Miraflores. Youthful and bustling. Loving Lima?

In my notes from last night I have written:
"Good choices:
This hostal
Playing pool
Starting up beer pong (jumping the gun to predict)
Buying this extra pen
Buying a bit of weed (though shady and scary as hell)
Knowing Spanish
Coming to Miraflores though mas carro
Learning Krav (though not superlatively happy yet--we´ll see)(Israelis)"

But now I´m a bit leery. It first struck me while people-watching on the balcony how fabulously perfect this place, Miraflores, is. Starting with the row of cars below, including an old white Volkswaggon Beetle, all parked halfway over the line as if by consensus. The streetlights sparkled on the roofs like studio lights. Everything is so brightly and cleanly illuminated, replete with a park full of kids playing, watched over by gossipy guardians--am I on a movie set?
A pisco-sour in hand, I can´t help but enjoy this, relaxing for the first time since...oh, since Cali! Regrouping in Lima--in this moment, I am happy.
But another deja vu strikes me, and another. Here I hear stories of dealers luring innocents to pseudo-police encounters, but with longer-term setups including gradually increasing amounts. Doubly scary because I just this afternoon tempted fate and bought some from a brother/sister duo who promised a good time in the club and a phone number in case of increasing interest. Very pushy and suspicious: I wanted out! Ready to run at a moment´s notice, notwithstanding anything.
After a jaunt on the roof with some Israelis and a McGuiver bong, I released a fair chunk of tension. Later, after absorbing everything a bit, I began to wonder what angle I wasn´t seeing, letting paranoia enter the fray. How can I not be suspicious when everything lately has been so mediocre or downright horrible? It feels like a setup.
Then Hsan enters the scene. A partial owner or manager of the hostel, he´s a suave cat who reminds me of Maxim, making all sorts of outrageous claims along the lines of owning an island on the Amazon, talking about setting up a hostel there on his 358 acres with horseback tours (led, of course, by me)...
We chill up in a room on the roof that resembles a dorm room with unmade bed, Bob Marley posters, disheveled clothes, Men´s Health (in Spanish), which he says is occupied by his brother who helps run the hostel.
He adjusts his cap--Royal Carribean logo now more visible--and I wonder how this can be, this guy who earlier promised to get me a job on a cruise ship. Who now claims to own tons of land.
Then a horrible thought strikes me: am I in a dream?
This is all so absurdly perfect, appealing to your deepest heartstrings, it must come from within, no?
Will I wake up tomorrow in a dark alley, crunching broken glass as I groan in pain? Gradually piecing together moments from reality? Spiked beer in the restaurant: Dealers take all...
Hsan introduces me to his brother, who tries to get me to bet money on pool. An obvious shark attempt. I never play for money. He ends up beating me, but I´m confident he intentionally blew some shots to set me up. Sometimes it all just lines up too perfectly.
Am I dreaming a new reality to compensate for the last few days of savage loathing? What if I can´t get out? Would I start dream-dreaming of reality, how I think it should be?
There is no way I believe any of what these folk are saying. My trust has been used up, I think. Am I just paranoid?
This place gives me the willies...or maybe that´s just the lifesized statues lurking in every corner. It´s just all too perfect. Strange and lulling.
So tonight--what dreams? Horror of stolen articles and exploitation? Get back to the comfortable reality? Finding comfort in similarity, not essence. Familiarity breeds love...along with contempt.
So what happens if I get stuck back again in the blood-drained and discouraged dreamscape, forced to imagine again something different...?
My phases of being/desire alive/to be waver in and out of different levels of reality. <--is the previous a successful representation of simultaneous thoughts? If I am dreaming, can´t I make it so, whether you like it or not? Again, stuck in a dream in a dream in a book, vascillating between, in narrative confusion. Unreliably unreliable.
Near the embassy, this place became my mecca after much exhausted hesitation. The promised pool table might´ve sealed the deal. It took me some time to find it, dodging traffic after an arduous embassy-block tour. But I arrive, grab a cue, and start chatting with the bar tender.
Lima is a beautiful ocean-front city. The conquistadors were smart, mourns the owner of a ceviche restaurant, though hated. He urges me to tell all my friends his place is the best ceviche spot in Miraflores. Easy conversations in Spanish. Things are looking up.
But my mindstream from last night brings up a complicated question: What is real?