It's been a while, I think, since I had an Amina dream. I keep a recorder on my night stand because of the idea that I should be recording my dreams, but alas, I haven't been using it, even during last month or the month before when I was getting ridiculous amounts of sleep, enough to remember dreams upon waking.

But I awoke from this dream and started reviewing it mentally and had the presence of mind to reach for the recorder.

I think recording dreams is better than writing them down, because recording dreams allows you to stay in a muted state of consciousness and spontaneously reflect on what you remember about the dream.

Writing dreams down requires heightened conscious brain functions that might influence the final recollection of the dream. Indeed, from when I did this before, there were times that I would revisit a recording, and there would be stuff that I didn't remember at all.

In this dream, Amina and I had just gotten together. She was exactly who she was so many years ago when we did get together, my feelings for her were exactly what they were so many years ago, but I was who I am today.

The surrounding cast of characters were some people I know now, some I'm not sure of, and the setting was unfamiliar. I don't know where it was.

In the dream, we had just spent some time apart, and we were in a room talking, and it wasn't really clear that we were together, but it was clear there were feelings between us. We were enjoying being back together and being with each other.

She mentioned something about Mars, whether I had seen Mars rising underneath the Moon. We were in this room late at night because I had been out late. I asked her what time and she said after midnight. I was surprised that she was asking this because I didn't think she had an interest in astronomy or what was going on in the night sky.

I asked her why she knew about where Mars was and she said that (during our time apart) she had met someone who had written a book on astronomy and they had talked about it, and that's how she knew. I thought that was great. I'm always happy meeting people with an interest in astronomy.

Then the dream switches slightly and it's still late at night, but we're about to go to sleep on a very large bed, and there are also a bunch of other people there. We're about to go to sleep on the left side of the bed, other people would occupy the other parts of the bed, and at this point the feeling was very clear that we were together and enjoying each others' company.

One of my current co-workers is there and he notices us and realizes that we're together and makes a questioning gesture to that effect, and Amina is like, 'yea', and I'm like, 'yea, who woulda thunk someone like her would go for someone like me'.

I remember thinking, 'There's sure going to be a lot of people on this bed'. Some other guy, maybe someone else I've met in Taiwan, but he has no further role in the dream, is stretched out along the foot of the bed. Some other people were on the right side of the bed, but then they disappeared.

The dream switches slightly again, and we're still about to go to sleep, but we're in the back of my old car, which is the same size of that large bed, meaning it's still basically the same space we were in. It's just Amina, me and that co-worker there.

Actually, there was something right before that transition. The other people in the room were getting the room ready for all of us to go to sleep, and Amina and I were lying on the bed chatting, not in anyone's way, with the understanding that we would put everything away in the morning.

In the back of the car, it starts pouring rain, so I quickly reach over to pull down the glass hatchback window. She says, 'quick, drop the radio!'. I have no idea what she's talking about, but she says, 'quick, drop the radio, that's what you're supposed to do if you're in a car that's not running in a rainstorm'.

I'm like, 'what? I've never heard of that', but she repeats, 'yea, quick, drop the radio!'. My co-worker jumps under the dash and does something to it - ostensibly 'dropping the radio'. She explains what it means to drop the radio, and I'm trying to make sense of it, asking if it has something to do with grounding the car in case of lightning, and she says, no, the car is already grounded, tapping the dash, and I'm just like, 'OK, I'd never heard of that before, but of course there are things I don't know'.

I think this part of the dream was subconsciously referencing and acknowledging my general arrogance. How does she know something I don't know about? Why doesn't everyone know everything I know about? But I'm working on it, getting rid of that arrogant attitude, and I think the dream was addressing that, too. It's just not natural yet, it's still a cognitive step. I'm aware of the arrogance and that there's something wrong about it.

Mind you, I have little to be arrogant about. Except at work, maybe, where I can't believe some of the mistakes they allow to go to final print. DOH!

The aspect of the dream changes then, and we are in the car because we were on some kind of honeymoon, some bohemian roadtrip before I went back to start working for my parents (which is a current reality which my parents are pushing me to do).

The last scene in the dream felt like it was in the same physical space, but instead of the car or the bedroom, it was in a kitchen, and the co-worker was still there (he might represent Amina's current husband, come to think of it).

She had just cooked dinner and was wondering if it was alright that she wasn't working and was just being housewifey, and I said it was cool and that working for my parents, everything was stable, and she should do whatever she needed to do to settle down. If she wanted to work, that was fine, if not, also fine.

This part of the dream might have been referencing my oldest brother's situation, where there are tensions regarding their roles. In the dream, I was still doing music and wanting to work on music after coming home from work, but also feeling I should be aware of and attending to Amina's wants and needs.

Remembering back to the first scene of the dream when we were alone together in the room and it wasn't clear we were going out, but it was the actual point where we were getting together and getting to know each other more deeply, I asked her what magazines she was into. I was inquiring about her interests, knowing that when I was growing up, I had regular subscriptions to Astronomy magazine, and that said something about me. She said she used to read "Sixteen", so that probably indicates that scene was supposed to be from way earlier, long ago in my past.

I came out of the dream with the feeling that everything was going great, and everything would continue to go great. Uh, yea.