Hung over in Costa Rica.

9:00am

It's mid-morning on Easter Sunday and I am lounging lazily on the patio hammock, with a cup of hot chocolate and soothing flemenco guitar music emanating from the Macbook. Amber's gone for a surf and should be back any minute, unless the waves are really good.

I've got a massive headache from drinking too much last night. Paul and Gina brought a bottle of red wine and vodka mixed with carbonated water over and we got pretty boozed by the end of the night. We got talking about what New York was like and what we could do when we were up there. Knowing that we have friends in New York has multiplied our excitement of visiting a hundredfold!

We prepared onion omelette with chopped green beans, eggplant, 

zucchini and red cabbage with rice for our vegetarian friends.

5:06pm now and just back from a surf. It was pretty gnarly out there and only one other surfer besides me. Since Amber went for a surf this morning, she didn't bring her board out with her this time. She caught me with the Lumix catching some waves. I'm still far from being comfortable out there, but am feeling more confident each time I come back in from a surf.

I thought I had caught a big one here but it fizzled out soon after I got to my feet.

Most of my surfing has been done on white wash like this one which I'm pretty comfortable doing now.

I think I need to move on to a short board.

This is when I've had enough and decide to come back in to shore.

It's strange, but the part I am enjoying the best about learning how to surf is the big paddle out past the crashing waves. My shoulders burn out pretty quick, and I've learnt that it's more about endurance then anything else. Hint for all you newbies: paddle with your shoulder rotator cuff, not your arms! The waves on this part of Santa Teresa are big and El Torpe is too thick to be doing duck dives on, so to get past each wave I have to go under and turn the board upside down. It's a workout! And I'm learning to work with the ocean than against it.

We're getting used to having pasta with chopped sausages, with a side of veggies drenched in olive oil. It's cheap, healthy, easy to make, and oh so delicious! Check out the double portion I had for lunch today. YUM!

We've decided to rent an ATV (quad) this week to explore our surrounds. Time is starting to fly. We've got less than 3 weeks left in Costa Rica!

Dream, Paul and Gina.

This Dream moods website is pretty amazing. I had another dream last night which I quickly scribbled down when I woke up. Events in the dream seemed pretty unexciting but when I looked up specific words (in blue) on the online dream dictionary, I felt that they were remarkable.

• I am in the company of old friends in the USA.
• Sneak (stealing?)into cousin's house, hiding in several distinctive rooms avoiding aunties, uncles and cousins.
• I find a room filled with clothes and shoes. It's a pair of shoes I'm looking for.
• I find the pair I'm looking for! Gold-ish converse-type walking shoes. It might be 1 or 2 sizes too big.
• Feeling glad I found it, I put these on and head back outside to rejoin my friends.
• Extended family, mum and dad are outside hanging around not doing anything in particular.
• Dad just barely manages 3 pull ups on the clothesline (haha)
• Mum complains about her tummy getting flabby.
• In response, cousin jokingly asks me, since I'm a pt, how she can get rid of it.
• I half-jest in return that she'd have to pay me for me to tell her. It only gets a couple of laughs. *My feeling here is I was avoiding speaking in front of a group (family) because it made me uncomfortable. I avoided the situation, but didn't feel happy with myself.
• In a studio apartment. Friend tells me he's staying for another month or 2. I think to myself, "jeez, what are you guys going to do for so long?" and felt better that I was 'returning.' He leaves, and a feeling of loneliness overcomes me.

More often than not, I was able to find significance in the interpretation of these words for my life. The ones that particularly stick out, are 'shoes' and 'stealing.' According to Dream moods, shoes represent my approach to life. It also represents my convictions about my beliefs. If I am changing my shoes, then it refers to my changing roles. I am taking a new approach to life. The dictionary came up with 3 possible interpretations for 'stealing,' and from the available options I took that it meant I had unrealized and unfulfilled goals.

I find this entire process of interpreting my own dreams powerfully compelling. It feels reassuring to acknowledge an inspiring interpretation from the deeper levels of one's own psyche. I may not be so aware of my life objectives and intentions on the surface level, but exploring the possibilities and questioning myself about what my "convictions" and "changing roles" could possibly be, is uplifting. It propels me forward.

Amber and I went to the beach late this morning to read. We bumped into Paul and Gina, an American couple who arrived a few days ago from New York  and are leaving on monday. Paul's rental surfboard was too small and he was going to change it with another when Amber suggested we swap. What a great idea! Paul's board was just slightly shorter than mine and much thinner. I was able to attempt several unsightly duck-dives on it, and overall felt that it was a good board to progress my surfing abilities. 

As we were yarning on the beach, Paul communicated to us, to our delight, that he had an extra bedroom and generously invited us to stay in his apartment in Brooklyn for when we are up there in April. We reciprocated by inviting them over for dinner tonight. They're vegetarians, so looks like Amber will be Chief Coordinator on the kitchen floor tonight.

Muay thai and exploding eyeballs.

Dream recall:

I was watching two men fight it out in a ring muay thai/kickboxing style. One was shorter than the other, stockier, heavyset. He looked like the more comfortable of the 2. The other fighter was taller, leaner and younger. This one seemed more on edge and less experienced. In my dream I think I labelled the stocky guy "Champion," just cos he looked more like one.

They fought for a bit and both were doing quite well land solid punches and kicks. Soon, Champion got one really good hit in, then two. His opponent fell to the floor, lying face up, grimacing in pain. I (or maybe 'we,' as I think I felt I wasn't watching this fight alone, as if Amber was watching it with me) watched him in agony on the floor and noticed his eyes starting to bulge. At first it was only small protrusion from both eyes, but the swelling started to escalate. It reminded me of a scene in Total Recall starring Arnold Schwarzenegger when a bad guy got thrown out into the atmosphere of Mars and his eyes bulged and popped out. This was like that for the downed fighter and watching this made me cringe. I also felt concern for the person watching with me (Amber?) as this was a pretty traumatic sight to see! His eyes kept bulging and increasing in length until it was fully stretched from his eye sockets causing the whiteness to reach almost maximum transparency. Then both eyeballs burst!

Next I saw the fighter's head/face on the floor facing up in a state of decomposition. It was a mess and I could not make out any facial structure. The head seemed to be deflating slightly and discharging puss.

Then I watched the same fighter do the after-fight interview. He's got his eyeballs back! He looks different. Emotionally deflated and dweeb-like but not deplorable. he expressed how he feels disappointed that he has lost the match after all the practice he had put into leading up to it. His voice was high pitched and I thought the last place he should be in is a boxing ring! He was like a nerd that had trained his body hard to fight. 

Researched dream entities:

Eyes - To dream that your eyes are injured or closed, suggests your refusal to see the truth about something or the avoidance of intimacy. You may be expressing feelings of hurt, pain or sympathy.

Fighting - To see others fighting in your dream, suggests that you are unwilling to acknowledge your own problems and turmoil. You are not taking any responsibility or initiative in trying to resolve issues in your waking life. 

Attempted interpretation:

I can see in my relationship with Amber that there are areas in which I am not willing to take an active role in healing. These areas are issues I've experienced in past intimate relationships and accept that these short comings are solely my individual issues. I accepted with slight repulsion to Amber's impressions the other day that I might be slightly "sexist." In retrospect, the way I reacted to her confronting the issue was one of evasiveness, behavior reminiscent to my interpretation of the dream.

I saw myself in the beat down fighter - committed to regular meditation and study (reading) and achieving a certain level of aptitude. However when it came down to really what mattered, (ie. the fight), it isn't enough. Dream moods convincingly suggests the symbolism of 'damaged eyes' as the avoidance to see truth about something or avoiding of intimacy. And I took the words expressed in the post-fight interview to mean that it didn't matter how much I read, or meditate - If I didn't use this knowledge and insight actively in life, then inevitably I would lose the fight.

Perceptive observations:

I remember that I was aware enough to remind myself (in my dream/sleep state) to remember the details of this dream for my waking state. So much so that after the dream had ended, I was able to go back into the dream and bring into memory the most provoking images. I am not certain if in this state I am awake, or aware in my sleeping state.