Bizarre dream this morning. I usually don't remember my dreams, so the ones that I do remember always seem especially strange. I guess if I remembered more of them they wouldn't seem so weird by comparison.

Anyway, I joined this one in progress in some sort of swampy outdoor camping area. It was time to retire for the night, and I had laid my sleeping bag out already. First odd thing, I was next to somebody I've known since fourth grade, but who never seemed to like me much. Her sleeping bag was on top of a 6" foam mattress (just a big block of foam, actually), but I had mine on the ground where it could get wet, as it apparently had rained. So Julie (the girl who never really liked me) suddenly discovered that something of hers was missing (memory fails me, but it was something small, like a pair of earrings) and she immediately accused me of taking them.

I offered to help her look for them, but I don't think she believed I hadn't taken them. She stood up and lifted up her sleeping bag, leaving the foam mattress on the ground, and I started to look around for the earrings or whatever they were.

To make this weirder, there were about a dozen other women there, all people I had known, and they were all (including Julie) wearing those old style two-piece nightgowns with the gown underneath that closes between the breasts, and the diaphanous over-gown stuff on top of that (I have no idea what that's called). The other girls/women were mostly ones I had known in school or college, but one or two were from more recent memory. I was never involved romantically with any of them, so their appearance in this dream, together, is a bit of a mystery to me. I was the only male there.

So another girl came out of this house (sort of like a rundown plantation home from Louisiana, where I've never been) in front of which all the various sleeping bags seemed to be arrayed. One of the other women made a comment to her that she needed to close her gown and there was much giggling, but it didn't occur to me to look more closely, as she was facing the other way. I began to fuss with my own sleeping bag, which had gotten wet after sitting on the wet ground.

I realized that I need not be wet that night, so I picked up my sleeping bag (Julie by this time having vanished along with her sleeping bag and the foam mattress) and headed into the plantation home to find a dry spot to bed down. Inside the house was familiar but I can't identify what house it was supposed to be. It was not, however, the interior you'd expect of a run-down plantation home. None of the women in nighties were there, so I assume this was one of my regular dream scene shifts, but I still had the sleeping bag and it was still wet on the bottom.

I found a spot to lay out my bag, in a hallway for some reason, and wondered why it is that I own both sleeping bag and pad but I hadn't brought the pad along with me. My backpack was suddenly there although I hadn't been carrying it earlier, but the pad wasn't in it. I was very confused.

Then I woke up.

(2000-03-19)