Dream Interlude - Spirit Walk

I had a really strange dream last night.  Thought I’d share it with you...

I’m in bed.  Someone else is snuggling close against me.  I open my eyes and see that it is morning.  Light as bright as if the sun is right next door.  I hear water sounds.  

The person next to me is an attractive Japanese woman.  Her eyes are fluttering.  She’s just waking up.  I don’t recognize her from my real life.  She looks much younger than me, but the thing about most Japanese women is that they often look younger than their actual age.  

I hear people calling to me.  I get up on my elbow and look out side.  There are a group of people out there, calling to us.  That’s right...  I’m in Japan.  I’m with a group touring the country.  One of them, laughing at me as he’s waving, looks like my friend Marq Del Monte, except his beard has grown into this chest covering, mountain-man bush, and his hair is in this big fuzzy afro.  They yelling at us to get up.  We’re going to miss the ferry we need to take that morning...

I’m now running down the boardwalk.  Someone is running with me, holding my hand.  Our feet are pounding on the slate boards.  People are jumping out of our way.  

I get to the ticket counter. I start slapping money on the counter, pushing it through the opening in the teller’s glass.  “Ni mai!  Ni mai, onegaishimasu!”  Two tickets!  Two tickets, please! 

The old woman in the booth scowls at me.  She’s dressed in a peach colored kimono.  Her hair is cut short.  She’s giving me an annoyed look through her tiny, round rimmed glasses.  

“Chekketo ga ni mai hoshii desu.”  I want two tickets.  Is my Japanese bad?  Am I not being polite enough?  “Chekketo ni mai kuremasen ka.”  Will you please give me two tickets? 

She frowns.  I look at the pile of money before her.  I suddenly get it.  I’ve been pulling dollars out of my wallet.  I open it up and take a look.  I don’t have any yen, no Japanese money.  

“You don’t want dollars!” I say to her in English.  “You want yen!”  

“Hell, yeah!” She says back to me in a heavy Texas drawl. 

My companion steps up to her and they start talking rapidly in Japanese.  But now my companion is my ex-girl friend.  She’s dressed in a purple kimono with a pattern of growing vines on it.  Her hair is long, hanging down her back.  She looks beautiful.  I start looking around for my group, and the woman I was with before.  I am thinking of an excuse, “I was running to buy tickets and ran into my ex-girl friend.  I didn’t even know she was here!”  

The old lady in the booth tells my ex-girl friend that there are people down the boardwalk that exchange money for us.  She turns and heads that way.  Still looking for my group, I follow after her.  

There’s a festival on the boardwalk.  A matsuri.  But it’s not a normal Japanese matsuri.  The Japanese people are all wearing European renaissance clothing. The activities are more like what you would find at a Renaissance Faire.  Jousting.  Swordsmen fighting in European armor.  Jugglers and acrobats dancing on moving barrels.  

My ex-girl friend and I walk through the crowd.  We come to a large enclosure.  It looks like a pen for a big animal, with a rail fence surrounding an area covered knee deep in hay.  But no animal is in there.  On the far side I see tent booths with tables and chairs in them. One booth has a woman wearing a long purple renaissance gown, with black hair stretching down to the back of her knees.  I immediately think that she’s some sort of fortune-teller.  

“Will You Take The Spirit Walk?”  This is what the sign over the entrance to the enclosure says.  A small crowd of people are milling about before the entrance.  They are like penguins at the edge of the ice, pushing and jostling about to have someone else go first.  

My ex-girl friend steps through the crowd and opens the gate to the enclosure.  The fortune-teller, whose dress is the same purple as my ex-girlfriend’s kimono, crosses through the hay.  He takes my ex-girlfriend by the hand and draws her inside.  

I look around.  I don’t see anything that looks like a money exchange place.  I don’t see my group.  I don’t see the Japanese woman I woke up with that morning.  I only see a bunch of Japanese people play-acting at being renaissance folk.  I turn back to see what my ex-girlfriend is doing.  To ask her where the old lady in the ticket booth told her the money exchange place is...

But she’s gone.  As well as the fortune-teller.  The crowd of people are gone, too.  The enclosure is still there, still full of hay, but there is no one else.  I can see that the booths across the way are empty.  

“Will You Take The Spirit Walk?”  I read the sign again, wondering what to do next.  

That’s when I wake up.  

Anyone care to interpret?