I leave for the lunch shift today, they don't need me. So I go downstairs to sleep, I can't go home, there's contractors, there will be no sleep had there other than by them.... The owner's in a foul mood, it's cheque-writing day, and as I try to sleep I can hear all the goings on in the restaurant, the medley of banging pans and Italian curses, it's not the best place to nap, but somehow I manage it...
I'm in London, not London, walking the streets, making a map....
I realize I'm dreaming, this is Lucid, the sounds of the restaurant keep me from falling completely asleep...
I'm on an ancient cobbled street, fine, small row houses, grotesque gargoyles and ornaments, the mood is drear but there's a heightened sense of reality, every gargoyle is different, and as I'm making a map I note that this place hasn't changed, I must take the boy....
now it's a lucid dream and so I wake myself to make my notes.....
....and I'm unrolling a roll of rice paper-parchment, adorned with printed courtesans, I write upon the paper (yellow light), the ink bleeds into the paper, I return to the dream....
The same street I just left, the same as I left it, and I'm walking....a horologist, a bright tree in front, a stump, embellished with watch dials and crystals, broken wares advertising his trade, and I pull aside a crystal to check the dial, it looks like a good make even if it's broken...
Walking through London not London, making my map, there's a festival of sorts, it's evening, and I walk up, people, South American, this is different....
.....and I wake again, knowing this is a dream, make my notes upon parchment....
The din above is too much, and I awake from this again, perplexed, in the squalor of the restaurants basement, the lucidity was real, but the waking was into another dream...