salamanders aplenty

i haven't recorded an interesting dream in a little while for you, so here's one i had thursday night, thought i had properly interpreted, and then decided i didn't. so, for your pleasure:

i was traveling for work to baltimore, and was going to try to meet up with friends, but i couldn't. instead, i found myself in an historic market district that seemed so familiar, and i decided i'd just wander around there instead with the time set aside where we'd originally planned to meet up. i wanted to get lunch and i thought i remembered there was a good seafood place that did takeout, so i found it. it was at one end of this market street, tucked in a corner with outdoor seating and black iron-wrought furnishings. the rest of the market, by the way, was full of white, or lightly colored building fronts, almost white in the sunlight. it was early morning, so the sunlight was extremely bright.

then the waiter told me that they didn't do takeout anymore, or their food was not what i expected to be in some way, and i was frustrated. i knew i had limited time, so i had needed to take advantage of that, and now that time was wasted.

then the dream shifted and it was night, and i was checking into a hotel, presumably in that same neighborhood. the hotel was awful, extremely cheap, with crumbling ceilings and dodgy light fixtures, and even more bizarre, piles of random bric-a-brac that seemed to have been collected from garage sales, and thrown in piles into all of the rooms, by way of decoration and furnishing. the furniture, therefore, was all mismatched and scratched and gross-looking, and all i could console myself with was the thought that i wouldn't be there for long.

the dream shifted again and i'm in that hotel room but it's daylight now, and the sun is streaming in and blinding everything in the room, and i can't decide if it's good or bad. then i notice something i hadn't noticed before because of the glare in the room: a little salamander. it's on the floor, which is white tile, and it's so white itself that it's almost translucent. i peer closer and see that it is translucent, save for its two deep black eyes. it's both beautiful and gross, somehow--beautiful in its pure form, so white and so smooth, but gross in that it looks sticky, and is on my floor.

in real life, i love salamanders, but my only thought is that i enjoy them out in nature, and not in my bedroom. and the salamander is indeed sticky when i try to pick it up, and then i begin to notice that there are more of them.

some of them are tiny, and others are huge, and they're all over the floor, and the walls, and the ceiling, and i'm trapped because if i move i know i'll step on one, which 1) grosses me out, and 2) i don't want to hurt them. i call for help, and someone suddenly appears close to me, but i don't know who it is. i tell her that there are these salamanders everywhere, and she acknowledges it, but we don't know what to do. this part of the dream ends with us still trying to figure it out.

there is a second part of the dream that happened after that, but it's too vague now for me to recall more than faint images.