A new-twisted anxiety dream.

In my dream, I was heading off for a college-sponsored program in Tehran. We were lined up in a space like a laboratory, with long tables, while we received last-minute advice. Then, we were dismissed for our final packing and preparation. Language lessons had been involved somehow, but I was sure that my Farsi was not good enough, that no language learned anywhere but the place where it's spoken can ever be good enough. Nonetheless, I finished my packing and headed to the meeting place for the shuttles that would take us to the airport. When I got to the shuttle, though, someone needed to take my huge suitcase, the green four-wheeled Samsonite that my father bought in Japan after his colleagues made fun of his "stupid American luggage." The suitcase was definitely mine, mine from real life I mean, complete with the red, white, and blue luggage strap that my father also bought in Japan.

Anyhow: they took my suitcase, and I let it go, figuring that I'd know where to find it once I made my way to the rest of my traveling group. But then something went awry; I was delayed and detained and realized how dumb it had been to leave my suitcase with anyone. And then it turned out that the suitcase was up on a platform with an enormous ladder leading up to it. I am deathly afraid of falling, as I believe I have told you. And so getting to my enormous, heavy suitcase was going to be a problem. But lo and behold, there were two young men nearby, and so I flirted with them a bit, and they retrieved my suitcase for me. Somehow, this made me realize that flirtation could be a useful tool. (How old am I?)

I proceeded to where the rest of my group was, and somehow it turned out that the rest of my group had disappeared. Eventually I found them, but not before I'd lost something else--and decided that I really needed to change clothes and put on some makeup. Did I mention that this airport was also a post office? It seems to me that by the end of the dream, I had started getting my whole act together: all luggage in my possession (or safely in the airline's possession, in the case of the enormous bag), my group within sight, everything starting to gel. But then I awoke, which was a blissful turn of events, as it had just started dawning on me that Tehran might not be the best place to go on a study abroad program at this moment in time. And when I awoke, I realized that I had dreamt my way into a hot sweat.

It seems clear to me that this dream is about a few things, among them the oncoming semester and the aftermath of my bibliography school experience (since it seems to me that at least one of the teacher-figures in this dream was someone from that school--and the institutional landscape of my dream two nights ago was heavily influenced by the University of Virginia and the homework assignments I completed while in Charlottesville). I suspect there's lots more bubbling back there, as well; who knows what this concatenation will produce tonight. I'm meditating on a sestina (which was the agreed-upon sign, earlier in the summer, that an intervention would be necessary), and so perhaps I'll be cranking math problems in my sleep.

source for tonight's image: Medicine at Michigan, the University of Michigan's med school magazine.