beautiful, funny, sad & true

For the record, it should be noted that the following is the transcript of this morning’s dream.

I’m driving in a newish white Ford van, on a road trip with with my brother.  The van is full of our stuff and a baby that we’re taking care of for some reason.  We park the van in front of a hotel room and we unload our suitcases and go inside to our room.   I wake up in the morning to find that during the night, the baby unloaded a huge turd and smeared it all over the end of the bed, which prompted my brother to pull the white down comforter over the top of the mess and made the smearing even worse.  He’s packing up and preparing to leave.  “Gross!” I say.  “You can’t leave it like this.  You have to at least pull the sheets off so the staff knows to wash them, but you really should wash them yourself.”  He pulls off the sheets and leaves them in a pile on the floor.  We grab the baby, walk out the door and climb in the van.

We drive to a park on the east side of Portland.  There is a Mexican culture festival happening in the park, which we’re both excited to participate in.  When we arrive, the so-called festival turns out to be one little food cart selling tacos and stuff, with hundreds of people milling around the gigantic grassy park.  No events or anything are happening.  We look around and see a batting cage at the opposite corner of the park.  We are a bit let down by all this, and I tell him, “I’m out of here.  I’ll be back to pick you and the baby up later.”  I drive off in the van, never to see either of them again.

The dream’s location changes, and I’m walking around downtown Portland by myself.  I decide to walk through the basement levels of each of the buildings I come to.  This is an exhausting endeavor, and I wonder to myself if I should maybe change into a different pair of shoes.   I meet a friend along the way, and we walk together into a nice hotel and ride the elevator down to the basement.

The ‘basement’ is a circular room, dimly lit from overhead, with lots of food stalls around the edge that have bright neon signs above each of them.  We are standing in the middle of the room, spinning slowly, taking in the sights, when a couple of rough-looking men approach us and tell us we should leave now.

“We were,” I say.  “We just got a little bit turned around, is all.”  We walk away toward the staircase this time, and the men follow us.  We race up the stairs and out the front doors of the hotel.  When we get there, everyone is staring at us.  It seems they think that my friend is my brother, and that we have abandoned the baby.  The news of this has spread quickly through the city.  We decide to go ‘on the run’ until such time as the general population figures out that we’re innocent. . .much like The Fugitive.  I tell him that we should go to my van, which is parked nearby.  We run to it, climb in, and drive away.

I find myself in the lobby of the San Francisco airport, alone, exploring it.  They have redecorated it with dark red carpeting and slightly lighter red walls, which looks surprisingly good.  I see a couple of drums sitting on the floor unattended, and I walk toward them.  Someone appears from behind a swinging door, grabs the drums, and carries them back through the door to a tiny concourse for private planes.  I follow him through the door to see if he’s alone or with a band.  If he’s with a band, I want to see if they’re people I know.  I take a few steps and stop.  The drummer is catching up to his band members, and I can’t see them well enough to tell if I know them or not, so I turn back and walk through the door into the lobby.

The dream’s location changes to one of the light industrial areas near the south end of the city, and I park the van and step out onto the sidewalk.  I see a small crowd forming, and they are yelling the name (“Dan!  Dan!”) of someone I don’t recognize; a local politician or TV news personality.  I turn away from that crowd and see a musician friend from Portland, Chris R., walking down the street.  He tells me he’s playing with his full band, but that I should be ready, because he may call me up to play guitar with him.  We walk over to the venue and are hanging out backstage with his band, raiding the small food table and drinking bottled water.  I tell him about the band I saw at the airport, and ask him if he knows who they are.  He doesn’t,  naturally, since I don’t even know, and I laugh and say, “Enh, they were probably just a local cover band anyway.”  We all laugh.  Just then, the announcer gets on the PA system and proclaims that it’s time to start the show and that he’d like to introduce Chris, with no response from either Chris or the crowd.  Someone tells the announcer he should say the name “Chris Everson” instead, and he does, then turns back and asks the person, “Why?”

“That’s his rap persona,” the audience member replies, “and that’s who’s performing tonight.”

Chris puts on a bright yellow pullover rain jacket and a curly, black wig that’s bleached blond on the top.  He runs down the aisle through the middle of the audience toward the stage, and I’m right behind him, wearing a pair of yellow bike gloves.  I clap my hands together and yell, “Woooooo!” to get the crowd going, which miraculously seems to work.  I see Justin from MellowBand in the third row, so I join him there.  ChildhoodFriendJason appears in the pew behind me (the seats in the first few rows are dark wooden church pews) and I tell him to come up and join Justin and me in our row.

The dream changes again, and I’m back in Portland.  By this time, I’m definitely on the run.  Even as far away as San Francisco, I don’t feel safe.  I’ve been driving and flying for days without seeing any friendly faces, and I keep hearing news stories about the Portland men who abandoned a baby and then disappeared.  I drive and run all day, and at twilight I walk toward a community baseball field.  I sit near the back of the small bleachers, among a small crowd of other people.  I see a few friends mixed in with the crowd, and I move to sit near them.  They’ve heard the news, of course, and they seem frightened and surprised to see me, but I reassure them by telling them that not one of the allegations is true, and that I’m waiting for the metaphorical storm to pass before I come out of hiding.  My friends are relieved by this, and a couple of them hug me.  “You can’t imagine what these last few days have been like,” I tell them.  “It’s been horrible.  I want nothing more than to go back and make everything right, but I know I can’t do that yet.  I miss my brother, and I hope the baby’s okay.”  I tell them I should probably be on my way, though, because “you never know.”

It’s now ten o’clock in the morning.  I’m driving toward downtown Portland along Interstate 84 (which is called Interstate 205 in the dream) and trying to find a place to park within walking distance of the Coliseum.  I see my friend, the one with whom I’d explored the basement of the hotel downtown, walking nearby and I yell over to him to get his attention.   I tell him that I’ve seen some friends, and that they showed their support for us.  He tells me that he has good news for me; after all this time and hassle, the authorities have realized their mistake, and they’re going to just let us go.  “That’s great!” I tell him.  “Where do you want to go?”  He climbs into the van, shuts the door behind him and rolls the window down.

“How about we go downtown again and look at some more basements?”

“You’ve got yourself a deal!” I say, and I drive off in the direction of one of the bridges that will take us downtown.

I knew this was going to happen.

At eleven-thirty, I couldn’t keep my eyes open, and I decided I should give in and go to bed. I picked up and started reading a book of short stories called The Best American Non-Required Reading from a few years ago, and I got completely engrossed in it.  At one-thirty in the morning I found myself completely awake, and practically buzzing with stories.  I didn’t want to get up and turn my computer back on, because I knew that if I did, I’d start telling another of my huge childhood stories, and before long it would be four o’clock and my shoulders would be sore from hunching over in my chair, typing.  Well, that seems to be what this night has in store, so since I’m here now and so are you, it’s time for another one of those stories. I’ll give you a fair warning before I go any further.  I don’t think I’ll need to use any R-rated language, but the subject matter of this entry may make it unsafe to read at work, or it may make you uncomfortable, if reading about nudity is something that makes you uncomfortable.

There’s a certain age that kids reach, years before puberty, when curiosity gets the better of them and they want to see what the opposite sex’s naughty bits are like.  For me, that age was about nine.  The list of likely candidates was surprisingly long, since our neighborhood was full of kids the same age as my little brother and me.  A girl who lived two houses down used to come over to our place to color with crayons on the front porch.  Not on paper, mind you, but directly onto the porch.  One day she scrawled out the words BELLYBUTTON and BAGINA onto the cement.  When I asked her what a ‘bagina’ was, she pointed between her legs and said, ‘This,” and we smiled conspiratorially at each other.  My mom came outside to check on us, and noticed that we’d been drawing all over the porch.  She got mad and sent the girl home, and I had to scrub the porch clean with steel wool.  That’s when she saw what the girl had written.  She decided there and then that the girl was Trouble, and I wasn’t allowed to play with her anymore.  The girl and her family moved away not long after, actually, and I never saw her again.

The Mormon family next door had three kids.  Their son was a year older than me, and he fancied himself a comedian.  He used to say things like, “Excuse me, excuse me, excuse me, in THAT order,” and we found him hilariously clever.  He also had what was by far the coolest bike in the neighborhood; a purple chopper with stickers of flickering flames along the bottom.  All of us were dead jealous, and we used to beg him to let us ride it.  He had two younger sisters, one of whom was two years younger than me, and the other a year or two younger than my brother.  We would all hang out together often, and if the parents of one set of kids ever wondered where their kids were, it was a pretty safe bet that they were at the other house.

I found out very recently that not long before they moved from the neighborhood, their mom had suffered a severe bout of depression and considered committing suicide.  She confided in my dad, who was then and is now an Episcopal priest, and he counseled her for a short time, which may very well have saved her life.  They moved across the country to New England, but they still keep in occasional contact with my dad, who occasionally gets a note or a Christmas card from them.  Interestingly, after my parents split up, they told my dad they had a feeling that my mom would end up marrying the guy who lived across the street.  Never mind that he was already married, and that my mom was doing a bit of dating herself.  This is actually a very funny subject and will probably merit some entries of its own at some point, but suffice it to say that six or eight years later, my mom DID end up marrying the guy across the street, and twenty-some years on, they’re still married.  I’ll never know just what it was that our former neighbors noticed, or how they could have predicted that marriage.

So.  Anyway.  Back to the subject at hand.  There was a family up the street with two daughters, the older of whom was my age, and the younger a year or two behind her.  They were not the cutest girls in the neighborhood, I wouldn’t say, or the friendliest, but they were cool enough, and we did hang out with them sometimes because that’s what kids do.  I seem to remember them trying cigarettes really early, but I’m not sure why I have that particular memory.

Next to the two sisters lived a cute dark-haired girl who was a year younger than I (presumably our age gap has not changed) and had an enormous crush on me.  She would ride her bike past our house and if I was outside, she would yell things like, “I love you!” or “I’m Wonder Woman and you’re my Superman!”  She was the obvious choice when the aforementioned Curiosity hit, and she was happy to oblige one day in her bedroom.

She made it easy, actually, by asking me if I wanted to see her.  I said yes.  She lifted up her tank top slowly, left it around her shoulders for a moment, and then decided to take it off altogether.  Then she unzipped her shorts, which slid to the floor.  She shimmied her underwear down to her knees, and stood that way for a while to let me look, then smiled and said, “Now you.”  I started to take off my T-shirt, and she reached over to help me take it off.  We were in love, after all, so that little gesture was surprisingly natural and sweet, especially considering that I think we were eight and nine years old.  I sat down on her bed and took my jeans off, which left me sitting in my tighty-whities and feeling really awkward.  She was still standing in front of me, shirtless, with her shorts on the floor and her underwear at her knees, so I mustered my courage, stood up in front of her, and slid my underwear down.  We stood there for a while, a foot apart, just looking at each others’ bodies.  It never occurred to us at that point to do anything more.

We started doing that pretty regularly.  Sometimes we would take our clothes off and cuddle up in a blanket somewhere in her house.  We used to pretend we were married.  We’d be outside playing and one of us would do a big fake stretch and yawn and say, “Unnnnnnnh. . .I’m really tired.  Is it time to go to bed?”  “I think so,” the other would say, and we’d wander off into the house together, holding hands.  We got familiar enough with each other that I could probably have identified her in a lineup of naked girls with their faces hidden.  She was my first love, and her first name was the same as Angelina Jolie’s last.

The Mormon girl next door was a different story, and not a romantic one.  She showed my brother and me (and we her) in our garage.  I don’t quite remember the circumstances of how it happened, but we were outside playing baseball or something, and it was all very matter-of-fact.  We just kind of went in the garage at the same time.  I remember telling her, with my plethora of nine-year-old tactfulness, “Whoa.  Yours is pink.  [GirlUpTheStreet]’s is red.”  My brother and I pulled our shorts down at the same time and let her inspect us in the same way.  I seem to recall that my brother was still uncircumcised at the time, which, if true, meant that we gave her quite a bit of information that day.  Having accomplished our mission, the three of us pulled up the garage door and went back outside to resume whatever it was we’d been doing before that.

My brother wasn’t immune to Cupid’s charms, either, despite his tender age, but this entry is long enough that I think I’d better stop now and leave some stories for next time.  There are a few more that involve GirlUpTheStreet, too, so we all have those to look forward to.   As I predicted, it’s four o’clock in the morning now, and my eyes and brain are having difficulty focusing.

To be continued.

Childhood can be a tricky subject to write about.  There are some stories that are great, but they may not necessarily be the kind of thing you’d want everyone to know about.  Either that or they involve people who you may still be friends with, who may not be too thrilled about having those stories told.

Maybe there are ‘secret’ stories that nobody else ever knew about, like the first time you pulled your pants down with someone, or the first time someone touched you in an intimate way, but you were still young enough that it never occurred to you to go any further.  These are the kind of things my friend and I were talking about in a phone conversation today, and we were laughing like hyenas the entire time.  Since then, I started compiling a list of stories, so that I can be thinking about how to tell them in a way that isn’t just gratuitously prurient. . .or TMI.

Here’s one that should be a good sort of segue.  If you’re reading at work, or if R-rated subject matter isn’t something that interests you for whatever reason, I invite you to stop reading now, because this entry is about to take a distinct turn for the worse.

My dad used to collect porno magazines, and he had a few books as well.  He made no secret about it, and he kept them all catalogued in boxes in the bedroom.  My parents also owned the book The Joy of Sex, and as a matter of fact, I don’t remember them making a big deal about it if my little brother or I snuck a peek at that kind of stuff occasionally.  I guess their feeling was that the more we learned on our own, the less they’d have to actually teach us themselves.

My dad mostly gravitated toward soft-core stuff like Playboy, but he had a few issues of Hustler floating around, as well as a couple of harder things like High Society, all of which was not a big deal to my brother and me.  He had one that we both distinctly remember, though, which was called Shuttlecock.  The idea behind this one was that a man and a woman would be in their yard playing badminton, and before long their clothes would start coming off, by which time they’d start getting it on.  My brother and I wouldn’t have thought twice about this magazine either, ordinarily, were it not for the hilarious captions that were on a few of the full-page pictures.  They were sayings such as, ‘They would fuck for a while, then she would suck his enormous cock.’ That kind of stuff completely cracked us up.  I remember asking, as we were looking at the magazine, “Is this supposed to be sexy?”  I’ve tried to find pictures of that for a while now, because I thought it would be funny to send to my brother, but so far I’ve come up empty-handed.

My dad also had a book in his night stand [Edit:  I just now remembered the name of it:  Pissing in the Snow] that was full of antiquated naughty stories and songs.  For example, there was one about a guy who would ride around town in his horse-drawn carriage and pick up women he saw on the street.  They were just bizarre, and we couldn’t figure out A) why our dad was into them, and B) why anybody would find them arousing.  I also remember a golf-related book that was called Dead Solid Perfect [I can’t believe I remember these names!], that involved a lot of swearing and sex.   It also prominently featured these brothers who would dress like nuns, unzip their habits and pee in whichever conspicuous location they found themselves.  They’d also stop people on the street and say, “Can you point me in the direction of the nearest bar?  I’m just aching to get a hold of a nice warm dick.”  So. . .um. . .yeah.

The worst and funniest occurrence happened when I was about fourteen, long after my parents had split up, and my dad had remarried.  LittleBrother and I were visiting for the summer, and we had a friend over.  We wanted to show the antiquated naughty book to our friend, so we walked into the bedroom and said, “You have to see this.  It’s right in his night stand.  Wait. . .what’s this?  Oh, pictures.  Pictures of Dad. . .and that’s our. . .stepmom. . .AAAAAUGH!”   We had inadvertently stumbled onto their stash of polaroids, and the images burned themselves into our impressionable little brains in a way that the magazines never could.  I wish there was a way to excise them, because seeing explicit pictures of your parents having sex is too much to process.

To this day, neither of us is into porn.  I can’t speak for my brother, but I know that I can’t help but think of dumb stuff like Shuttlecock every time I think of porn, and it just makes me laugh.

The moral of all this, I suppose, is that if you have kids and you have porn, you have to either get rid of one or the other.  I’m assuming that unless you have a serious problem, you’ll choose to get rid of the porn.  If you have it around, the kids will find it, no matter where you think you’ve hidden it.  Also, it’s probably not the greatest idea to take pictures of yourselves and leave copies of them in an easily accessible place.

Hopefully this was a good read, and hopefully it falls within the parameters that I set for this little endeavor.  I’ll keep thinking of more stories that I feel I can share.  In the meantime, for God’s sake, keep the porno away from the kids.

This morning, I had what was quite possibly the stupidest dream I’ve ever had.  Thankfully, it was also one of the shortest.

I was in my kitchen making chicken-flavored ramen, but I wasn’t doing it in the way a normal person would.  I got a bowl from the cupboard, set it on the counter, and carefully placed the dry clump of ramen noodles into the bowl.  Then I opened the packet of seasoning and, also very carefully, poured the contents in a small, neat pile over the top of the noodles.  Then I went to the stove and turned on the burner underneath the teapot, which was already full of water.

As if this wasn’t a stupid dream already, I decided to inspect my handiwork with the noodles and seasoning, so I poked my nose right next to the bowl and peered into it.  Everything I saw there seemed satisfactory, so I straightened up and moved the bowl onto the stove next to the warming teapot.  It was then that I noticed (pause for dramatic effect) that. . .I had spilled a bit of the seasoning on the counter.   That’s when I got perturbed and woke up.

What are you doing to me, Brain?  Why do I have to waste my precious REM time on this ridiculous pabulum?  Not only that, Brain, but you of all brains know that I have a blog, and that I’m gonna write about this, and that you’re not gonna end up looking too good when it’s all over.  There are tens tons tens of people who will read this and agree that this is well below your usual dream standards, Brain.

I’m not threatening you, I’m just saying you can (and should!) do better than this from now on.

I just woke from a very long and vivid dream that I haven’t had before, although during a certain part of it, I felt sure that I had.  The dream was comprised of a few different stories, and I’m going to attempt to reproduce them all.  Be prepared for a journey.

* * * * *

I’m riding on a tiny motorized scooter on a rural highway past the suburbs of the suburbs of Portland.  I’m on my way home and I’m making good time, even though my scooter isn’t very powerful and not really meant to be driven on highways.  As soon as I get into the city, it morphs into a smaller version of itself and becomes a motorized bicycle.  I have to pedal, but the engine helps provide a boost.  I have a choice between riding on a fast-moving freeway or a tree-lined residential neighborhood, and I choose the neighborhood, thinking to myself, It’ll be much slower, but much safer, and also much prettier so I’ll enjoy it more.

I turn and start to ride through the neighborhood.  There is a steep hill in front of me, and I pedal mightily up it.  At the top, the road becomes a dead end.  I see a house with its side door open, and I ride my bike right into the house, past an older woman who is sitting mutely on a small chrome kitchen chair next to the window, watching a cooking show on television.  “Sorry for riding into your house,” I told her.  “Does [my adopted aunt] live here?  I could swear she used to.”

“No, she doesn’t live here,” the woman said.  “I remember you now.  You’ve been by before to ask about her.”

“Oh, okay.  Good thing I learned, huh?”  I look over at the TV, which is barely audible.

“I prefer the quiet life–” she starts, but I interrupt.

“That much is obvious.”

“–But I always watch TV.”

I tell her that I’d better get going, so that I won’t have to ride home in the dark.  We both say the usual pleasantries, and even ‘good to see you again’, and I go on my way.  I ride into a wide cul-de-sac and notice that someone driving an old green BMW is following me.  I decide to visit a house nearby in which my brother is staying and babysitting his friend’s young daughter.  I park my bike in the driveway and walk into the house, which is dark except for the kitchen, which has one bright recessed light in the ceiling above the counter.   I walk into the light and see a coffee maker with its pot full of fresh, steaming coffee.  I think about taking some, but decide against it, since it’s late at night, and I don’t know whether or not it’s caffeinated.

I walk into the living room to find my brother’s friend’s daughter (not anyone from real life) sitting on the floor, surrounded by dolls and toys of all types, as well as cameras, small medical instruments, microscopes, miniature electronics; an enormous range of things to keep her occupied.  My brother is nowhere to be seen.  I say hello to her and sit down on the floor next to her.  A bunch of cats appear in the room and walk over to us.  Being a cat lover, I try to pet each of them separately, but they all arrive at the same time, and I soon find myself covered in cats.

I reach up at one point to adjust my glasses, and I notice that an elaborate piece is missing from the left corner, and they won’t stay held together.  The piece disappears on the rug, and with all the other miscellaneous tiny electronics that are on the floor, it quickly becomes impossible to find.  The little girl thinks she finds it a couple of times, but after attempting to put the piece in my glasses, I find that they aren’t the right ones.  We spend a good deal of time getting really frustrated (I even drop a couple of F-bombs in the process, which amuses the little girl) looking for the piece.  Brother comes in, at last, and instantly kneels down to help us look, even though he doesn’t yet know what it is we’re looking for.

After the pulling back of rugs and scattering of toys and other junk, I crawl underneath the pool table and find a couple of things that seem to have been stashed there; my brother’s little black leather duffel bag, a box containing some computer software, and the piece from my glasses.  “Here it is,” I yell.  “I found it!”  I tuck the piece into my pocket for safekeeping, since it attaches with a screw but the screw is missing.   I’ll have to take it to an optical shop to get it fixed.

At this point the dream changes, and I’m walking in downtown Portland, although it looks more like certain sections of New York City, with very wide streets, busy angled intersections, and a train line running overhead, with dilapidated buildings built right next to the road.  The sidewalk on which I’m standing is extremely narrow and I need to get across the many lanes of Burnside Street.  I decide to make a dash for it, but just as I get to the middle of the street, the traffic on the angled cross street gets a green light and starts to come toward me.  There are lots of big trucks, and I have to feint left and right, in the hopes that they’ll see me and not run me down.  Finally I make it across, where the sidewalk is wide, and there’s a cash machine and a large bus stop area.  I walk over to the cash machine and see two African-American friends talking.  Having seen my maneuvers getting across the street, one is laughing and telling the other, “You ought to try some moves like that in North Portland.  They won’t be slowing down for the likes of you and me.  You’re better off paying your two-ninety-five and catching the bus!”  They both laugh.

The man who’s talking seems to be a bit of a conspiracy theorist, and he decides to include me in their conversation.  He points at the cash machine and says that everything in our society is ruled by numbers now, and that’s how the government controls us.  “Did you know that in the Communist countries, they don’t have license plates on their cars?  Really.  They don’t even have license plates.“  His friend and I take a second to ponder that.  I don’t think he’s correct, but I don’t say anything.  He launches into another similarly far-fetched conspiracy and somehow manages to tie it to the Al-Qaeda attacks on the U.S.  It’s complete nonsense, and all three of us seem to know it, but he’s fired up and animated.  “Man, I never get tired of this shit!”  He comments on the fact that the bus schedule is in a multitude of languages, including Hindi, and the conversation takes an ugly turn.

He turns around, and we follow his gaze to see a group of Indian people, men and women, standing at the far end of the bus stop area.  They’re doing absolutely nothing but waiting for the bus, so our guy’s sudden outburst is completely unwarranted.  He yells very slurringly at them, “BRUTES!”  Without a moment’s hesitation, three or four of the Indian men run over to where we are, expecting and ready for a fight.  Our guy disappears, and the two of us remaining are trying to explain to the Indians that we don’t know where that outburst came from, and that we had nothing to do with it.  Luckily they believe us, and the last of the guys even tells us in his lilting accent, “You guys are okay; I can see that.”  By this time, the women of the group have come to join the men, and there are even a handful of lepers in the group, who are quite disfigured.  One of them somewhat unnaturally moves to shake my hand, since she’s learned that’s what Americans tend to do, but I tell her, “That’s okay, you don’t have to.”  I notice that the last two fingers on her hands are extremely withered and spindly.

The dream’s location changes again, and I find myself standing by myself on a grassy hilltop next to a rocky embankment next to the ocean.  The ocean is behind me, and I’m looking down the hill into a large park.  It looks a bit like Seattle’s Gasworks Park, minus the gas works, naturally.

There is a festival happening in the park, sort of a spiritual/Renaissance/humanistic kind of thing.  (It looks very much like this picture, actually.)  The people on my little hilltop are different from the rest of the festival patrons; they’re mostly aging hippies wearing things like long white robes and floppy tie-dyed pants.  A few of the people are chanting and singing.  The hillside is covered with two-foot tall plants, and the only way to the top of the hill is along a dirt path.  Somewhere in the plants, someone has set up an elaborate system of speakers, and they are piping music up to the hillside.  The strains of the Beatles’ Tomorrow Never Knows can be heard, and people start to sing along quietly.  I’m standing by myself near the edge of the plants, and one of the old hippies walks past me, mumbling something to me that I can’t understand.

I walk down the steep path to the main part of the park and meet up with a couple of friends (from real life this time).  Everyone is dressed rather nicely for the festival.  The women are all wearing longish dresses, and the men are all wearing ties; my friends and I have our top shirt buttons undone, but many of the men are wearing full three-piece suits.  The park is in the shape of a large square, divided into a number of different areas for this festival.  There’s a Kids area, to keep them occupied while the parents are exploring the festival.  There’s a Merchandise area where people are selling all types of handmade clothing and hats.   There’s a Barbecue area with three large fire pits with spits or rotisseries or whatever cooking various kinds of meat.  There’s a Garden area, with a flagstone path and dense reeds growing around a fountain.  There’s a grassy Meditation area for sitting and reflecting.  There’s a Temple area made of stone, with tiny ziggurats delineating the edges, and there is a flaming torch in each corner.  In the very center of the park, there’s a square section paved with cement, with a number of long, flat wooden benches with no backs, crisscrossing and facing in many directions so that people can sit and eat and interact with each other.

This part of the dream, in this strange square park, starts to feel familiar, as if I’ve experienced it at least twice before.

My two friends and I are there together, but we decide that we want to explore the festival separately.  One friend disappears almost immediately.  The second decides he wants some barbecue, so he walks in that direction.  As he gets there, he looks back toward me and points me in the direction of the garden path area.  I walk past the barbecue area and the meditation area, and take a right turn at the temple before arriving at the garden path.  There are two women walking together a short distance behind me.  One of them is quite tall and dressed in a blouse and knee-length skirt, and the other is rather short and wearing a sort of Romanesque costume, with a decorative helmet (no plume or anything, just an ornately carved helmet made of silver and gold) and a short white skirt that sort of billows as she walks.  She appears to be around my age, and I’m intrigued by her.  I think to myself, I don’t want to keep having this same dream over and over again; I’m going to do something different. In the other two dreams, apparently I hadn’t gone back and talked to the woman, but I vowed to meet her this time.  Having been lost in my thoughts for a few moments, I realize that I’ve left the Garden Path area and I’m now getting close to the center of the park, with the benches.  I turn around and walk back toward the Garden.

The two women pass me, and I smile a bit as they pass.  The one in costume is indeed about my age, possibly a year or two older.  She has shoulder-length blonde hair (visible from beneath the helmet), with the merest hint of grey; very flattering for her.  “You’re lovely,” I tell her.  She smiles widely and her friend gives her an encouraging smile and walks a little bit away so that the two of us can talk.  The woman I’m interested in gives me a smile and a come-on-with-me-but-let’s-not-leave-her-out look, and turns to catch up with her friend.  We are now in the center of the park, and we walk down the grass, past and just below the corner of the eating area.  I’m a few steps behind the two of them.  “Have you eaten anything yet?” I call out.

The woman’s friend laughs with surprise and says, “Wow, look at you.  You’re just coming right over.”

“Absolutely,” I say.  “Are you two hungry?  I know a great little place around the corner.”  I gesture toward the center of the park, and both women crack up laughing.  I walk toward the woman I’m interested in.

She removes her helmet and shakes out her hair, while giving me a slightly quizzical look, but she decides to trust me.  “Okay,”  she answers with a smile.  “I can’t believe I’m doing this, but. . .okay.”

I offer her my right arm, which she takes, and gesture with my left arm up the hill toward the middle of the park, so that the three of us can sit for a while and get acquainted with each other.

* * * * *

I should really have dreams like that every night.  It was so beautiful and strange; just the way I like ’em to be.  I should also be that effortlessly confident and easy-going in real life.  Who knows. . .maybe I already am.