Maybe I Need to Walk There Again...

My doc asked me if I slept well. I said after sleeping several hours I wake up and use the bathroom but get back to sleep easily but then in a couple of more hours I wake for another bathroom break but them I sometimes don't get to sleep as easily and I have to get up and read a book for 30 minutes and then I sleep on till dawn or sometimes after. When you do the math that adds up to 7 or 8 hours sleep which the journals tell us is about enough. 

What I didn't tell him is that second wake up is usually after a very vivid dream that leaves my mind awake and busy. I also didn't tell him because a family doctor seeing a basically well patient that he can get rid of in less than 15 minutes or anyone else for that matter other than a blog reader does not give a flip about what you dreamed.  

A couple of nights ago I woke from a dream like this and carefully sat up on the side of the bed. I kept very quiet so as to not wake Cathy but I wanted to think it over and have good recall since there were many themes at work.

I dreamed I was walking through the French Quarter in New Orleans with someone I knew but it was like the person was a composite of every person I had ever walked through the French Quarter with and also every person I knew that had told me a story about walking through the Quarter. Soon we were out of the neighborhood influenced by the old Spanish and French styles of architecture and entered a darker more slum like area. World beat music with a lots of congas, heavy bass and soulful vocals in an African language carried to us from an indistinct source. It was loud but not overpoweringly so. My composite friend tripped along lightly, almost dancing, occasionally whirling around to see if I was still with him.

We came to what seemed to be fire escape type stairs and began to climb. The steps seemed uneven and hand carved. A tall man in colorful African dress began to ascend the steps behind us and we all arrived at an open air restaurant or bar.

Inside there were quite a few people sitting at a plywood bar on barrels for barstools and it seemed like I knew most of them. We talked about walking down Bourbon Street and after looking at a menu on the wall written in a foreign language that I couldn't make heads or tails of someone told me to order the mosquito plate. "It means something special to them" they told me indicating the waitstaff behind the bar so I ordered. 

A girl sitting next to me who I did not know asked if I always wore a suit. I didn't realize what I was wearing but it was my old grey thrift store sport coat. I told her yes, this color in winter but come summer I would shift to seersucker suits for the hot weather. She asked if I was heading back to walk down Bourbon Street. I said no. I might never walk down Bourbon Street again.

I awoke from the dream and after a period of thinking all this over it occurred that while I've been in the French Quarter a number of times over the past decade I have not actually walked down Bourbon Street since Mardi Gras 2014.  

I never did get that Mosquito Plate.