A dream of being lost …in the dream I walk out of my house which is not my normal house but a high rise. I have left the contents of my pocket on a blue sofa, leaving the house with no phone or wallet because of my haste. I am walking up Sukhumvit Road.
I reach a corner with a crossroads. It's a busy place with a lot of traffic and I realize I am looking for a book.
A disembodied voice says, "And years ago, a young boy found in an old bookshop a biography of a young carpenter, and he opened a bigger bookstore with this book and the city became converted."
It's the bigger bookstore, I realize, that I am looking for.
I need to cross the street and suddenly the traffic is unearthly still. More still than simply foot on the brake — there's not even a thrum — the lines of cars are simply silent and unmoving — and I cross the road. It's not like they're stopped at a traffic light, more like time has stood still for me to cross.
I cross to the left side of the street and turn right and then there's a sort of market (with concrete stalls, not a canvas tent market). I know the bookstore was on the corner, but it's not. The stores are selling cloth and used electronics. In one place, the bookstore may have existed, but it is an empty concrete-and-brick shell. I realize that the alleys are no longer in square blocks, but diagonal.
I am lost.
I go through an alley and emerge on another big road which is quite different. I think it is like Rama IV used to look when I was a child. There are empty fields on my left as I turn left on the road, sure I am going the right way.
There is a flapping blue vinyl banner that seems to read QUESO, but in my dream that seems to be the name of some kind of international convention. I know I am going the right way. But am I? I remember that QUESO is some kind of regular convention in Bangkok that is held in more than one hotel. Suddenly I thin I am going the wrong way, and I reverse course and walk in the other direction, with QUESO on my right. I think I am going toward Asoke — the wrong direction — but it's right and wrong at the same time. I reach a street corner with construction and gravel and now I suddenly have my phone again. It's a purplish-pink gold phone, not the color of my real phone. It's a rounded corner, not square. There are cranes in the distance (building cranes).
I dial my assistant Nath and ask him to come and pick me up. I say "It's better, Mike will be worried by now."
It's a very odd dream to me because it seems devoid of fantasy content, and just has a boring, daytime urban landscape, and a quasi-religious content (i.e. searching for a book that seems to be about Jesus). And I don't know why a convention center would also be the Spanish for "cheese."