what dreams did come

In a night of recovery from a weekend spent camping with friends, strange visions and omens visited me. I describe several below, and leave them for you to interpret.

I am touring in Eastern Washington, looking out at a vast expanse where a highway, one I have traveled in the past, leads to the peak of a mountain. I have brought my digital SLR with a hurking telephoto lens, and furiously snap pictures of the landscape. Then the assault on a nearby peak begins, and as I ascend, the scene shifts (as it does only in dreams) to a luxurious Florida resort. I continue shooting photos of colorful hotel interiors, sunbathing palm trees, confused tourists. However, now I'm accompanied by a second professional photographer. He keeps stumbling into my shots, bumping me as I shoot, tripping me with his tripod.

* * *

I am shooed out of a dark gymnasium, where I have been searching for Real Madrid's locker room, hoping for a post-game autograph. (In real life, I don't know a single Real Madrid player, nor do I follow soccer.)

* * *

Cautiously driving a couple friends to school in the snow, my car hits a patch of ice and, inexplicably, flips over. One companion and I are unhurt, but the other is knocked unconscious. We take him to the hospital. Later, when I arrive at school, I stand in the gymnasium as the candidates for student government are announced, to raucous cheers. When my name is not called, I am told that I have been disqualified because I was not present to turn in my paperwork at the morning deadline. My excuse--that I was in a car accident--is not accepted.

I head to my classroom, where I have turned from student to teacher. As I try to start class, a returning student, trying to establish his class clown stature, starts interrupting. I send him out on a mission to find a custodian, since another student has suddenly taken ill and vomited on her desk.

It is later that evening. As I walk the streets of downtown Elma-Olympia (two towns twenty-five miles distant, for you non-locals), I wonder if I should visit my friend in the hospital. I see that my sister and brother-in-law have scored a reservation to Trinacria, which (in real life) is open only at the owner's whim. Despite the bitter cold, every restaurant patron sits near the window, looking out as I pass by.