#9 Alt Life
I had a long, involved dream where I was a vendor in a fish market. I remember getting up early, dressing, doing a whole morning routine, going to get tea, heading out to the docks, buying fish, loading them in a cart and going to get ice, then haggling for ice, buying some less fresh fish while I was at it, then going to a market to my stall, setting up and selling fish all day.
It was so real. I talked to friends, smoked nasty cigarettes, haggled customers, ate lunch, had tea and just lived through the day. At the end of the day, I cleaned up, counted my cash, paid the stall rent, went home, cooked some of the fish I hadn’t sold, along with some veggies and rice that I’d traded for.
I drank more tea, relaxed a while more, then drew a hot bath, soaked and smoked some more cigs, then went to bed.
The next morning, I woke up refreshed, ready to go down to the docks to buy fresh catch… Except I was in my house, next to my wife, truck parked outside and it was Saturday—no work. My wife and I were getting geared up to go skiing in Oregon and the car was already packed. Weird thing was….
In the dream, I was single. And a smoker (I’m not). And the whole long dream had been in fluent Chinese. The effortless kind of fluency that only comes from a lifetime of speaking it. Oh, and I had been Chinese in the dream.
I’m a big, hairy white dude—somewhat fluent in Spanish and I know a little bit of Russian, but I’ve never…. It was just weird. I’ve never worked in a fish market.
I wonder who I was. I wonder what that was.
Credit: ohfail