no cemeteries in switzerland.

I had a dream this morning (thank you half dose Ambien!) that i was waiting for a model and her sister to get ready for a "Cemetery Girl" photo shoot. i was at there house in Berkeley. it was one of those big, classy mansions that you find in the neighborhoods on the north side of the UC campus. there was a feeling of age to the place, of many, many lives having been lived there. there was just something in the air of the place that made you feel like a lot of souls had passed through the rooms, doing the sundry activities of their lives.

the house was warmly lit from the afternoon sun shining through the windows, filtered through the autumn colored, decaying leaves on the large trees in the outer yard. this worried me. it was getting late. a little bit too late. in the afternoon for our shoot. i do like to take photographs in the afternoon light, but since the recent ending of daylight savings time, afternoons get shorter and shorter every day. thoughts about this kept racing through my mind. i was calculating how much time there would actually be left if the girls kept moving at the pace they were moving at trying to prepare their outfits for the shoot.

i don't recall saying anything out loud to them in the dream about this. the conversation was internal, within the constraints of my own mind. but it intensified as time passed. they wanted to introduce me to their mother; something i never quibble about because my endeavor is a strange one; seeking out young ladies to take to a cemetery to photograph. they brought her to the hallway just as we were leaving the house and i gave her a polite handshake, but told her we needed to hurry because the light was fading.

we got into the car and i started to drive "to the cemetery". the only problem was that i did not recognize the neighborhood we were in and i did not know which way to go. that we were "in Berkeley" to start with was only a feeling. some sort of blind, internal recognition of "place". whether it was Berkeley or not i started to debate. in fact, i wondered so strongly about this confusion i spoke aloud in the dream for the first time, "maybe this is a dream". no one offered any consolence, or directions to "the cemetery".

so i kept driving. after awhile, it seemed to be an ongoing and eternal "5pm" to me, according to the fading brightness of the afternoon light we came to a park that could have been a cemetery but was not. there were no monuments or gravestones. i did not recognize the place but thinking about it now it could have been a cemetery anywhere in the midwest that i have visited before in Illinois or Ohio. i still thought i was in the Berkeley area and that i was heading to Mountain View Cemetery in Oakland. this was not the place though.

the girls saw some people that they recognized in "the park" and asked to get out of the car to speak to them. i allowed them to, thinking that maybe i could get directions from them. they were a man and a woman, very Berkeley looking in appearance, in their mid 30s or early 40s. they had an Australian Shepard on a leash that they were taking for a walk. no words were spoken that i can remember, so we got back in the car. ALL of us; the girls, the couple and the dog. THEN the man started to offer directions. "That way..." he kept pointing.

so we drove down this street that led away from the park into a downtown city area. not a large city but a village type city with maximum height two-three storey buildings. it was a very colorful district though with somewhat elaborate architecture and painted with very bright, rich colors. it didn't seem fairytale like to me, but it bordered on such a look. and over the roofs of the buildings to the left i could see very large mountains in the horizon. thus, i announced to myself, "we must be in Switzerland". what made me think this other than the sites, i do not know.

continued driving down this thoroughfare until we reached the end of the street and drove out of town. then we could see the mountain range in full view. there were fields and a river, and the mountains. we continued driving to the end of this road until we came to a mansion at the very end. strangely enough it looked very similar, or felt similar to me to the house back in Berkeley. i parked the car in the gravel driveway and the girls got out and demanded that we all go inside to meet their "grandmother". strangely enough, the woman looked exactly like their mother back in Berkeley.

it was at this point in the dream that i became frustrated because we had not found a (or "the") cemetery and my whole day's plans seemed dashed. i spoke out loud, and woke myself up. it upset me that the dream was not going to continue because aside from my discomfort from the plans being disuaded, it was a lovely dream. i enjoyed the scenery and the company of the girls. i wished upon awaking that i could have continued and figured out a proper ending to the activities.