7.10.2025: a recurring dream

It's strange how often I have the same- or almost same dream: I'm in New York, (which is also Miami; my parents are there, ) and I'm about to return to Israel. It's all of the emotions of wanting to get home, but feeling sad about leaving the people I love. 

And now it's 3:08 PM, and my flight is at 3:30, but I still haven't even packed yet, or figured out how I'm going to get to JFK, and in order to leave my house, I have to exit through the enormous, poorly lit, oddly esoteric shopping mall that takes up the first few, endless floors of my building.

When I get to the airport, I still have several knives in my backpack from when I went camping, and have to apologetically surrender them to the security guard. The terminal for El Al is impossibly far away, and involves a several-hours long walk to get to, parts of which are outside through deep sand, up mountain sides, beside furious seasides, and/or through rainstorms. I get lost. Several times. Every time, the way I have to walk is different. I ask directions, from several different people, and the response is almost always a vaguely, pointed finger. 

Eventually I make it to my gate, and the plane is there and I'm allowed to board, eventhough I'm 5 or 6 hours late.  

The inside of the plane looks like an MTA Subway car: long, light blue plastic benches that line the walls and face one another across a central aisle, and there are adverts that line the walls where the overhead carry-on compartment doors should be.

...

When we land, I get off the plane and go upstairs, exiting into my twilit neighbourhood. Before heading home, I decide to stop off by the market- an outdoor bazaar of winding rows of miniature circus tent like booths, that sell everything from zucchini and canned tuna, to dreamcakes and concepts; a place where day and night, the present, future and past, shift and change from booth to booth. I've many friends who work there, and whilst away, I'd missed them. In this place, it's not only time that shifts randomly, but I, and the rest of the market's denizens seem to randomly shift and change form: more or less human one moment, an idea without physicality the next.  

I'd missed this whilst away; shedding form is like taking off a sweat soaked, too tight bra whose underwires have been torturing me all day, and finally being able to take a deep breath.  

I'm finally home, and it feels good.