dream reunion

i just had a dream of some kind of high school reunion. we were all coming back to mhs for some kind of homecoming game. only, we weren't quite so old, maybe a couple of years out of high school. all the faces were as i remembered them, with the teenager still present in the features. yet, oddly enough, there was this shimmering echo in the back of my mind, that i knew so much better, that this was so far gone as to be absurd... and yet, i played along.

it was like a repeat of facebook experiences, meeting all my friends from the past, only now, they were "grown up." and i had the dubious privilege of introducing everyone to everyone else, only, there were some awkward periods when some who claimed to be my friends, well, i couldn't quite remember their names... and the odd sensation, when someone you barely knew, for some reason, has the loudest voice, and starts calling out everyone's name, and starts narrating and steering the conversation for the most part... but somewhat pleasant, that, connecting ties that maybe should've been connected, in my "fantasy high school" (in the manner of "fantasy football.").

we passed by the "cool kids," and they were the same, maybe i knew now that they weren't quite as cool as they seemed to be (or that they wouldn't be, in a few years, with pregnancies and dead end jobs), but weird as it may seem, in this dream rendition, they were still cool, and still as hard-to-reach. they weren't but a few bleacher rows above as i passed, but it seemed as though they were staring down at me from heaven with imperious gazes... how i wanted to be their friends, how i "knew better," this being a dream, and this being a dream about reunions... but somehow, it felt as though there were a current pulling me: i'm in an "it's a small world" ride, and much as i'd like to stay on stereotyped japan or stereotyped hawaii, the ride was pulling me on and on, and i couldn't resist it.

strange.

and as i passed people i WISH i had known back then (only? it was back now?), this covered morrissey song "let me get what i want" was playing (embarrassing, but i had actually watched "sky high" with lynn once, and the thing i remembered, aside from all the corny stereotypes, etc., were the neat alternative 80's covers: it was like the soundtrack for my high school years, the music of the goths and the mods, redone disney style: weird, just like this dream). so this song was playing my heart, like maybe there was someone i really wanted to meet and talk to, especially with these twenty or so years of hindsight behind me, but i couldn't. couldn't see the person, couldn't get to her in any case. and the song kept playing: "please, let me, let me, let me..."

when i woke, it was strange, as though years had melted off me partially, and i was stuck in a place where different time periods of my life were echoing together. if i were a bat or a dolphin, echo-locating, i'd be thoroughly confused; it would be like, i had shot out a signal decades ago, and shot out a signal recently, and for some reason, they both came back at the same time, saying similar but different things... so i started seeing ghost signals, ghost walls, ghost tunnels, etc. only, i wasn't sure which was the ghost, and which was real...

i came away with a feeling of, like, whoa what did i eat last night, and then, this sad resignation. people always say, "like, if only i could go back." but in my dream reunion, even shimmeringly blessed with a "better perspective," there were currents and tides that i could not resist... dissatisfaction with my friends, longing for "meaningful relationships" ... hell, all of that has existed since the beginning of time... and much as we'd like to puzzle piece our pasts, as though it were simply a matter of finding the pieces... it really is more like a narrative stream, with currents that you think you COULD resist, but ultimately can't... after all of the effort to reach one thing, you'd lose so many others... and you'd just be tired out, and likely prey for the riptides.

i walked in the darkness, and it was really strange. REALLY STRANGE. my wife sleeping on the sofa near me, then my kids passed out in their rooms... this is my present, my beloved present... and yet, for a moment, it seemed, they, this was the ghost... or maybe i was... floating between realities... walking through walls.

sadness, regret, at times it can crush you, but at times, you realize it is the natural soundtrack of your life. it gives depth to the music you feel in the present. not all complete saccharine disney, but there's some faint undertone drifting throughout, that this present is not the only surface that could've been, but even with the absent could've beens ("with the absent???"), there is an informing, an echoing, of all possibilities... a much richer sound...

there was a story about some musician's musician, a guitarist, forget what his name was, but he was from louisiana, and one thing he did with the glass slide, well, there were two things he did that were neat. 1) he plucked the strings on BOTH sides of the glass slide, on the normal side, and on the "wild side" close up on the neck of the guitar; this created an echo, because although both plucks ostensibly produced the same pitch, to pluck both created some strange reverberation so that each note carried longer, with strange overtones; 2) he used the palm of his hand over the amplifier box (the hole) to "shape" the sound. it reminds me of this, for some reason, this dream... don't know why; simultaneous plucks, modifying amplified sounds... i guess i'm stretching it, but the dream made me think of these things in "realities," i suppose.

well, to all my friends, both dream and real, i send sweet dreams...