead and colorless now. Lillian is my art, I know. Do I feel like it is a meer remnant, the life and color faded from it? But it also seems like a bit of the joy of sharing my story. And discoveries about the past.

I also had a strange dream about a man with a flute played like a clarinet, simple, base, in appearance made of a brittle grey clay with coarse holes on both sides. They called it a Hooka flute. (What ever, dreams do their own thing.) He was a white scrawny man with a long scraggly beard, hippyish in appearance, almost homeless. He was essentially major caterpillar from Alice in Wonderland. Playing to a crowded restaurant full of loud conversational chatter. We could hardly hear the notes. But no one believed he could truly play it, he was seen as a fraud. His playing was like the flute, coarse and rough, strained and slow. He quickly gave it up. But I believed him. He gave the flute to a middle eastern looking man at the table directly in the middle of the restaurant. His hair was dark and cut short, with a closely trimmed well shaped beard, he was small in stature and very collected, with a dramatically non-expressive face. He played beautifully, with mastery and movement. The notes came out easy and smooth.

I take it to be about mastering grey, as opposed to black and white. That the old white man had no dexterity for it, but it was natural to the foreigner.

I had to bring paperwork to Michael McQuarrie and in the process cross some rather trecherous terrain. There was a main door that had a tiny earth ledge outside of it that dropped maybe ten feet at most and extended to the right the length of the building. This ledge was maybe 4 or 5 inches wide and uneven. I was in heels and though I had crossed this way in the past with out trouble it was extremely difficult for me to keep my footing this time. I almost didn't make it. A secretary stood at the open door to admit me. The other curious thing was I only had a black bra on and a skirt. And though in the dream this seemed to be fine, in keeping with appropriate dress for the office I felt awfully inappropriate going to see Michael looking this way and I was embarrassed. A funny thing about dreams is I felt like I had no control over what I was wearing- which in a sense was true, the dream dictated this. When I got to his door it was closed; in the past I would have simply walked in and this also seemed appropriate- but at this moment it didn't feel right to me at all so I knocked and waited for the door to be opened to me. I also covered my chest with my free hand and told him about the paperwork I was meant to deliver. Then promptly left hoping he didn't notice or wasn't bothered by me not wearing a top. Then I suddenly had my favorite button-up sweater on and felt my stress melt away. I closed it over me and felt covered.

Michael is from the office I work for. He is one of two people that greets me by name when I call his desk. His face is shaped to look gentle, friendly, and sincerely kind. It is impossible not to like him immensely. Because I think I am similar, a person with a proclivity to be gentle and kind with people, I actually struggle with feeling appropriate with being friendly towards him. Like it's an invitation when I simply genuinely enjoy interacting with him and appreciate his nature. So I assume the struggle in the dream reflects my own desire to master my behavior and to be appropriate.