bad dream...

Early this morning I dreamed. This has been happening most mornings as of late, and in fact its been happening throughout most nights as well. I attribute it to secret stress. The only constant in these recent nights and mornings is the interrupted patterns of periodic rest that I anxiously add up to "enough" sleep around nine each morning so that I may rise and temporarily forgo dreaming any more.

...and instead begin my daily pursuit of a more tangible dream: the one every American is manufactured to strive for...

I haven't written yet on my experiences amidst my fellow community members of a temporary town called Black Rock City whose overarching purpose for coming together was to question, consider, escape from, and simultaneously become privy to "the American Dream". But I've had notions about the hype. And as I now find myself on the losing side of this wild goose chase for another go at the 'dream', I question every interaction, development and conviction to this end.

[In the most generic sense and for the sake of illustrating my point, I'll just say that the blazing headline "American Dream" is encapsulated by that gleaming vision of a wholesome family beside their conveniently "fuelish" automobile in the driveway of their suburban home with the white picket fence and Fido all decked out in his special outfit, the "portrait bandana"... and we know just by looking that dad worked from the bottom of his company right to the top...he has health care, vacation savings for the entire family to go on trips to Disneyland and other prefabricated recreation areas, and a strong 401k.]

Just before the close of summer thousands of vagrants, the products of these aforementioned dream-lands, come to a remote and isolated place to test the limits. Donning a weeks supply of "basic" necessities for survival, a mass exodus convenes on the solitary road to the desert. Only, a week's necessities somehow require the use of a rented camper complete with all the amenities...stove, indoor lavatory, bunk beds, firm sheltered structure....to 'rough it' with strangers, and in hopes of creating "community".
So I wonder, having rented a camper to hold all the "basics", do these participants reconsider their place in this bubble "American Dream"? Do they evaluate where their values align and misalign with those inside the bubble? Have they stepped outside of their comfort zone for this experiment at all? Do they wonder what they can do to adjust the dream of Americans to encompass more of us??

For, my dream is certainly different from the one I described above...I want love all around in all facets and manifestations, and to know that if I'm not well I will be taken care of. I want financial stability insomuch as the ability to pay back what I owe for an education I intend to use and enough left over to eat and travel. I want children worldwide to be given every opportunity they deserve and I want other people to give a damn to see that this is achieved. I want everyone to earn what they are worth when they put in hard work and reliable dedication that they may be able to afford a shelter for their families, and someday I would like to have a space of my own. I like to envision many sharing a more humanist dream like this as well.

But this morning in my little temporary bungalow ( a couch in a living room of a condo-built-for-one, me making "two") I dreamed of filling up with gas. I inserted the pump just so in the place where we all know it goes, and watched the numbers tick by like a slot machine...40....50....60...the gooey stinking liquid finally spilling out on my shoe at 62. I scratched my head and furrowed my brow, thinking that even this number was too high for just one tank. I consciously questioned the texture, color and smell of the fuel I had just unloaded into my automobile, turning to check the dial again... does something smell funny? did I put in the right kind? it wasn't diesel was it?? But, I was satisfied by my reinvestigation of the pump and hopped in my car turned the key and maneuvered out and on my way. The car stuttered with a quick and startling backfire as if a gunshot were just fired inside my ear sending my nervous system into a reactionary convulsion. It happened again, and as I went into panic mode I looked out the passenger window and my car was inundated with flames. Suddenly I could smell the searing metal, nylon and rubber. I knew it was about to blow. Magically I pulled a drop-and-roll move to the other side of the car and out onto the road just as it blew into a million smithereens, burning everything in its wake there on the street. I was mysteriously spared even the slightest contact burn.

This all happened in what seemed like milliseconds in my dream scape, and I awoke with a start, my whole body numb and tingly as if every inch had fallen asleep and was that pins-and-needles feeling that seems so agonizing in regular waking-life scenarios. I had that disoriented feeling that sometimes occurs after intense dreaming, as I struggled mentally to decide what was the real (and unfortunate) truth and what was only a visual film playing in my mind. While sometimes I'm disheartened to find that all the turmoil is an actuality, a tribulation of this earth, at least this time it was as they say "just a bad dream".

compartmentalize

My whole life fits in the back of my car.


There's a sense of satisfaction in this. I have been packing and repacking, then repacking again, and doing "one final pack...I swear! the last one!" for over a year now. With each relocation I perform this ritual of readying myself for departure both physically and mentally (with much greater emphasis on the latter) for the moving on and looking forward, the new spaces to mold myself to and new people to meld with. I've left so many things all over this land.

Schlepping all my goodies to the airport, and having already dumped a few in the hands of that glorious mail system our nation has, I glare at uniform ladies behind the luggage scale as they tell me I will owe them an extra fee.

"I move a lot. How is someone supposed to move from one side of the country to another on an airline without an extra fee??" I often mutter, wishing I had only an overnight pack and sleeping bag stuffed into carry-on and was going on some exciting excursion with someone I love.

But now, the satisfaction of having all of my material possessions crammed into the back of my jeep like a jigsaw puzzle assembled 'just-so' sets my mind at ease. Extra fees no more!! And while I haven't actually placed all of my things in the literal space, I envision it fitting. Like a glove. My capacity for spatial awareness is surprisingly good...I'll chalk it up to my visual learning style...


In recent past this dividing of things into separate containers has come in handy when organizing the levels of my life. As in, "sure. I could freak out that I don't know what's happening next (a week from now) but instead I'm going to put that in its storage container riiiiiight here! and focus on what I do know about today." I find administrators are successful at this game. Both in the workplace and in their own meticulous personal lives. Perhaps this is the essence of a 'multi-tasker'...being able to shut out this one-thing right-now in order to get these two other more urgent things done. And while I've boasted of my multi-tasking skills in cover letters past, I'm pretty sure I've managed to take them to a whole new level as of late....the administrator level!! ooooo....aaaaahhh....

And in the meantime I've noticed I probably used to be a forecasting-the-future emotional wreck.


While diving head first into yet another arduous job search and ridin' with style on the couches of others, I'm working like the devil to compartmentalize each day...put each development (or NON-development) into its little plastic container on the tall and accommodating shelf of my brain to make room for others more pressing, more key.

But today each little thing fell off of its shelf, climbed out of its neat little box and began traipsing around the interior spaces of my brain. In a haze I blundered about trying to accomplish my 'to-do's'....for naught. I was lost the hurricane of my thoughts. Directions. Desires. dare I say Goals.

I felt like my grown self lying on the floor with four children pulling at my limbs...
Immobilized. (does this make any sense?!)

But I digress. The feat of the week is that my whole life fits inside an automobile. I have my car to hold all my earthly things and get me "there". When its time I just load up, fit each thing into its place...its own compartment...and head out into the sunset.

The only question is where to go...