The Deferral

I dreamt I was away for a few years. Too much sugar and alcohol last night combined with living in a new room in a house full of strangers made my sleep a little congested—more antsy than usual, the kind of sleep where you wake up sweaty with your sinuses too clogged to want to sit up.

The dream was less visceral but felt about the same as the waking. The difference was I knew the cause of my grogginess, where the distance I felt from those I knew in the dream was a mystery. I dreamt I returned to the community in which I now reside to visit after having been gone for three or four years. I was either a missionary or living in a big city—something respectable and intriguing to those I was returning to, but not something they could relate with, hence the alienated feeling.

A friend who had made it with his music was asked to play a back to school concert at his alma mater (which would have been mine also had I finished college). The setting was strange for all of us—felt more like a high school reunion than a meeting of old friends. In the gymnasium-floored auditorium of the university, we talked between the non-descript opening bands. As it works in dreams, my friend—who was playing next—was simultaneously in the audience talking to me while on stage tuning his guitar. Our interaction was a combination of eye contact from the stage, and words only half-heard by my deaf right ear.

People were at the concert that who never would be in reality—people I knew from jobs I’d had around the time I left who were now avid fans of my buddy’s music—“hands-waving-in-the-air” kind of fans. For them this wasn’t a joke-y “I can’t believe I’m playing at my old school” kind of show, but a chance to meet their favorite artist and get his autograph. People of snobbish tastes were here. Middle-aged people I knew were here. I think my grandfather was in the audience. It was my own Sergeant Peppers cover with every character in the audience a profound or ironic recollection of this season in my life.

Next I dreamed I was driving back to the airport or somewhere in my old beater Honda (which will likely not make it another 5 years in the non-dream world). A suspension bridge was before me with an otherworldly incline—like ramping up Niagara Falls. All the other cars had no problem ascending this highway, but the motor in my Honda was huffing like the train in Dumbo...”I think I can I think I can I think I can I think I can…” Then I awoke.