weird dreams and good books

I have really weird dreams. When we were growing up all I had to do was say that phrase and my siblings would start groaning. Sometimes the Lord speaks to me through my dreams. Sometimes I can just see how I'm processing the day's events while I'm sleeping. Sometimes my subconscious imagination just runs away with me. I think Thursday evening's dream would fall under that classification.

I was running late to the meet kids and their parents at the drop off point for a kid's camp I was helping to run. I had half an hour to get there and I had forgotten my bag. My mom was supposed to bring it to meet me and she had not left the house and there was no way that she was going to make it before we had to leave. So I had to go to "Target" and just buy clothes and toiletries for the week.

I was in "Target" (which seemed like Wal-Mart meets Tescos meets Sam's Club) searching through the clearance section for enough clothes to put together mix and match outfits for a week of camp. (The prices were in pounds and the other girls in shopping in the section were British.) I wasn't doing too bad having found a 1 pound rack when my cell phone rang. It was Billy Connolly. I was surprised that he had my number but we apparently knew each other.

The conversation went something like this: "Hello?" "Hi Rebekah, this is Billy." "Billy, hey!" He asked me when I was heading to Ireland and I replied with my standard answer, trying to find a job... etc. He said I needed to hurry up and get over there because he was opening a new comedy club in Dublin and he wanted my help managing it. I was only half listening because I was still shopping so the details are fuzzy. He was telling me about how he was going to use the club as an outreach tool, I was murmuring along as if I was listening in spite of the fact I was really trying to decide if this skirt would go with that top or not.

So when he paused I said, "That really sounds exciting. I can't wait to hear more but..." Then explained what was going on and we made arrangements to speak later in the week. And that was pretty much it.

Now I can see where some of this came from my subconscious working through things I've been thinking about... working with kids, getting to Dublin, even the shopping. But Billy Connolly! That was completely random. To prove how rarely I think about him I had to google his name to make sure it matched the person I was thinking of.

In other news I just finished Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri. It was a beautiful collection of short stories. I really enjoy short stories, but one thing I've noticed is that they are much more likely to be without hope than a fully developed novel. I wonder why that is? My favorite story in this collection was The Third and Final Continent, the finale of the book. The familiarity of feeling left me in tears. I loved this closing quote:

"I am not the only man to seek his fortune far from home, and certainly I am not the first. Still, there are times I am bewildered by each mile I have traveled, each meal I have eaten, each person I have known, each room in which I have slept. As ordinary as it all appears, there are times when it is beyond my imagination."

I guess my thoughts have been caught in this tension of leaving and staying for a while.