Strange Dreams

I've recently started dreaming again.

I stopped in my junior year of high school. It was just another fall night, with another dream, but it'd be the last one I would have for a little while.

I am walking with my two brothers in an open strip mall. The air is crisp- the sky, clear save a couple of cotton-ball clouds. We are heading towards a Starbucks. As we approached, a blinding flash fills the sky ahead of us. I can feel a breeze pick up and rustle my shirt. I fight the polka-dots to try and see. The breeze becomes a wind. I look up and I watch a dark pillar rise up and encroaching the blue sky. Those cotton-ball clouds quickly fled away. The wind is physically blowing me over. I see the ripples of a shock wave emanating out from the dark pillar of fire. I turn and grab my brothers' heads, tuck them them into my chest, and huddle against the concrete foundation of the Starbucks. I feel the ground beginning to shake. The windows break, raining little beads of glass upon us. A deafening roar fill my ears. The wind is becoming hot. I can't open my eyes. I can't breathe, my throat is dry. It burns. I feel blisters rising, my skin is boiling. I feel dizzy. The pillar of fire overtakes me. I see nothing.

I wake up. The pulse in my temple is pounding, my breathing is short and quick, I'm covered in beads of cold sweat. I died in my dream.

In retrospect the dream was strange because in my waking life, I rarely went to Starbucks in the first place. I also thought it was strange that I died in my dream- knowing the urban legend I thought I should be dead. Clearly I wasn't, so that was good. What wasn't good was that I wouldn't dream again until the summer of my junior year in college- a full 4 years and not one single remembered dream.

I can't remember exactly what my first dream back was about. I know I've been dreaming because as I awoke, I fell out of my bed confused and startled to actually be waking up. The dream escaped me in disorientation.

Familiar faces, fuzzy words, fragments of a porcelain jar, a flight through midtown, amorphous settings that change unnoticed, a sense of urgency, a sense of calm. It's great to dream again.

It's been a long time

I've decided to peek my head out of my little hole and here I am.

It's been an awful while since I've posted anything. It's not like I haven't been doing any writing or thinking- honestly I don't know why I was on that hiatus. Anyhow much has happened since, but I guess nothing is really worth noting. Still back at GO, just without the extra $200 is all.

I've been writing again recently and have been keeping a physical paper journal for the first time since middle school. Physically writing is a trip- it's a different experience. It's a different connection to the medium. Typing, you're just almost mechanically plunking away on the keyboard. It feels detached. Pen-and-paper writing is more intimate. There's a tangible writing utensil you must use in order to make your mark on the clean sheet of paper. After a little while, the joints in your writing hand go numb, then sore. You have to take a break to shake that out, only to realize that your own handwriting curiously resembles cuneiform. No matter though, you're only writing for the sake of writing, you probably weren't going to read it again anyhow. Yep, that's what it is.

But anyhow, I'm back now and I'll try to keep it up (I've said that in 7 of my last 10 entries).

Writing again,
Greg