Imagine waking from a dream to a world where everything was the same… except for one or two little things. The next day those seem fine, but there’s something else a little off…
The drainage pipes on the building across the street have offsets of different sizes that make them look uneven. I’m sure this isn’t the fault of the architect and just some miscommunication between an engineer and the contractor who put them in. At least this is what I learned from a repeat of How I Met Your Mother episode.
Oh, and the rivets in the siding. They are not quite perfectly lined up. It’s hard for me to look at. Not because it looks bad; it is
certainly the nicest building in its vicinity. I’m just always looking at how things line up with other
things and when it isn’t just so, I become annoyed fairly quickly.
Earlier, I received an email from the insurance company I
used to have. That’s right, they
shouldn’t be contacting me anymore because I’m no longer one of a million
satisfied customers… at least they advertise something absurd like that. My assumption is that the other 999,999
customers never had any intelligent questions to ask their customer service
reps who perhaps couldn’t have told me the difference between my policy and the
receipt from their lunch break.
But that’s beside the point.
The email from the insurance company isn’t the point either. Neither is the building across the
street or any of its “flaws” that probably exist only to me.
So what’s really going on? I woke up from a dream and this time there were enough
things off for me to notice and since I’m not very good at expressing emotion,
I felt irritated, unsettled and even a little angry.
It’s also important to note that I don’t mean dream like one
of those things you think of since you were little and try very hard to achieve
or obtain. I simply mean a dream
like when you sleep. It’s sort of
like this…
One night after a long shift at work, you went to the bar where
you went almost every night after work and probably had either a PBR or a Coors
Light, depending on what was cheaper.
At one point in time, you never would have drank that awful stuff
proclaiming to have tastebuds or standards. But the first sip of ice cold beer after a long shift,
especially at a job you’ve become disenchanted with, is so good, regardless of
the beer. So good on so many
levels, it lulls you into returning night after night without ever realizing
how often you go or how much money you’re spending on shitty beer. You flirt with the habits of your
alcoholic friends; dark, empty lifestyles you refuse to believe could ever
become your own.
One night, you fall asleep on the couch you got for free on
craigslist; probably a semi-deep pseudo-sleep that’s been partially induced by
a couple of shitty beers and some well whiskey. This sleep is not very restful, but you drift from
consciousness and your body doesn’t move the entire night.
As consciousness slips, your mind is hijacked and taken away
to another place.
Away from everything.
A fresh start.
And it turns out to be a lucid semi-deep pseudo-sleep.
So you explore.
You see the newfound sights around you, and you begin to rewrite who you
are.
A new person, a new place, a new story.
You can be whoever you want to be. Good, bad, whatever… none of it matters, because you are
inside a choose-your-own adventure story as the protagonist and somehow you
cannot fail.
If it were my dream, I would choose to be really good at my
job. Its something I cannot
help. I would also choose to live
like I’m on top of the world, that I mattered, that what I was doing was going
to guide a piece of what would someday be important history. I would make a lot of money and get to
eat almost whatever I wanted, whenever I wanted.
Then you make a critical error. You forget you’re asleep. You start really investing where you are, in the place, in
the people. You make some really,
really good friends, find favorite places… favorite flavors.
Chicken wings from that super cool place, the best
sandwiches of your life… regular tasting best-coffee-of-your-life because it
just was. Breakfast that was the
best because of the bike ride and scenery you experienced before. And ramen. Oh, the ramen!
You spend Sunday afternoons in a park with best friends you
barely know. They showed up
somewhere in the middle of the dream but it feels like they’ve been there far
longer. At night you eat three
dinners, because…
Cocktails here and there. They fried what? I have to try that, do you want to go? Oh, they have amazing… do you want to
try it? What about noodles? Steam buns? Foie gras? I
used to think it was disgusting, but I absolutely love it at… Let’s do drinks
on Monday. Drinks and dinner? Dinner then drinks?
It goes on and on, crazy combinations of the best flavors
you can imagine at a nearly unheard of frequency. Is it gluttony? Nah. It’s just something to do. Food and drink bring people together
and this is certainly the best time of your life.
Then a ripple happens; you can tell something isn’t right
but you’re not sure what it is.
Like something is coming.
Like a character in a movie where a bad guy or bad thing is right behind
them but they can’t see. You feel
your body start to wake.
Frantically you examine everything in your dream and you start grabbing
for everything.
Anything.
Something.
Please remember.
Don’t forget this.
When you wake up, don’t… don’t you dare forget.
And so you go on but more and more frantically. You burn brighter and brighter in more
places with more people, but you forget the wick is almost gone. Slowly the flame fades from its
brilliance as your body wakens.
You let your blurry eyes open.
The couch has become someone’s guest bed and there’s no whiskey on your
breath. You blink a few times to
be sure. This is reality, but that
dream…
…it was so real.
It feels like you became somebody, like you discovered your own self,
like you became somebody different and perhaps better. But your dreaming stopped and now
you’re here. The semi-deep
pseudo-sleep transported you from a place of deep dissatisfaction and darkness
to a place of ideals (mostly), and now you’re here. What is here? Where is here? What just happened…
The dream fades from your consciousness and the details
slip… what was it you tried so desperately to preserve? What was that? What was that dream I
had just earlier today? the other
day…
And it slips.
Further, further
further.
I know it was a good one. It was like… I was invincible. The world was my oyster and I had it with bacon and Champagne.
That’s the alarm.
I woke up before it again.
I should put on some pants and leave the house.
- --
White peony white tea
Townshends
2223 NE Alberta
Portland, OR 97211
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