very strange dreams last night, even for me.

shopping with my parents, i bought a beautiful black lace-net cocktail dress, which i was planning to wear to a reception. strangely, i picked it up at a sort of large discount pharmacy, like a cvs or similar, but in a pretty crummy neighborhood. there were a couple of very fine rough silk and embroidered lace skirts in butter yellow and deep teal green, but one was too small, and the other too expensive. anyway, i bought the black dress and some saline solution, which is what i had gone in there for in the first place. it was a tiny, cramped little place, and i irritated the cashier by changing my purchase at the last minute after making him price-check the clothes.
then i dreamt that i was living in this beautiful house in florence with gardens at the back terraced up a hill. it was in altr'arno, looking back over the valley towards the duomo and fiesole, and the gardens had a stream running over and under the plantings, and a little gazebo up at the top. The house was owned by an elderly couple, and I was staying with them while i lived in italy. at various points in the dream, however, i was different characters, switching back and forth during this section from myself to a young couple falling in love, from each of their points of view. when the girl was mistakenly arrested in a nightclub for drug posession after having been falsely accused, she/i wore the black dress from earlier in the dream to her hearing, at which we were aquitted when our accuser misspoke. the dress was a bit tight, but looked great.
at this point, the dream took a funny turn when i decided to take a walk in the hills. i followed a tributary of the arno for many miles, up hills and through valleys, pausing at one point at a broad and relatively shallow pool which was absolutely filled with fish, crabs, frogs and, (of course!) turtles and terrapins. I stepped onto the back of an absolutely massive turtle, and sat down on it's shell for a while as it cruised around the pond, looking at the buildings of florence though a deep v-shaped valley between the hills. eventually, the turtle climbed back onto the shore and i got off. it gave me a kind of skeptical glance and then returned to the water. i continued my journey, running into my parents and my grandmother in a car, we drove along a twisting road that more or less followed the path of the river. there were strange-looking rounded houses along both banks, some shops and some homes, and i though it quite odd, this architectural style, for the countryside. the car arrived at a series of locks and rolled right into the water, climbing up the riverbed in slow stages. i remember looking out at the river, seeing the long plants pointing in the direction of the current and the algae growing on the mechanisms. we pulled into a parking lot of some kind, to pick up our laundry, but much of it fell into the water and we lurched about wading in the hip-deep river fishing underwear and socks from the reeds and drains and grates.
eventually i found myself approaching a sort of grand manor house in a bend in the river. i walked in, into the midst of preparations for a wedding with some highly eccentric (ha!) people walking around dressed, alternately, like turn-of-the-last-century nouveau riche and straggly arthurian knights and ladies. the interior of the house is like a junk shop piled two floors high. as the chubby vulgar gibson girls rush around getting ready to attend the wedding, i amass small ornaments in a basket and creep up to the second floor in a surprise attack on the 'enemy' knights, whom i proceed to pepper and bean with paperweights, old chipped porcelain hands and swans and so forth. eventually the princecharmingesque groom gives up and comes over to tell maidmaybemarian that he's real sorry, but that he is totally gay and would rather not get married. considering that my job is done, i leave the house, only to discover that there is some kind of bizarre performance-art peice happening on the front lawn, which is nestled by the river. there's a screen, where images are being projected, and a bunch of people are getting very high indeed on various and sundry exotic drugs, which they drink down and smoke with abandon. i join them, a bit suspiciously, (For this part of the dream, I am for no reason at all, Kurt Russell) and set about getting extremely wasted and participating in a bit of a halfassed orgy in one of those little electric corvettes that parents give their spoiled little kids. meh. the banks of the river are littered with incredible white spiral shells and their hermit crabs, and in my totally zonked state, i just stagger around under the strangely tropical foliage, until i discover a path that leads to a rather lovely pavilion by the edge of an enormous lake, with a sort of museum building a hundred yards further down the shore. teams of workers are restoring the pavilion and various visitors are scattered around the highly picturesque docks and benches and pilings, feeding bread to some truly enormous koi fish, who surge out of the water to nip to food from our hands (i'm not kurt russell right now) leaving traces of fish spit and wetly masticated dough on my fingers, which i cannot wash off because everytime i try to dip my hands in the water, the fish think i'm feeding them and nip at my fingers. i try to explain to the people sitting nearest me that koi are ornamental carp, but for some reason they just refuse to believe me. after a while i wander off towards the museum pavilion, where there is some kind of installation art show. the museum is part inside and part outside. among the installations, an open tibetan temple alongside the fence that gives out on a busy highway, the prayer-wheels and gongs contrasting with the buzz and whoosh of cars careening by a couple of feet outside the enormous hardwood arches and chain-link fence choked with bolting weeds. in another room, a beautiful bed, set at a forty-five degree angle to the walls. a huge room with walls covered in prints of art noveau and jackson pollacks and swaths of tulle. various rooms have human components, a dancer, a short-haied girl declaiming pretentious nonsense in a highly theatrical tone. several rooms have windows and doors which give on further installations, hedges and avenues outside. i am wrapped in a blanket, looking for some people who know the organizers of the show, but eventually i decide that it is time to leave.
by bridge and rollerblade and flying car, picking up another hippie traveler, who pilots for a while, as well as a ticket for rollerblading off the designated path, i make my way back to florence, where the story of the two young lovers is wrapping up. having won the court case, a celebration is taking place. in flashback, i see that the young man has decided to remain in florence and become a chef, having learned a great deal about the local cusine from various acquaintances of his hosts. (the food looks awesome) i see that the young man has lost patience at times with the elderly gentleman, who seems to be unhappy a great deal of the time, despite his beautiful house and loving wife. when his wife becomes ill, he seems to realize, with the young man's help that he should be appreciating what he has. cheese-ola. anyhow, the kids are celebrating in the terraced garden and the girl tries to interest he love in taking a walk with her, but he seems disinterested, as if he is going to bed. after he leaves, she looks down at her hands, thinking 'if there's one thing that have always really believed in, it's that there is some kind of connection between all of us, but if i could be so wrong about him... maybe i'm wrong about that, too.' as she says this, her hands flash strangely, as if with sunlight reflected from the water, and the young man appears at the top of the garden stairs. he has brought her dinner, and they go up the stairs together towards the gazebo to eat.

well, there you have it.