One day I had a dream. A dream so real that I can't escape it.
It is warm when the din of crashing waves begins to overtake me, my synapses no longer able to resist the tug of my internal off switch, a switch that has become less reliable as the years pass. My last thought before the tide sweeps me under is one of abject loneliness, loneliness that delivers blow after blow as my body drowns in sleep.
I awake to a rain shower, cold and dreary. I am sitting in silence in a coffeehouse with a friend, watching out the windows as torrents of liquid pelt the saturated ground without mercy. We comment on how lovely a blue sky, or even a wink of the sun would be.
But the sky is an angry grey, threatening nothing but more cold rains. And that is exactly what comes.
Thoughts skitter fleetingly through my mind, barely skimming the surface, like water bugs in vernal pond. I don't remember them. They are as fleeting a hummingbird's time on a flower. They are as fluid as the rain that roars down the road's edge like a nascent river.
But the sky is an angry grey, threatening nothing but more cold rains. And that is exactly what comes.
Thoughts skitter fleetingly through my mind, barely skimming the surface, like water bugs in vernal pond. I don't remember them. They are as fleeting a hummingbird's time on a flower. They are as fluid as the rain that roars down the road's edge like a nascent river.
I flash to a different time, a different place, someplace in my future and past. It's a bar of some kind, and beside me on a tall barstool sits a strikingly beautiful woman, the kind that only appear in dreams. Her face is shrouded in the fog of my mind. I cannot see it, but I know it is sublimely brilliant all the same. We talk and smile and drink. But mostly we talk. And we wile the evening away with delicious conversation. The discussion satiates us, and deep in my dreams we hatch a plan to meet again.
And we do, for something like a week. We become closer and closer in this foreign world so antithetical to my high desert home, nestled in the baked-dry mountains. The sparse flora of my world has learned to suffer from paralyzing droughts, the kind that would put down a mature redwood in less than a year.
In my dreamland, rain is the rule, not the exception.
My mind awakes in a start, sweat coursing rivulets down my chest, my breathing rapid and shallow. "Damn," I think, "If that was a dream, why do I feel like a nightmare hides just beneath the veneer?"
I feel the comforter wrapped around me and it's soaked like my body, but right now I'm just trying to get my heart under control. I have a moment of fear, thinking my chest may be calling the final timeout of the game. And just as I'm about to pull the comforter down and awake, my mind and pulse calm.
And as they do, I try to recollect my fantastical dream. But all I can pull forth is a wraith of a picture that floats tantalizingly in my mind's eye. I dreamed of a woman. I know that. Her name? I think maybe Katy. Maybe Kris. Something like that. It doesn't matter. I just want to sleep. I can live without Katy/Kris in the next round. If she wakes me like that, I'd prefer to sleep the sleep of the dreamless.
I settle my thoughts further. The comforter still wrapped about me, too hot, but me too tired to change my accommodations.
I have nightmares when I try to sleep in heat, like at my parents' house, in Nebraska, where the thermostat rarely goes south of 75. In the winter, that's not a problem. I just open a window and awake in my little room in the morning almost able to see my breath. In the summer, there is no respite - only more sleepless nights. Unless I stay with my brother, Doug, or my sister, Gwen. I have gotten to doing that more often as my parents grow older, the thermostat seemingly rising with their age.
Before I go under the waves a second timw, I hear a haunting melody. And it goes like this:
I fall into a fitful slumber, mayhap a reawakening of the lucid dreams of my young adulthood. The ineluctable dream continues with the force of a tsunami. The best place to be is deep in the sea of dreams, away from the waves. So I dive deeper.
And in a moment's time that could be months, I have returned to the otherworld, where rains are as common as sun in the desert, where browns become verdant greens, where trees tower and water roars.
And there she is again - the beautiful woman. We have become a couple in the faraway land in the faraway place in the waves of my mind. We share each night together in a perfect union. And in the dream, we even visit the ocean, but it is not the Southern California ocean that I am acquainted with. Rather it is like a scene of the Northwest or the Northeast or somewhere distant that I know not. The air is brisk. The wind is restless and whispers a sonorous note. Rocky islands dot the coastline as far as the eye can see. The trees behind don't rise like giants, but they are not the palms of which I am familiar.
The striking woman and I share this moment of bliss, sitting near the ocean's turbulent waters feeling only placidity and happiness. In her embrace, and she in mine, we are both where we should be. It is a perfect marriage of natural and human forces, both holding in them inexplicable power.
I know that I have been with her longer than this ocean tryst, but this is where my dream wants me to be, and I am a hostage to its whims.
I have another memory before I awake, this one equally lovely. We are driving through thick forests singing songs that come on the radio. Neither of us will be confused with a future front for a band, but we do a pretty decent job. Then come the haunting lyrics:
And if, you don't love me now
But in that moment, I am as happy as a man can be. I am in love, the kind of love I desire to have.
And in the instant of unbounded joyousness, I awake a second time. It's a reprise of my first. I am sweat-soaked and lost. Why is this happening to me? But there is no answer; there is only me alone. I lie in the dark, tired of dreams of a beautiful woman who is no more mine than the sea or the sky. They, like her, are only meant for me to be gazed upon, their beauty admired.
As I ponder, my fatigue overwhelms my curiosity and I begin my descent anew. The waves are again pulling me under.
And I fall to sleep for a third time.
My mind's eye has placed me in Las Vegas, where again I await the striking woman. I am at the airport - and yet I have never been to the airport in Las Vegas. But I don't have time to consider this because there she is again, so beautiful. Her eyes are like the ocean, a grey-blue that you can't help but fall into.
I fall.
I muse as to how she made it here. There is the airport, of course, but I can't piece it together any more than I can a 1000-piece puzzle of blue sky. I haven't the patience for these types of things, plus I know that our time is precious, so consideration of the esoteric is the last thing with which I want to occupy myself. It is good enough that we are one again.
We do not stay in Vegas; rather we tour my world.
And I think that time is speeding up.
We head north first and go to a place that is equal parts of our separate galaxies. The trees are huge as in hers; the ground is dry as in mine. But the feelings we share do not change.
In the blink of an eye, she is at my house. I whisper "Kim" to her, convinced that I have finally gotten that part right. No matter, it is the time together in my part of the universe that is important. I can reassemble the details later. Right now, I feel the clock is accelerating at an accelerating rate. I have to treasure these moments. The time is like a microcosm of a person's life: it increases in speed with the each year passed until soon it is a runaway train - something that can't be stopped by natural forces.
Before I can even begin to soak up the moment, it is ending. I am taking her to the airport where she will bid me goodbye.
Along the way, somewhere past Kingman, AZ, in the barren ruin with a strip of pavement leading to Las Vegas bisecting it, we again take to singing the song that has now become our anthem:
From this point, the future is indeterminate. We must forge our paths so that somehow they become one.
There is a sweet goodbye at the airport replete with tears.
Then the dream ends.
I wake up. But only for a moment
Then I am fade for a final time.
And the nightmare begins.
This one is different. I drive to the faraway land, which I realize is Southern Oregon, just north of Ashland. The twenty hours on the road leave me confused and vulnerable. I am beyond completely gassed. The only thing I have left in my tank is fumes, and those can't take me to the next fuel station.
Perhaps this is the fuse that ignites a series of events that end the dream and transmogrify it into an ugly ending that I could not have guessed, not in all those miles and hours of driving when one goes through thousands of possibilities: great, good, unsatisfying and bad.
The moment I am greeted I feel a sea change difference. Sure, I am beyond exhausted, but Kim proffers me a luke-warm welcome. This in contrast to everything we ever were - the love, the fun, the outrageous joy of each moment.
We spend Christmas together, but the mirth and warmth took a detour somewhere on that long drive. We argue - a first. Then again and again.
And again.
One final argument leads to the decision to leave in the late of the night and try to make Arizona..
I awake again. Sweat soaked, I pull the comforter down from my face. Arc sodium lights greet my eyes with their hideous yellow light. They outline an island of grey pavement with a building in the center, resembling a lighthouse to the man on a lifeboat. After waking up from so many dreams, I realize that this is far too real to even resemble a dream. It is my new reality.
I'm parked at the Elkhorn Southbound Rest Area, just outside of Sacramento. The engine is idling, the heater pouring out hot air, enough that the car is a sauna.
And I remember the argument that ended our shared dream and led to this little nightmare some five to seven hours out of Oregon. That's how far I had driven before I realized that I had become a danger on the road, and thus pulled over.
I step out of the car, throw on a hat, loosen my joints and stagger to the rest stop bathroom. My mind is flooding with thoughts, reminding me of that first day I had "met" Kim at Noble Coffee Roasting. Our first meeting was via Tinder, but it lent a touch of wonder to a day that was otherwise less than.
I start the car and head south.
I'm going home...alone.
Afterword
I wrote this about a wonderful women I met in Ashland, Oregon, and whom I dated for six months. I frequently wonder how something so good could fall apart so fast. But that drive to Medford seems now like the beginning of the end. The drive back was simply the final chapter.
Love is a capricious being. It gives so much, but it also bites. And sometimes it savages.
I wonder frequently about Kim, and how it all went so bad so fast. The pain is gone, but the questions do haunt my nights. Was it me? Had she found someone else? These things I will never know, but that is not so great a loss to endure.
I think back on my time with Kimmie and smile for all of the times she made my heart feel so complete, so happy.
It is good; it is enough ~Black Elk of the Lakota Nation
I think that every good love has at least one song attached to it. For Kimmie and me it was "The Chain," by Fleetwood Mac.
It's ends with these lyrics .
And we do, for something like a week. We become closer and closer in this foreign world so antithetical to my high desert home, nestled in the baked-dry mountains. The sparse flora of my world has learned to suffer from paralyzing droughts, the kind that would put down a mature redwood in less than a year.
In my dreamland, rain is the rule, not the exception.
My mind awakes in a start, sweat coursing rivulets down my chest, my breathing rapid and shallow. "Damn," I think, "If that was a dream, why do I feel like a nightmare hides just beneath the veneer?"
I feel the comforter wrapped around me and it's soaked like my body, but right now I'm just trying to get my heart under control. I have a moment of fear, thinking my chest may be calling the final timeout of the game. And just as I'm about to pull the comforter down and awake, my mind and pulse calm.
And as they do, I try to recollect my fantastical dream. But all I can pull forth is a wraith of a picture that floats tantalizingly in my mind's eye. I dreamed of a woman. I know that. Her name? I think maybe Katy. Maybe Kris. Something like that. It doesn't matter. I just want to sleep. I can live without Katy/Kris in the next round. If she wakes me like that, I'd prefer to sleep the sleep of the dreamless.
I settle my thoughts further. The comforter still wrapped about me, too hot, but me too tired to change my accommodations.
I have nightmares when I try to sleep in heat, like at my parents' house, in Nebraska, where the thermostat rarely goes south of 75. In the winter, that's not a problem. I just open a window and awake in my little room in the morning almost able to see my breath. In the summer, there is no respite - only more sleepless nights. Unless I stay with my brother, Doug, or my sister, Gwen. I have gotten to doing that more often as my parents grow older, the thermostat seemingly rising with their age.
Before I go under the waves a second timw, I hear a haunting melody. And it goes like this:
"Listen to the wind blow, watch the sun rise
Running in the shadows, damn your love, damn your lies"
I can't find time to remember the artist or the song. The tide is ebbing again. I'm being pulled under.
When I was in my twenties, I went through a period of lucid dreams, also known as sleep paralysis. The best way I can describe it is that I fell asleep while my mind stayed fully awake. An ocean of sound began in my outermost limbs and roared inward with a hurricane of sound, paralyzing my body as it coursed up my legs and arms towards center mast. I felt my joints lock; I felt the thunder of sound move to my core. If it sounds horrible, it wasn't. In fact, it was the most peaceful feeling I have ever experienced in all of my sleeps in all of my years. I stood outside my body and experienced all these feelings with a mixture of overwhelming calm and overpowering fright. The calm was borne from the feeling of watching myself sleep peacefully while still having control over my thoughts. But there was a haunting whisper in my ear: "You are dead now; enjoy your forever slumber!" No matter the perfect tranquility, the fear that I was dead made me fight to the surface of wakefulness, only to be stunned that I had fought through the rip current from my peaceful lacuna to the quiet dark of an Ohio night.
That was thirty years ago, though.
Fast forward to now.
When I was in my twenties, I went through a period of lucid dreams, also known as sleep paralysis. The best way I can describe it is that I fell asleep while my mind stayed fully awake. An ocean of sound began in my outermost limbs and roared inward with a hurricane of sound, paralyzing my body as it coursed up my legs and arms towards center mast. I felt my joints lock; I felt the thunder of sound move to my core. If it sounds horrible, it wasn't. In fact, it was the most peaceful feeling I have ever experienced in all of my sleeps in all of my years. I stood outside my body and experienced all these feelings with a mixture of overwhelming calm and overpowering fright. The calm was borne from the feeling of watching myself sleep peacefully while still having control over my thoughts. But there was a haunting whisper in my ear: "You are dead now; enjoy your forever slumber!" No matter the perfect tranquility, the fear that I was dead made me fight to the surface of wakefulness, only to be stunned that I had fought through the rip current from my peaceful lacuna to the quiet dark of an Ohio night.
That was thirty years ago, though.
Fast forward to now.
I fall into a fitful slumber, mayhap a reawakening of the lucid dreams of my young adulthood. The ineluctable dream continues with the force of a tsunami. The best place to be is deep in the sea of dreams, away from the waves. So I dive deeper.
And in a moment's time that could be months, I have returned to the otherworld, where rains are as common as sun in the desert, where browns become verdant greens, where trees tower and water roars.
And there she is again - the beautiful woman. We have become a couple in the faraway land in the faraway place in the waves of my mind. We share each night together in a perfect union. And in the dream, we even visit the ocean, but it is not the Southern California ocean that I am acquainted with. Rather it is like a scene of the Northwest or the Northeast or somewhere distant that I know not. The air is brisk. The wind is restless and whispers a sonorous note. Rocky islands dot the coastline as far as the eye can see. The trees behind don't rise like giants, but they are not the palms of which I am familiar.
The striking woman and I share this moment of bliss, sitting near the ocean's turbulent waters feeling only placidity and happiness. In her embrace, and she in mine, we are both where we should be. It is a perfect marriage of natural and human forces, both holding in them inexplicable power.
I know that I have been with her longer than this ocean tryst, but this is where my dream wants me to be, and I am a hostage to its whims.
I have another memory before I awake, this one equally lovely. We are driving through thick forests singing songs that come on the radio. Neither of us will be confused with a future front for a band, but we do a pretty decent job. Then come the haunting lyrics:
And if, you don't love me now
You will never love me again
I can still hear you saying
You would never break the chain (Never break the chain
I can still hear you saying
You would never break the chain (Never break the chain
And if you don't love me now
You will never love me again
I can still hear you saying
You would never break the chain (Never break the chain)
We belt out the lyrics in cheerful spirits and harmony, though the message of the song is about neither. You will never love me again
I can still hear you saying
You would never break the chain (Never break the chain)
But in that moment, I am as happy as a man can be. I am in love, the kind of love I desire to have.
And in the instant of unbounded joyousness, I awake a second time. It's a reprise of my first. I am sweat-soaked and lost. Why is this happening to me? But there is no answer; there is only me alone. I lie in the dark, tired of dreams of a beautiful woman who is no more mine than the sea or the sky. They, like her, are only meant for me to be gazed upon, their beauty admired.
As I ponder, my fatigue overwhelms my curiosity and I begin my descent anew. The waves are again pulling me under.
And I fall to sleep for a third time.
My mind's eye has placed me in Las Vegas, where again I await the striking woman. I am at the airport - and yet I have never been to the airport in Las Vegas. But I don't have time to consider this because there she is again, so beautiful. Her eyes are like the ocean, a grey-blue that you can't help but fall into.
I fall.
I muse as to how she made it here. There is the airport, of course, but I can't piece it together any more than I can a 1000-piece puzzle of blue sky. I haven't the patience for these types of things, plus I know that our time is precious, so consideration of the esoteric is the last thing with which I want to occupy myself. It is good enough that we are one again.
We do not stay in Vegas; rather we tour my world.
And I think that time is speeding up.
We head north first and go to a place that is equal parts of our separate galaxies. The trees are huge as in hers; the ground is dry as in mine. But the feelings we share do not change.
In the blink of an eye, she is at my house. I whisper "Kim" to her, convinced that I have finally gotten that part right. No matter, it is the time together in my part of the universe that is important. I can reassemble the details later. Right now, I feel the clock is accelerating at an accelerating rate. I have to treasure these moments. The time is like a microcosm of a person's life: it increases in speed with the each year passed until soon it is a runaway train - something that can't be stopped by natural forces.
Before I can even begin to soak up the moment, it is ending. I am taking her to the airport where she will bid me goodbye.
Along the way, somewhere past Kingman, AZ, in the barren ruin with a strip of pavement leading to Las Vegas bisecting it, we again take to singing the song that has now become our anthem:
And if, you don't love me now
You will never love me again
I can still hear you saying
You would never break the chain (Never break the chain)
You will never love me again
I can still hear you saying
You would never break the chain (Never break the chain)
And if you don't love me now
You will never love me again
I can still hear you saying
You would never break the chain (Never break the chain)
You will never love me again
I can still hear you saying
You would never break the chain (Never break the chain)
From this point, the future is indeterminate. We must forge our paths so that somehow they become one.
There is a sweet goodbye at the airport replete with tears.
Then the dream ends.
I wake up. But only for a moment
Then I am fade for a final time.
And the nightmare begins.
This one is different. I drive to the faraway land, which I realize is Southern Oregon, just north of Ashland. The twenty hours on the road leave me confused and vulnerable. I am beyond completely gassed. The only thing I have left in my tank is fumes, and those can't take me to the next fuel station.
Perhaps this is the fuse that ignites a series of events that end the dream and transmogrify it into an ugly ending that I could not have guessed, not in all those miles and hours of driving when one goes through thousands of possibilities: great, good, unsatisfying and bad.
The moment I am greeted I feel a sea change difference. Sure, I am beyond exhausted, but Kim proffers me a luke-warm welcome. This in contrast to everything we ever were - the love, the fun, the outrageous joy of each moment.
We spend Christmas together, but the mirth and warmth took a detour somewhere on that long drive. We argue - a first. Then again and again.
And again.
One final argument leads to the decision to leave in the late of the night and try to make Arizona..
I awake again. Sweat soaked, I pull the comforter down from my face. Arc sodium lights greet my eyes with their hideous yellow light. They outline an island of grey pavement with a building in the center, resembling a lighthouse to the man on a lifeboat. After waking up from so many dreams, I realize that this is far too real to even resemble a dream. It is my new reality.
I'm parked at the Elkhorn Southbound Rest Area, just outside of Sacramento. The engine is idling, the heater pouring out hot air, enough that the car is a sauna.
And I remember the argument that ended our shared dream and led to this little nightmare some five to seven hours out of Oregon. That's how far I had driven before I realized that I had become a danger on the road, and thus pulled over.
I step out of the car, throw on a hat, loosen my joints and stagger to the rest stop bathroom. My mind is flooding with thoughts, reminding me of that first day I had "met" Kim at Noble Coffee Roasting. Our first meeting was via Tinder, but it lent a touch of wonder to a day that was otherwise less than.
I start the car and head south.
I'm going home...alone.
Afterword
I wrote this about a wonderful women I met in Ashland, Oregon, and whom I dated for six months. I frequently wonder how something so good could fall apart so fast. But that drive to Medford seems now like the beginning of the end. The drive back was simply the final chapter.
Love is a capricious being. It gives so much, but it also bites. And sometimes it savages.
I wonder frequently about Kim, and how it all went so bad so fast. The pain is gone, but the questions do haunt my nights. Was it me? Had she found someone else? These things I will never know, but that is not so great a loss to endure.
I think back on my time with Kimmie and smile for all of the times she made my heart feel so complete, so happy.
It is good; it is enough ~Black Elk of the Lakota Nation
I think that every good love has at least one song attached to it. For Kimmie and me it was "The Chain," by Fleetwood Mac.
It's ends with these lyrics .
🎼 Listen to the wind blow, down comes the night
Running in the shadows, damn your love, damn your lies
Break the silence, damn the dark, damn the light
Running in the shadows, damn your love, damn your lies
Break the silence, damn the dark, damn the light
And if you don't love me now
You will never love me again
I can still hear you saying
You would never break the chain (Never break the chain)
You will never love me again
I can still hear you saying
You would never break the chain (Never break the chain)
And if you don't love me now
You will never love me again
I can still hear you saying
You would never break the chain (Never break the chain)
You will never love me again
I can still hear you saying
You would never break the chain (Never break the chain)
