Dream Journal: May 20, 2006 -- "Don't Get Sold"

I had this dream this past Saturday night:

"Don't Get Sold"

In the first section of the dream, I am in a small hill town in the Himalayas, maybe Nepal. What is remarkable about this part of the dream is not what I do -- travel around the town socializing with some of the friendly locals, chat with some Western tourists that are passing through, go to the market, etc. -- but rather how I do it. To get from one spot to the next, I "ski" across the snowy ground on my feet. It's something like rollerblading (digression: I was once an expert 'blader, regularly playing "kill me if you can" with the street traffic in New York City [I had a full-on Taliban-style beard then and my hair was halfway down my back...I'd be wearing wraparound sunglasses as I'd bomb down 7th Ave from Times Square to the Village, hair-a-flyin'...the look on the faces of cab passengers as they watched me passing their taxi {which itself was traveling at 20-25 mph} was always priceless -- somewhere between awestruck consternation and outright stuttering panic]) in the way I'd move my legs to control my velocity and direction. It was an intoxicating feeling of power and grace, especially in the offhand way I did it.

As there often is for me, there was a brief break or *shift* and then the dream continued.

In the second section, I was at a ski resort in some American town. It felt and looked like the Rockies -- maybe Park City. The resort was brand new and having its grand opening gala. A friend of mine (let's call him B) -- a guy I was once close to but our life paths have diverged in a yuge way in the last 10-12 years -- was on the local board that was responsible for the grand opening. And as is usually the case, when somebody's throwing a big to-do, they're selling something. In this case, B was selling ski equipment. I ran into him outside one of the resort's lodges and we chatted a bit to catch up with each other. Then he told me he had skiing gear inside the lodge for sale and wouldn't I want to take a look? He insisted I'd be *crazy* not to, since it was such amazing equipment and discounted for their Grand Opening Gala Sale! I wasn't really in the market to buy, but he was persistent and I eventually decided to go have a look. Once inside, he led me to the display area, which was mobbed by a crowd in a Ski-Gear-Buying Frenzy. "Omygawd Norman lookit these!" one middle-aged woman was yelling at her husband as she brandished a pair of cross-country skis that were flopping around like they were made out of soft rubber. I picked up another pair of skis that were, to my surprise, made from laminated brown banana peels. All the equipment was bizarrely defective or ludicrously designed in one way or another (one pair of skis were curved such that they would make an 'O' on the ground underneath you when you put them on). Even so, I was gamely sifting through all the stuff on sale to see what I could find when I woke up.

When I told my wife about the dream, it took her all of three seconds to point out: who needs to buy B's crummy stuff when you "ski" just fine on your own two feet?*

Who indeed?

In terms of honoring this dream -- putting its juice to work here in the waking world -- I have my antennae out for snake oil salesmen/women: who's gonna try and sell me something (whether a material thing or an idea) that's a shabby, useless replacement for something I already have? Stay tuned...


* (insert joke about my size 13 feet here)