dream 2006-05-18

Didn't remember this 'til midday, sitting at lunch in a kitschy restaurant. M'excusez, svp...

In a building, concrete walls, dark wooden doors; I walk through networks of halls with no windows. My mind identifies it as Winters res, but the one of these past years of dreams -- recognizeable and very different, all at once. Something is particularly different this time. As I walk, I encounter people I haven't seen in res since first year. For some reason, I'm apparently living in a different room than I remember -- not the room of this whole past year. And yet, my keycard... as I wonder, realization races down the empty hall and hits me: I am dreaming, the first time I know it is so!
So in this dream I live in a different room. What about my card? I try it on the door of my dream room, a theory already in mind. And, yes, it doesn't work! Now to test the rest of it: I rush to my "real" room -- someone else's in the dream -- and my card works there. I haven't actually broken completely free of the dream rules, moving omnipotently through and shaping the world, but I've still achieved a minor miracle, the changing of one small detail. I've created my own personal loophole.
Elsewhere in the halls, I encounter Armour, just like when he lived in res in first year. I'm excitedly telling him about all of it, and he accepts it all -- even the fact that he's just a part of my dream, and not the real Armourtime. He seems genuinely pleased for me that this has happened, but of course that's really my mind giving itself a pat on the back... which I guess is why he takes being told he's not real so well.
One other thought has been with me throughout the dream: it's interesting how this place IS res to me, but when I think about this, it's laid out nothing like the actual place... yet I've dreamed it before and know it well.