I was taking a flight somewhere, and I arrived at the airport extremely early, by at least a flight prior to mine or a few hours. I checked my bag, an old blue Samsonite my father gave me in another life, one that I still have, and went to wait in a waiting area.
When the time came to check in, I overheard some attendants in a little kiosk say my name. One was on a video phone call with someone as I approached her and asked what was going on. She asked me if my bag was “the one with a little badge on it”, and I said it was. She told me that it got sent on the previous flight. Even worse, it contained a 10% off coupon for my flight—which was nuts, as the tickets were already paid for. I said I was fine waiting for it to come back: “that’s why I check in for flights five hours early.”
It’s worth noting that this is the very first dream I’ve remembered during the first practice of a “segmented sleep” exercise, which has me going to sleep at 8 PM and waking up around 2 AM for a while before returning to bed. This dream occurred in the first segment.
There were things that worked, and things that didn’t. Obviously, the things that worked were better.
Some days I look at the dead and think: why them, and not me? Then I remember: soon enough.
It’s like asking a 19-year-old “what was it like growing up” as though she’s grown up already and doesn’t still have a couple of decades worth of battles to fight before she starts feeling even vaguely adult. This is an even worse crime than projecting so-called negative or unrealistic beauty standards: giving off the illusion that maturity is something that just automatically comes because you’ve managed to capture a few decent frames with an expensive set of photography tools.
“She always told me to live in the moment, she just never said which one.”
2016.04.06