Dream Log: Lost on Sunday

I dreamed that I and some friends were in a car together, and we pulled into the parking lot of a Catholic church in an area somewhere on the border between suburban and rural. Mass was about to begin. The others went inside, and I decided to take a walk until Mass was over. 

There was a tall, steep hill near the church, and I climbed it. The hilltop was very broad and flat. Even though I was in church clothes, I felt like running. After I had been jogging along for a while, a man zoomed past me, wearing the Chariots of Fire running outfit: white T-shirt tucked into white shorts, white socks, black shoes. 

I took the difference between his speed and mine as a challenge, and sped up. He soon disappeared around a bend and I never saw him again, but I enjoyed running fast. For a while I was self-conscious because I was running in a dark red shirt under a dark red sweater, dark red corduroy pants, white socks and black shoes, but then I told myself to worry less about what people thought and enjoy myself.

I ran so far that when I stopped I didn't know where I was, and couldn't find my way back to the church where my friends were. The area had become much more urban. 

I walked through a plaza lined with Renaissance-style apartment buildings which, I felt sure, many connoisseurs would disparage as absurdly gaudy and over-the-top. But then I told myself that I didn't have to let some hypothetical snobs stop me from enjoying the view. 

And the dream went on like that for quite a while: I walked through many different architectural styles which I liked although, somehow, I was sure that there were many experts who would laugh at them, and over and over, I was able to overcome my self-consciousness and like what I like. None of it was Sylvester Stallone's sort of thing. I don't like architecture that's THAT gaudy. (And there's no reason that Sylvester Stallone should be upset about that.) One of the buildings was a mall which included a shop whose wares included some of those old books which are as tall and wide as a man, which often appear in my dreams, or, more likely, new replicas of those old books.