The Moonlit Path

Every Saturday night, almost religiously for the last several weeks, Robbie, Vivien and I gather at my house for good company and Absinthe. One of the great things about ingesting this once illegal substance is that it always invokes very vivid, psychotropic-like dreams. Once I am wide awake, my dream usually begins to fade unless I immediately write it down. I am then left with only fragments of the experience which is both frustrating to remember and somewhat unsatisfactory. I decided this morning that I should begin documenting my dreams so that I could later analyze them in hopes that it might reveal some profound insight into my life, or perhaps I will come to a conclusion that they are just a series of random and meaningless visions that entertain me while I sleep. Whatever the case, I suppose they still remain to be interesting stories to tell.

Note: The dream in which I am about to tell will mention the names of several people; their stories and how they relate to me in real life will not be fully explained. I am just documenting this experience for myself and not necessarily telling a full-blown story.

"As soon as I get my head round you, I come around catching sparks off you, I get an electric charge from you, that second hand living it just won't do, and the way I feel tonight, I could die and I wouldn't mind, and there's something going on inside, makes you want to feel, makes you want to try, makes you want to blow the stars from the sky, I can't stand up, I can't cool down, I can't get my head off the ground."

-"Head On" by the Jesus and Mary Chain

Last night's dream begins with a group of friends. Robbie, Vivien, Erika, Jacob and I are walking through a parking lot as we leave a local bar after getting absolutely plastered. Jacob had just finished saying goodbye to someone he had known. As soon as that person was no longer around, Jacob then began to make weird hand gestures; it was somehow his way of non-verbally explaining to us how lame that person was when they are drunk. I then remember that he has to work very early the following day, but he was now too drunk to do so. I turn to him and tell him that he better start calling people and get that shift covered because there was no way I was going to go in for him. I am not sure if he was even able to reach anyone that late at night. Luckily, Erika suddenly decides to be the nice one and volunteer herself to cover for him since she was not as drunk as he was. Jacob suddenly disappears from my dream and Erika leaves as well since she now has to work the next day. The rest of us make plans to clean out my closet in the morning. I believe we were going to sell whatever stuff I did not want at some garage sale that we also were planning to have. Robbie, Vivien and I are instantly transported to some room that supposedly was mine, but obviously did not look at all like what my room looks like in real life. Without having any idea just before, I suddenly am expecting Monica to come over and join us. When she arrives, I see her strutting down the hallway and as soon as she makes her first step through, the song "Head On" by the Jesus and Mary Chain begins to play as if it were her theme song from a movie soundtrack. We all start to talk again about our plans to clean out my closet. Supposedly I had helped Vivien do hers the week before and now they were going to return the favor and help me. All of a sudden we decide that we are hungry for fruit. We begin to talk about apples and oranges and pears and I tell them that there is a place I know of where I have taken some before from people's gardens when they are not at home. I realize by this time that Robbie is no longer in my dream and I remember later that he had gotten tired and decided to go to bed. Vivien and I decide that we should be the ones to gather the fruit. Suddenly we are transported outside and are walking down the side of the street. Monica by this time is also no longer in my dream. I am not sure when and where she went, but I recall later that she had stayed behind and was waiting for our return back in my room. I remember looking at a blue dumpster parked on the right side of the street as if I were in some familiar place, but I cannot seem to recollect where I have seen it before and why it was so memorable. Perhaps I will have Déjà vu and experience being in the same place again sometime in my waking life. Suddenly as if we were in a movie, my dream fades into the next scene and Vivien and I are now arriving in front of a row of houses in which we are to "steal" the fruit from. We walk to one particular house which had a couple of pillars in the front where the patio was. It was a humongous white Victorian mansion. For some reason I somehow knew that the owners were not home. I think we walked in through the left side of the house where a huge garden resides. In the middle there was a magnificent tree that resembled the White Tree of Gondor as it starts to finally grow again at the end of The Lord of the Rings. We go around to the surrounding trees and begin to pick apples, oranges, pears and bananas off of them until our arms could not possibly hold on to any more. We then walk over to the side against the wall of the mansion, sitting down upon a patch of un-mowed grass, and begin to eat the fruit. We were eating mostly pears, which was really weird because I am not too fond of pears. They are delicious but there is something about the texture that I just do not like. Another strange thing was that these pears unexpectedly had the texture of apples which is probably why I liked them so much in the dream. We suddenly get startled by a noise coming from the front of the house that sounded like the rustling of leaves. Vivien and I both stand up in synchronicity thinking that we might have sat there a little too long and that it was now time for us to start heading back. We both nervously peer out towards the front expecting to perhaps see something or someone. I then begin to look at all the windows on the neighboring mansion to my right and in one particular window I notice that there is a curtain that is shaped as if two hands were spreading them open. I take another look and focus intently on the window and realize that there is a face there with bulging eyes staring at us. At first I think it is some terrifying demon but later I realize it is some woman thickly covered in one of those green mud masks glaring at us from what must have been her bathroom window. In a strange slow motion sequence I turn and start to yell "Ruuuuuuuuuuuun!" Vivien, on the way home, keeps constantly asking all panicked like "Is she there? Is she there?!? Where is she?!?!?!" We both run as fast as we can as if our lives had depended on it and as we get closer to my house we both start to laugh hysterically at ourselves and the situation we were in. We barge inside the house, throwing the front door open and slamming it closed, into my room and collapse to the floor sweating profusely and trying to catch our breaths. I don't remember dropping the fruit, but we somehow lost them along the way back. Monica suddenly appears in front of us as if she had been with us the entire time and we begin to tell her the story. I remember taking her through every step in detail, even mimicking with my own hands how the curtain had looked using my window. She gasps and says, "Oh my God, that is so scary" in that "Monican" way of hers. We then decide to go to bed and make plans to have breakfast together in the morning. I suddenly remember waking up in the bed with Robbie in real life half-dreaming thinking to myself, we need to wake up now so we can go have breakfast with Vivien and Monica. I fall back asleep and my dream continues: I am waking up and Vivien is suddenly gone. I think she might have gone home sometime in the middle of the night. Monica and I start to get dressed so that we can go somewhere and get breakfast. We begin to talk about toast, omelets, linguiça, chorizo, marmalade and hashbrowns smothered in ketchup. Just thinking about it now is making me so hungry. Immediately we are transported to another place. We are at a Starbucks and we see Erika working behind the counter helping customers. It is unfortunate that she could not join us for breakfast. We say hello but she does not seem to see us. Suddenly, Monica disappears from my dream and I am now in another house. Again, it is my house but it is not the same place I was originally at in the beginning of my dream. This house seems very new and very bright. It was a place that seemed as if it were bought with a significant amount of wealth. I enter a room full of children and now with me is Larisa, Nikki, Erika, Alfie and Vivien. I suddenly think to myself that I need to wake up Robbie so we can go and have breakfast. I realize that I may have to wait since it seems as if some sort of birthday party is being held in my house, but I do not know whose. The room is all of a sudden decorated with a variety of balloons and we are all playing with them, fascinated by the different shapes they have come in. There were big ones, small ones, round ones, elongated ones and ones that have been decorated and crowned in fancy tinsel like material. As I am playing with the balloons, Larisa begins to take pictures of us with all the children. She begins to call my name until finally she has my full attention. She suggests that I pose for the camera as I play with the balloons. Two kids suddenly walk toward me, both holding onto a clear, glass bowl which they hold in the center between them. They set it down in front of me and Larisa strangely suggests I stand on the rim of the bowl. I stand on it and I again start playing with the balloons but I tell her how stupid this is and to just take my picture doing something naturally. Carol all of a sudden appears, says hello to me and then asks if Larisa is being her crazy self again. I say yes in absolute annoyance and I tell her about the idea she had just come up with concerning her picture taking and wanting to pose me standing on a glass bowl. Suddenly, I wake up thinking to myself I need to write down this incredibly ridiculous dream so that I will remember it. After recording the events of my dream onto my computer, I lie back down on my bed and wake up Robbie. He turns, looks at me and squints his eyes half-sleepily and I ask him, "Want to go get some breakfast?" He extends his body to its full length, lets out a creaky stretching noise and says, "Yes."