Change is inevitable. Nothing you do will change that. Paradoxically, the inevitability of change is the only thing that doesn’t change. Remain static and the world—the universe—moves on without you.

I always slip back into this blog with the intention of making it a regular thing, but I typically only find time at the beginning of my work day to make it happen. Even when that’s a possibility, the time is tight while I wait for my computer to sync, information systems to spool up, and coffee to wake me up.

It has been a while. It’s not that I haven’t been dreaming, but I certainly haven’t been dreaming with any regularity. My sleep schedule has been erratic; my sleep quality has been poor. I haven’t had anything burning a hole in my head wanting to be written.

And so, here things change again.

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THE GYM AND THE WOMAN

Several blogs back, I ran through most of the recurring locales from my dreams. I don’t think I mentioned the gym. I’m not entirely sure where it’s located geographically in my dream world, but it is typically one or two large rooms in a larger building. Sometimes there are floor-to-ceiling windows all the way around, but usually its a nondescript room with white blank walls, charcoal carpet, and several weight-lifting contraptions.

I’ve been lifting weights on the regular with my friend, Ian, for a couple of years now. During the height of the pandemic, we abandoned our gym and just maintained what we could at home, but it’s been about eight weeks now of regular 3-4 days a week of gym. So, I guess it’s no surprise that I might dream of the gym, and that Ian would be there.

There was one other person in the gym with us, and I recognized her as a woman from my past that I had recently been reintroduced to at a show this last weekend. I didn’t interact with her.

Ian hurt himself and intimated that he was done and wanted to go, but I was still finishing up a set on a contraption that required you to push down on a lever that activated pulleys that stretched my legs painfully. I don’t know.

As I was gathering my stuff, Ian encouraged me to talk to the woman, to introduce myself, but I resisted. This irritated Ian, so that when we passed her on the way out, Ian says to her, pointing at me, “This is Richard.”

It’s an unusual feeling to be mortified in an awkward situation in a dream, but it happened. I stammered out some half-assed greeting, but she did seem genuinely interested. I still fled the scene, and received admonishments from Ian as we departed.

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THE SPECIAL HAT AND THE RESTORED COUCH

This dream was unusual. There were no familiar characters, and nothing about it could be associated with any event or interaction I have experienced lately.

The beginnings of this dream are foggy, but it is entirely possible this dream followed the gym dream.

I was being measured for a hat, randomly. The young lady was Indian and had what appeared to be a pop-up hat shop where she displayed a number of different patterns and materials, examples of different styles of hats, and measuring tape. She didn’t make the hats there, she only designed and took orders, but she did have a few pre-made hats for sale.

I don’t remember specifically choosing a hat for her to make, but she took my order and informed me that she’d be back in an hour with my hat.

At this point, whether it had been all along, or morphed as the scene advanced, I found myself on a side street of the Downtown Square, the dream version. I waited on the corner for I suppose was an hour in dream, but even in-dream seemed like five minutes.

I heard a car honk its horn, and either a Kia Soul, Nissan Cube, or some marriage of the two, pulled up. The hat lady and her boyfriend got out of the car and approached me. She was holding a baby blue Fedora with a dark blue band with a teal, yellow, and green feather.

I took it from her and looked inside, noticing the inner lining was a patina-like ugly blue-green.

The boyfriend seemed to sense my disgust with the color and explained, “No, it’s okay, you just have to rub it off. It’s protective coating. he demonstrated on a small area, and sure enough, when rubbed with a finger, the patina coating rubbed away to reveal a beautiful maroon beneath.

He continued on this way, and the scene zoomed into the revealing process, erasing the rest of the scene. For several minutes, both he and I worked away this blue-green coating, revealing the prettier surface beneath.

When the dream camera zoomed back out, we were no longer on the side street, we were in an open carport next to a house, and we hadn’t been rubbing the lining of my hat, we had been rubbing a leather couch that had also been coated with blue-green and was now a beautiful natural dark orange leather.

A man came out of the house, visibly angry, and said “You owe my wife two grand for that couch you just ruined!”

I held up my hand and explained, “Actually, we’ve just restored the couch. This is its natural color”

The man sat down on the couch and ran his hands over the leather. “My god, it’s beautiful,” he said.

And then I woke up.