Saturday, September 25, 2010

Cocktail Party

I was at a friend's house - a lovely 3 or 4 story, dark wood sided, mountain house, built in the side of a hill. The back of the house had balconies, and floor to ceiling windows, looking out on a view across a large mountain lake, pitch black, but shiny in the moonlight. On the other side of the lake, there were mountains. The inside of the house was dimly lit in spots, in a fairly dark, but not cold way. I could see well enough. The carpets were a taupe color, and the walls white. Some flat banisters were made of a warm wood panel.

One mountain, directly across from the house, was a ski resort. At the base of the mountain, you could see tiny people walking around near the docks of the lake, partying, boating, going to restaurants and bars in the ski village. There was one large ski run that led down the mountain to the village, a wide, swath of brightly lit white snow, with skiers gliding down it. As I watched the scene, I noticed that the size of the people on the ski slope was much bigger than those, closer to me in the village and on the docks. The inverse perspective made me think of religious paintings from medieval Europe, and I thought there might be a trick of physics that made the world work that way. As I was watching some of the skiers grew bigger, and the village was hidden under the snow and skis as the skiers started to ski towards the house I was in, across a disappearing lake.

I wandered away from the window, and found a second beer. I mingled, wandered around the house a bit, recycled my beer, and then decided to look for something else to drink. I didn't want to get too drunk, so I decided to have tonic water on the rocks, so as to appear to be drinking a gin and tonic. I searched around for a fresh bottle of tonic water, and found a good one, poured a glass, and drank some. It tasted good. The glass was a bit too small though. I looked for a clean glass at the sink and in the cupboards, and could find only glasses that were especially small, like the one I had, or clunky white mugs. I finally found a small, but nicer and slightly bigger glass with slightly sloping sides, and tiny orange elephants in a little pattern all around it. I looked in the fridge and found a hand-sized, pyramid-shaped bottle of Bombay Sapphire, and decided I would add some to my tonic water after all. [The kitchen was mostly whites and greys - the walls and fridges being white, the counter a light grey, the floor a darker, but still light grey, and the sink being a typical metal sink.]

I came back to the counter, and my glass was missing. A woman, now standing between me and the fridge (to my right, just on the other side of the sink) had it and was washing it to use for a drink of her own. I told her that I had worked hard to find that glass, and that I had still been using it. She let me have it back and I refilled it with tonic. I sipped off a bit of my tonic water, and poured in some gin. Then I looked into another freezer, to my left, for an ice cube or two.

I wandered back out into the dining/living room area where most of the party-goers were. I knew that this was P's house, and I saw my friend D, but didn't recognize anyone else at the party [though I didn't really think about that]. I wandered up a flight of stairs, and found an open level, with a den setup, with black couches, but otherwise fitting into the overall taupe, white, and warm wood colors of the rest of the house. Two large men were in there, chatting and laughing. The other side of this floor was mostly taken up by a bathroom, that I only just barely noticed the door to. I wandered up another floor, and found the bedroom level. I wandered across the room, and felt a soft rug under my apparently bare feet. I looked down and saw that it was a sibling of the rug in my own livingroom [in real life]. I wondered about this for a moment, turned around to see a friend had followed me into the room, and woke up promptly.

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