Brussels Day 4: Graph Paper time!

Well son of a bitch! I’ve been searching every day since I’ve gotten to Belgium, looked in every store that seemed even remotely likely for a new notebook or journal to write in. Finally, I think I’ve found one and what does it turn out to be? A thin book of graph paper, of course! What does it speak for Belgium’s literacy rate that I can’t find a pad of blank lined paper? Aren’t there any aspiring writers in Belgium?

At any rate, I’m back at Brussels Midi, the big train station, awaiting yet another train to Bruges. My feet were killing me by the end of yesterday, walking all over the place has taken its toll, and if they were killing me yesterday, today they went a step further by planting swollen nukes on the balls of my feet. Sadly, their protests will have to go ignored, though not unheard. I can’t very well tell people that I missed Brussels (or indeed Europe) on account of my sore feet.

I have now smelled at least 3 instances of people smoking marijuana in public areas. Once at a bus station and twice by some guy standing in the street. I suppose it must be easy to acquire, so close to the Netherlands, or else the police simply don’t care. They sell a type of beer here, Juliper, in vending machines. For some reason that appears to be the only beer sold in this fashion, and I can’t help but wonder why.

Every night I’ve been here I have had weird, restless sort of dreams. I think it’s because with 8 people in the room, someone is always coming, going, taking a shower, turning on a light, or making some sort of disturbance. On some level that activity keeps my body somewhat alert.

The dream I had last night was rather Freudian. Not in the sense that there was lots of symbolism (although perhaps there was and it just went over my head) but in the everlasting argument between the id and the superego.

It started out with a semi-attractive woman roaming a place where I had slept, strongly resembling the bunk-bed complex I was actually sleeping in, and other boys were on all sides of me in their own bunk beds. Our bunk beds are all lined up in rows, much like soldiers barracks often are organized.

In a way that you sometimes know things in dreams without explanation, I knew that the woman was lonely and doing what she did every night – choosing a sexual partner from the beds. I think she used a random method to choose, because when she finally fixed her gaze on me, she sighed deeply, as if let down, and said “You’ll do I guess”, more to herself than to me.

Then she asked me if I wanted to go somewhere, the implication being obvious. We were already in a giant bedroom, so what place more fitting she wanted to go, I’m not sure. I remember her face – white, skinny. She was tall and quite pretty despite a few zits. I reluctantly (very reluctantly) told her no. I don’t recall the rest of the conversation, but my desire for her was made clear. And abruptly the dream changed, as dreams sometimes do, to become a dream of romance. It wasn’t a dream of the perfect love (which I’ve had once before), more of a comfortable romance than an ideal one. But it was nice, very nice.

Somewhere in the wee hours of the morn, the dream changed so that I was no longer the boyfriend, but a third party to this romance. There was quite a bizarre story line that formed from this, but I don’t remember much in the way of specifics.

Then as people began to rise in the morning and my body became roused to half-consciousness, I dreamt as I have every morning of various scenarios involving my parents and my brother (mostly my brother). I suspect this has the most to do with the fact that I' have spent the last two weeks rooming with my brother, and I am still adjusting to not being with close family.