This may be a bad/shortlived idea, but as part of a New Year’s resolution to write more varied material I’m going to try to use my blog (partly) as a dream journal. This will probably drive the few readers I have away, but I’m hoping it might provide some amusement. I barely remember my dreams these days, and would like to remember more of them, so here goes. Feel free to file under TMI.

Walking into a cafe/restaurant in the morning, in what feels like New York, but I’m not sure…it could be any city. It’s a cosy, narrow setup, with all the seats taken by people quietly chatting. I manage to get a cup of coffee to go, and stand waiting for a table to open up. I discover a staircase and vaguely remember that there is seating upstairs. I go up the stairs carefully balancing my wide bowl-like cup of coffee.

The upstairs area is quite large and sprawling, dimly lit, with comfortable chairs, wider tables, and in the middle is a life sized sculpture of a woman in motion, looking behind, while walking–who apparently is the owner of the establishment. A hostess shows me to a table nearby, and says she can’t remember the name of the server, but that someone would be with me shortly. I sit down with my coffee.

After just a few minutes I notice that it feels like evening. There are lots of conversations going on nearby, which I’m able to hear fairly easily. One man in his early 30s is standing at his table, and in a kind of spotlight. He is talking quietly, as if on stage, not obviously on a cell phone, about a meeting that he has just had, and how they will need to travel to Austin, Texas to help protect some geographic area. I can’t remember the exact details of what he was saying but it is clear he is working for an organization that is trying to save some ecosystem features in Austin.

There is a bookshelf nearby with a disembodied head on it, which looks like Ralph Nader, and also a bit like Darth Vader when Luke takes his helmet off at the end of Return of the Jedi. The head is animated, and seems to be simulating the other half of the conversation. He is saying that this is important work, and is similar to a recent project in Seattle. The conversation ends, and the man walks out of the coffee shop.

I notice three other people, with big thick, Ginsbergian beards also leave their tables at the same time, deep in conversation, about something different. There is a counter-culture, occupy-like feeling in the air, of people steadily working to make there corner of the world a better place, it’s a good feeling.

Afterword

Half awake I found myself thinking about the talking head, and how it reminded me of LibraryBox. It was as if the head made it possible to easily tune into public conversations that were going on in the local context of the coffee shop…and it served as an archive or store of these conversations for others to discover later. I don’t know if LibraryBox actually lets any of that happen, but it’s something I’ve been meaning to learn more about in the new year.

By the way, dream interpretations as comments are most welcome…