I show up to a big art party bash, one of those semi-regular community-wide fun Bay Area events, where I quite soon run into Plarvolia. It’s too late; there’s no pretending; we both have seen that we have seen one another. We share the same reaction: while niether of us likes being in the same space, ignoring each other might be tolerable. She is wearing a pair of obliquely-angled blinders over the edge of her glasses — I spot them as we perform our mutual heel-turn about-face. The blinders give her exasperated/embarrassed expression a heightened cartoonish quality.
The party is rather lively as there’s lots to do. Vibe is creative and friendly. The event is laid out on a wide unsteep staircase, more of a single-sided ziggurat I suppose, such that one can see the swath of the revelry both up and down. The mood is light enough that she and I end up nearby on a few couches. Without discomfort, we can idly observe and even eavesdrop thus finally getting a genuine read on the other person — perhaps the root of our earlier failure to connect. Eventually we even flow into shared conversation. It comes as a striking relief for us both, this passive lifting of the unresolved tension and harshness we carried these years. I observe her former warniness replaced by a sort of wan disappointment at her own misjudgment of me (or simply unlucky judgement). She realizes I could’ve made a nice friend — still could be — and who knows what else — in the end all the mistake cost was wasted time. None of this is acknowledged verbally. By the end as the party is emptying out, she invites me to meet outside, or later, something like that. I say “we’ll see, I’m gonna help clean things up here for a bit.”
And that’s exactly what I do. I don’t think much about it for a bit, as I quite enjoy having a bit of camaraderie with the party organizers (and I usually do). I do take a moment though to reflect how I’ve managed to leave her to herself, to let her invitation to furtherance sit and rest. She may choose to either wait for me or to go off for her next thing, as she pleases. I didn’t overthink it.
I wake up quite early. I recognize the significance of a Plarvolia dream like this. I write only a brief description, nudging myself to remember it the rest of the day (one such trick I’ve learned over years of writing down dreams).