Dream Log: July 10, 2001

I am driving Winston, the Toyota Previa I traded in last July. I park him behind Buzz, in the same place I always parked him when I lived in Cincinnati. In my dream I do not live there anymore. I've driven to Cinci from Nashville just to see the looks on people's faces when I come in. I feel quite mischievous.

I walk around the block and into Buzz. The stairs have been removed and the counter has been lengthened. The inside resembles Cafe Coco. I am amused at Buzz's attempts to yuppify. Buzz got bricks through the windows when the Cinci riots raged. Buzz will never be upscale.
Jon and Dreamy Steven are still working the counter. I feel good about this.

I order coffee and forget about their 'fill your own damn cup' policy. But I do not feel stupid for forgetting this. And I do not put anything in the tip jar.
I stand outside on the sidewalk, drinking my coffee and watching people. I see familiar faces. I do not greet them. I left them behind for a reason. The only person I talk to is Matt Macy. I am very glad to see him.

I look around and gape at the things that have happened to the area surrounding Buzz. Martin Luther King Boulevard has been turned into some kind of porn amusement park. Skinny, spacklefaced bottled blondes stand at the entrance, feigning interest in each other and the park guests. I think that they might be attractive if they were old enough to have some womanly hips. Across the street, The UC campus is full of brothels and smuthouses. There is a sign saying that You Must Be 21 to Enter This Street. This makes perfect sense to me. I stand there wondering if I could walk around in there without being asked for proof of age, but I don't bother trying.

A woman comes up and taps me on the shoulder. It is Scottie Semler, who I knew from band in high school. She was such a girlygirl, but now she's a bull dyke. She tells me that she has something very important to tell me inside. I go back into the cafe and ask her what she wants. She tells me that Angie Strebel is there, and she is looking for me. My blood gets cold and my belly drops. I buy another cup of coffee, trying not to panic. Angie comes in the door, looking even more cracked out than she used to.

I nonchalantly walk out the door, ignoring her, and start walking quickly to my car. She follows. My pace picks up. So does hers. I begin to run, knowing all the while that if I run, she will too. And then she will catch me. Running is a mistake. But I am scared.

She does catch me, and punches me hard in the face. I yank my body out of her grasp and keep running. I lock myself into Winston, panting, and stare into her bony little pig face smooshed against the window.

I wake up.

The dream resembled a Jim Hensen film. It was the second one I had but I can't really seem to remember what came first...

I was part of this traveling caravan of strange, unheard of creatures and people. We had a large home that we carried with us, and we were on a journey through a huge maze. It was a race, and we were racing against another caravan of strange, unheard of people and creatures, only they were the good ones and we were the bad ones. They were all in white, and we were all in dark earth tones. The just of the story is: We caught the good group and imprisoned them, making them slave for us, cooking and avigating our way through the maze.

All of a sudden, the sky, which until this time had been a constant deep dark gray, opened up to reveal a white-yellow gleaming color (I suppose it was heaven), and the rays of light shone upon the good guys as they slaved away under our command. Suddenly they were exhaulted, and flying above our heads and into the hole in the sky. Music was playing much like the heavenly hosts mentioned in the Bible. They shone bright as the sun as they were pulled into the sky, it was really beautiful.

Once this was done and all the good guys were gone, the jig was up, and my caravan sat on the grass awaiting further instruction. It was as if a movie had ended and the good guys won and then instead of stopping after the conflict was over, the film went on. We sat and waited, rejoicing that our tedious journey was over, when all of a one of the many black discs that were in constand orbit through the air came down and landed, and the commander stepped out. The leader of the caravan (whom coincidently is the Shift Manager at Whole Foods, where I work) stepped forward to receive instruction, and was informed that when the maze had been built, there was no intention of it ever being finished. So, we had been following a never ending maze of pointless creation, and all of our work was for a nothing cause. We all turned back to look at the maze behind us, and I saw through the murky and polluted air that it was a city. An industrial, grease ridden city, and the creatures that had built it knowing that it would only bring misery and leave us with an endless toil that meant nothing, these creatures were people.

Since when do dreams get to make social commentary?