I dreamed I was in Morocco. M was working at a popular bar/restaurant. For awhile I hung out there, laughing with his coworkers and friendly patrons inside. M told me to go wait for him until he got off work. He put me in a tourist surrey and told the driver to take me for a ride.
The driver pedaled me around the neighborhood and I watched all the brightly colored fabrics in shop windows of crumbling old buildings and pedestrians mingled with tourists. I was careful to keep my knees, arms, and head covered to not attract bad attention from religious locals, but my scarves kept blowing off in the breeze so I had to keep holding everything rigidly in place. I was also careful not to let the soles of my shoes offend anyone by accident so I couldn't comfortably sit cross legged or put my feet up to enjoy the ride. At the end of the ride the man asked for payment. I thought M paid, but he had only initiated the ride and left me to pay for it. Luckily a nice man appeared out of nowhere and offered to cover the price of my unexpected trip. I thanked the man.
I continued walking in the opposite direction than M sent me to see what was on the other side. Lots of happy people were celebrating in the streets on this side, laughing, prancing around in costumes together, smiling at me. I smiled back. What a good idea this was to come here, I thought, to be adventuring and exploring new sights and sounds again.
On my right I came upon a small lake with beastly alligators and a tiger, part of a street performance which would never be legal in my country. Tourists took photos and I reached for my phone to do the same. Impressively giant alligators crawled toward me emerging from the water, the tiger roared, and the alligator receded back into the water.
I kept walking until I heard classical north african bellydance music playing. I danced through a room, not taking myself very seriously, overdramatically play-dancing the song, did a succession of chaine turns across a floor and a dramatic dip at the end, my chiffon scarves draping to the floor. I gained myself an audience of onlookers who were amused by my little dance expression and told me that was great. I laughed and continued walking forward, until I woke up.
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I got out of bed, took a bath, and made lions mane coffee and oatmeal with fruit and nuts. My dad asked me to help him locate his wife's brother's estranged daughters today, because his wife's brother died, and he wants to give him a proper burial. But the deceased man abused his daughters so they were taken away from him as children and never spoke to him again.
But my dad framed the story as if the abusive man was an innocent victim and his daughters (both of them) lied about being abused. "This poor man has been in a freezer for 10 days and no one wants to bury him!" Well, yeah, because this "poor man" abused all of his daughters. Did he rape them? Did he beat them? I don't know, but it was bad enough for the state to revoke his parental rights. So for some reason I am being asked to help my dad help a dead abusive man today.
8:34 a.m. - 2022-12-09