beautiful, funny, sad & true

Last night’s dream took a while to get going, but it ended in a classic BFST way.

I am sitting in the back seat of a van in the driveway of my childhood home in Yakima with my two estranged stepsisters and one’s husband, drinking a concoction that the younger stepsister made from lemonade, vodka and whiskey or something.  We are sitting and talking awkwardly, and the husband calls me by a different name, so I say automatically, “You mean Todd.”  He gives me a little laugh and shrugs it off.   I set down my mostly full glass, stand up, climb out of the van, and walk across the front yard into the house.

As soon as I get inside, the dream’s location changes to that of a busy office setting.  I duck into the bathroom, pull down my pants, and start to. . .um. . .go Number Two.  As I’m doing that, the door starts to open.  It’s C, one of my real-life friends, so I tell him, “Hey, I’ll be out in a second.”  I reach over to lock the door, but the lock is broken.  I stand by the door, pants down, and try to  maneuver the door into position in such a way that it will latch and lock.  C says, “Oh yeah, I think they said something about the lock being messed up.  Here let me just [he opens the door enough to reach through] try and jimmy it.”

I say, “Just. . .hang on.  I’ll be done pretty quick.  Let me finish up in here first.”  C ignores me and continues to fidget with the door.  Pretty soon, there are five or six people walking around in the large bathroom, which turns out to be sort of a hallway that leads elsewhere in the building; a very high-traffic area normally.  I tug at my pants and tell everyone that I’m almost done, and that they should be patient for just another minute.  I finally get them corralled out the door, when a co-worker of mine runs into the room, smiling mischievously, knowing that she’s consciously disturbing me.

I make a sort of growling noise under my breath, and she asks, “What?”  She has her hand over her mouth, and is clearly trying not to laugh, which makes me totally furious.

I can’t contain my anger anymore.  “I’M WIPING MY ASS, EVERYONE,” I say loudly and exasperatedly.  “GO AWAY.”

She runs out the door, and I wake up, laughing at another crazy ending to another crazy dream.

In no particular order (Actually, they’re in reverse chronological order):

veni, vedi, vici

not quite there yet

Ethiopian wedding

Hydrox

George Harrison

beach trip

halfway through

the mental game of music

synchronicity

still don’t smoke

quite a group

lovely day in Seattle

Amen

happy as we are, thank you

Silver Falls

Port Townsend trip

dream girl

non-nostalgic nostalgia

wedding, play, garden, hike, learning

Of Yakima and Feces

the Oriental Chicken

Catherine Burton (Bunton?), R.I.P.

Oceanside

mona lisa

lots of big musical news, and links galore

a very coherent narrative

what if it is?

apples and bananas

cello scrotum

by way of example

flirtation versus pedantry

communication breakdown

Enjoy!

Today I was supposed to record with IrishBand, but Singer was sick and losing his voice, so he had to cancel.  That left me with a couple of hours to kill before our band meeting tonight, so I took the opportunity to enjoy this beautiful fall day and went for a hike in Macleay Park.

I thought about taking my camera, because after a few months out of the habit, I’ve started taking it everywhere with me again.  The reason I didn’t today is because I didn’t want to carry it on the hike, and I’ve taken it to Macleay before, and while the park is supremely beautiful, the pictures have never been compelling.  So I left it at home, much to my later dismay.

When I arrived at the park, there was a guy who was practicing his sword and staff skills, which was surprisingly cool to watch.  I’ve never been into it myself, but I’m fascinated with all that SCA stuff.  There was a guy I knew in Yakima who used to make his own huge swords and armor and everything, and go out into Randall Park and practice fighting.  He was a little too into it, as a matter of fact, and he was a little bit scary.   The guy I saw today just looked cool, and was doing parries and lunges.  He was just finishing up as I was walking by, though.

I hiked a mile or so up the trail, to the dilapidated Stone House, and when I got there, a family was shooting a movie with their little digital video camera.  I sat on a log and watched them for about twenty minutes, while they filmed the last few scenes.  They were in full costume; the princess, the witch, the adventurer, the sorcerer, and the two ghouls.  I arrived just in time to see the ghouls and the witch get killed by two different spells, like this:  “Abracadabra is what I say, and I want you to go away!”  The little princess was about four years old, and when she yelled, “Save me!  Save me!  Save me!” I have to admit that it was pretty dang cute.  The best part, however, was watching the dad be a director for the kids.  It seemed like he had some sort of video experience, or at least he was acting as if he did.  It was really a fun thing to see.  I had my phone with me, so I was able to take a couple of pictures, but they both suck.

See what I mean?  Oh, how I wish I had brought my camera.  I learned my lesson, that’s for sure.  After they finished filming, I thanked the guy for letting us all hang out and watch them (because a handful of other people joined me on the log), and asked him if this film had a name.  “Indiana Johnson and the Princess in Peril,” he replied.  Sounds awesome, and hopefully it’ll be coming soon to a YouTube near you.   Let’s keep our eyes open.

Tonight is a meeting with IrishBand, followed by a happy hour at Kell’s, where they have an open Irish music jam session that Singer and I have been to see a time or two before, and it’s really great.  It would be fun to bring my cello down there sometime, but space is at such a premium in there, and the cello would make it pretty cramped.  There are lots of violinists, and mandolinists, and flutists, and even an accordionist who played for a little while.  Cello would totally rule with a group like that.  Who knows, I may bring it in at some point.

Anyway. . .signing off.

I had a dream this morning which was so long that I’m a bit fuzzy on the details, but the entire first half was exactly the same as one I’ve had before.  I met a guy who was in a traveling music show of some sort, and he was really trying hard to recruit me for it, but I didn’t get a good vibe from him, so I decided not to join.  I liked the idea of the group, however, so I decided to pack my stuff into a van and take a road trip for a week or two that would follow the group’s route, in order to watch a few of their live performances.  Each time, the guy asked me why I didn’t just join the group.  I always shrugged him off by saying I was too busy, or some such nonsense.  He always saw through the excuses, and said, “Yes, but here you are already, anyway.”

That’s where the recurrent nature of the dream ended and the new section began.  After leaving the group’s trail, I decided to drive to Washington state to visit my mom.  I had invited a girl from high school (though I didn’t speak to her or communicate with her in any way; I just somehow knew that I’d invited her) to meet me there by taking DogBus, and for some inexplicable reason, once I arrived at my mom’s house, she was there.

In real life, I didn’t know her.  Her initials were KT, and she played clarinet in the band for a while, before becoming a cheerleader.  All that is just back story, anyway, because even in the dream I didn’t get a chance to talk to her.  She always seemed to be busy in other areas of the house, or talking with my mom, who was having a gigantic yard sale at the time and so KT was helping her with that.   I was outside in the garage, where I found a closet full of my old clothes, particularly jeans.  There was an older woman friend of my mom’s who was also helping by watching the table full of clothes in the garage, and by taking money.  I went in and rummaged through the closet full of my stuff and found some jeans that were cool and that would still fit, but many that would not.   I separated them out – this pair was too small, this pair was out of style, this pair was acid-washed green – and then found a funny vest hanging there, which I pulled out to look at.  It was very light yellow, with pictures of fishermen embroidered on the front.  I laughed and held it up for the woman to see.  “Sometimes my mom used to bring things home for me to try,” I said, “but this clearly wasn’t one of them.”  I showed her its small size, and the ribbing through the chest, which meant that it was a girl’s shirt.  “I’m not a teenage girl,” I said, laughing, “and I wasn’t, even back then.”

The woman responded gruffly, “No one’s ever told me that before.”  She took the little vest, folded it for display, and set it on the table next to her.  Okay, I thought, I guess that conversation’s over.

I decided to go look for KT and my mom, and walked back toward the main part of the house, and that’s when I woke up.

This is my all-time favorite dream, which I had when I was eighteen years old.  I found it written out on an old floppy disk, along with my other two favorite dreams, George Harrison and The Organ Man.  I’m sure you’ll enjoy all three of them.

* * * * *

It was a beautiful spring day, and I was sitting on my old Honda motorcycle outside a small outdoor shopping center in Yakima with a railroad theme.  It was one of the few historical landmarks in town, and there was a great little ice cream shop there, with a cute server girl who was a friend of mine.

I was holding a bag of Hydrox cookies in a plastic grocery bag that was dangling from my handlebars.  It’s amazing what one can accomplish when one has no other options.  I’ve held many a bag of groceries from the handlebars of that motorcycle, let me tell you.  As I was looking left and right, scanning traffic to make a turn from the parking lot onto Yakima Avenue, two early teenage kids ran by and attempted to snatch my bag, but since the handles of the bag were wrapped around the handlebars, they did not succeed.  I was not amused.  “I’d better hide these,” I resolved to myself, tucking the bag inside my brown leather jacket and zipping it up all the way.

I revved the engine a bit and looked to my left at the oncoming traffic, where I saw a small crowd of maybe ten or fifteen people milling around on the sidewalk in front of the Oriental Garden restaurant about a block away.  They appeared to be looking for someone.  A middle-aged guy turned and looked directly at me for an unnerving second, then pointed me out and yelled to his cohorts, “There he is!”  They all turned and started to run in my direction.  “Let’s get him!” someone shouted.  Not being one to suffer hostile mobs gladly, I revved up the motorcycle and turned right onto Yakima Avenue, away from the crowd. Looking across the street, I saw the two kids running in the same direction I was going, and one of them had a bag of Oreo cookies in his hand, which was startlingly similar to my own bag of Hydrox. “Ah,” I realized, in a flash of inspiration.  “They must think I’m those kids.”

Suddenly the motorcycle became extremely sluggish.  When I turned the throttle, the engine revved slightly but dipped immediately afterwards.  It eventually came to a stop just short of where the kids were running, and I had to resort to the time-honored ambulatory means of escape.  The kids saw me approaching and, thinking I was chasing them, took off running even faster.  I ran across the street to the far side of Yakima Avenue.

Glancing over my shoulder to where the crowd had been only seconds before, I noticed that they were now crossing the street toward me.  I tried to run but was unable to.  I tried to walk fast, but was pathetically unable to manage that either.   Panicked now, with the crowd coming ever closer, I tried to coax my leaden legs to get me away, but it was to no avail.  The menacing mob closed in around me.  They pushed me to the ground and, despite my protestations, poked and prodded me from all sides, trying to unzip my jacket and remove my precious cargo. . .the Hydrox cookies.

Lying on my back, with the crowd of people on top of me, digging their fingers into my jacket, I finally relented, salvaging the vestiges of my dignity in the only way I could.  I fought off the offending hands with one hand, and unzipped my jacket with the other, slowly revealing the telltale blue and yellow bag.  I shouted at the crowd incredulously, desperately, gesturing frantically at the label on the bag with my free hand.  “They’re only Hydrox!  They’re only Hydrox!”