Once upon a lucid dream (Thoughts on waking from a semi-deep pseudo-sleep)

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

(503) 445-6699

Knotty pasta and imaginary movies.

The other day before work, I was walking to the Starbucks around the corner and listening to something on my iPod. I wasn't really listening though. Sometimes I just like to have earbuds in so I don't feel obligated to acknowledge anyone and let low music dull the sounds of the city. This day I was particularly distracted by everything around me.

In general, I have a slight obsession with shapes and the way they look, how they interact with other shapes and the spaces that are created between them. As I type this I realize that I'm at a round table, with my rectangular-ish laptop in the center, my cell phone carefully placed to the left and my coffee to the right, both spaced perfectly between the side of my computer and the edge of the table. Equilaterality is key. Anyway, this is one my my many neuroses, but sometimes it is a fun one.

This day, the sky was a brilliant blue and there were plenty of fluffy white clouds cruising across the sky. Quite fast actually, which is why they caught my eye. What really struck me was the way all of this combined with the appearance of the buildings on New Montgomery St in San Francisco. It is a one way street and you are surrounded on three sides by buildings. Everything was so picturesque, I wondered what it would be like if my eyes were movie cameras; each blink a carefully placed cut, changing my focus between this or that like the careful artistry of a good director. Then I think about what it would be like to make movies, or rather, to be successful at making one box office smash after another, and it all goes downhill from there.  When I finally come back from my fantasies, I let my brief thoughts be what they were; a fun little moment that was exclusively mine. The camera panned up the side of an older building as clouds shot over the roof and across the street.

Sometimes, it's little moments that nobody else can possibly understand that make life so exciting. No amount of explaining can do it justice.  I felt like I was 9 years old at Disneyland and they had created a ride where you're inside a dream like in Inception and the laws of physics were obliterated as the ground before you bent up toward the sky like a dandelion on time-lapse.

Rereading that, it either sounds like I'm crazy or trying too hard to talk about a brief moment that nobody else could ever really understand. Maybe this moment only existed for me because the tangled spaghetti of neurons in my brain were overstimulated because I finally gave them a chance to do as they willed.  The following poem is not very related except it's about a moment that nobody else can understand, and it's stated in a much more elegant and concise way than my knotty pasta is capable of.

Scrambled Eggs and Whiskey 
by Hayden Carruth
 
Scrambled eggs and whiskey
in the false-dawn light. Chicago,
a sweet town, bleak, God knows,
but sweet. Sometimes. And
weren't we fine tonight?
When Hank set up that limping
treble roll behind me
my horn just growled and I
thought my heart would burst.
And Brad M. pressing with the
soft stick, and Joe-Anne
singing low. Here we are now
in the White Tower, leaning
on one another, too tired
to go home. But don't say a word,
don't tell a soul, they wouldn't
understand, they couldn't, neverin a million years, how fine,
how magnificent we were in that old club tonight.
Go outside and don't forget to look up. You just might end up in a movie.

---
Starbucks Coffee
74 New Montgomery St Ste 100
San Francisco, CA 94105

When the sun sets to the east...

In A Million Miles In a Thousand Years, Donald Miller talks about creating memorable scenes. Those moments you're likely to remember forever. Yesterday I was sitting at home and it was a very plain Sunday. Except that I had a delicious pork butt ready to be braised, nothing would be memorable. Someday, I'll probably braise a better pork butt, and that will be forgotten also. So, what to do...

I live about a mile and a half from the Golden Gate Bridge, and if I leave a window open in my bedroom I can fall asleep to the rhythmic cooing of a buoy and crashing waves. I love that. I found myself relishing in these blessings and I had an idea. I would book it over to the bridge and watch the sunset from somewhere in the middle. Brilliant... sort of. This is also where I would encounter a flaw in this "memorable scene." You see, pedestrians are only allowed on the east side of the bridge. I realized this on my way to the Bridge, but decided go anyway. The GGB is big, the ocean is big, the sun is big... I'd probably be able to see it. Except there is also a big railing; right over the sun. You can see it (because it is big), but it isn't fun because the railing gets in the way. So I decided to enjoy the walk, the freezing wind, and a great view of San Francisco. That's when I realized something that changed everything... sort of.

I like to think about perspective a lot; a lot referring both to frequency and my level of enjoyment. Sometimes I'll look at a random object and imagine it from an impossible angle, if I were inches or millimeters tall, if i were a spider on the wall, or what the world would look like if I were the thing itself. Now that I think about thinking about this, that might be something fun to write about sometime. Anyway, perspective. I looked to the east, because then there wasn't an orange vermillion railing in the way. Facing east, I saw a beautiful sunset. I realize this doesn't make a lot of sense, but it does. I promise.

When considering the sun simply, it is a GIGANTIC BALL OF LIGHT, which means the light it projects must be reflected. We see this everyday it's light outside and the last time I checked, this was everyday. So I forget about it. Until one Sunday evening when I was walking across the Golden Gate Bridge and I happened to look east and the hillsides were sparkling. Windows of buildings I couldn't see reflected such a pure golden color. The sunset to the east was not a gigantic glowing orb but tiny, fragments of light moving slowly, gently upward and becoming a thousand lightning bugs graciously making a heavenward ascent.

---

Truthfully, I've never seen a lightning bug, but I imagine that its incredible. Someday I want to sit somewhere on a hot summer night and wonder at them like I would if I was six years old; like nothing in the world mattered or existed except those glowing bugs and the jar I was going to collect them in.