Imaginary Keith rarely dreams about the same thing twice.  It happens, but not very often.  So just think how surprised I was, sitting there on the edge of the bed watching him, when I see that he is dreaming about that imaginary daughter of the real life customer again.

Who is this girl?

They’re walking along a sidewalk, which appears to be out on the coast.  Imaginary Keith is following the imaginary girl, who is singing a Tom Petty song very badly, which is okay, because, well, it’s a Tom Petty song, and everyone knows if you don’t sing a Tom Petty song badly it won’t sound right.  And Imaginary Keith must think that it sounds just right, because he’s smiling big like a fool, just listening and following and looking at the girl.

Anyway, they walk up to some sort of booth or counter.  They’re just poking around, having a good time.  No one seems to notice them.  Maybe in dreams everyone sings Tom Petty songs and all the secondary characters are used to it.  But the imaginary girl is just belting away at that song, and Imaginary Keith is just belting away at his smile, when all of a sudden a big rattlesnake slieds into the picture out of nowhere, takes one look at both of them, and then swallows the imaginary girl whole.

Apparently snakes do not care for Tom Petty songs.  Imaginary Keith can still hear the imaginary girl singing, although the words are a bit more muffled, if you can imagine that being even possible.

I almost woke Imaginary Keith up at this point, knowing of his aversion to snakes, but then saw him spring into action.  He grabbed the snake by the head and began yelling out for a pair of scissors.  He was going after the girl!

Imaginary Keith was a hero!  Well, I think.  He woke up then before actually doing any heroing, unless you can call grabbing a snake head heroing.  Which I think you can.

Hurray for Imaginary Keith!

But now I’m off to the dream dictionary for a little consultation.  I need to find out a bit more about snake wrestling.  I wouldn’t say I’m nervous.  Just apprehensive.

A neighbor is moving out this morning, and I see her trudging back and forth, going up and down the stairs just outside of my kitchen window.  No, it is not the church mouse who lives upstairs.  Her quietness lays over me still, like a goose down quilt, its presence comforting, yet hardly noticeable.  If the world was filled with four billion souls just like hers it would be a quiet, peaceful place indeed.  Of course, it would also be an incredibly scared place, where people scamper inside out of fear that some unruly gentleman might be so bold as to say hello while passing on a sidewalk.  I know her name, but will not tell.  I, too, will someday forget her real name, and she will then forever be remembered as the church mouse.  Just as it should be.

Was it the neighbor moving up and down the stairs that awoke me this morning?  I’m not sure.  But my eyes popped open while having some odd dream that seemed filled with imagery even a child could interpret.  It was a dream filled with the images of swimming long distances, lost identity, intimacy, and sexual ambivalence.

I, along with some others unknown to me in waking life, had missed a boat that would take us to our next destination.  We approached the docks from a high, treacherous mountain road that sat precariously near the edge of a cliff that twisted back and forth, following a coast line far below.  Someone else was driving the car, but driving erratically.  Our wheels constantly were leaving the edge of the pavement and skidding on the narrow, gravel edge.  I felt certain that the car would plummet down into the water, far below, yet recall not feeling too exceptionally frightened by the prospect.  I urged the driver to slow down a bit and get control, all the while feeling that I would like to reach the boat in one piece.

But the boat was missed.  The poor driving, it seems, had caused us to miss the launch time, and now we found ourselves stranded on the dock, far from wherever the boat was to take us.  But several people from the group decide that they will head out after the boat in much smaller rowboats, risking the high waves and uncertain conditions further out.  Not all make this decision, because it seems like one filled with potential disaster.  No one knows how far it is across the water, and the water is rough and cold.  Most, it seem, are content to stay behind.  So we climb into our flimsy craft, and begin rowing across what seems like river, lake, and ocean all at once.  The waves lap high on the sides of the boat, and it is clear that it will indeed be a dangerous journey.

We have not gone very far when I realize that I have forgotten my wallet.  Without my identity, the trip will be meaningless, because once reaching the other side, I know that I will be required to prove who I am.  I have no choice but to turn back, which means either forcing others to turn back with me in the boat or swimming off by myself against the heavy waves.  My decision, at this point, seems simple to make.  I bid farewell to the others, telling them that I will catch up (which everyone knows is impossible), then dive into the water.

I am a much better swimmer in the dream then I am in real life.  My strokes are steady and strong, and I make quick work of the distance back to shore.  Those who had decided to stay behind are there, waiting for me at the dock.  Not much time has passed, so they have not even begun to organize or settle into what is to become their new life - a life, I realize, that is centered around the idea of being left behind.

I begin searching for my clothes, or pants, or suitcase, or something.  Personal belongings are scattered everywhere - along the dock, near the edge of the water, and all along the road that lead back up along the cliff’s edge.  Some of those who have stayed behind have already started to scavenge through suitcases and bags, searching for valuables.  It is a desperate act of self-preservation.  Most of the people, however, are simply lost and lethargic.  They are, for the most part, doing nothing more then milling around the dock, talking with one another in low voices, wondering how long they will be able to watch the small boats off in the distance.  The main boat, the one we have all missed, has disappeared from sight long ago.  And when I stop and look out across the water myself, I see nothing.  Even the small boats have disappeared.  The people, it seem, either have better sight then me or are staring at nothing.

I find my suitcase, halfway up the cliffs, dumped and scattered alongside the edge of the road.  My wallet, with my identification, is nowhere to be found.  I creep to the edge of the cliff, wondering if it has somehow fallen over and is lost forever.  But this doesn’t seem likely.  My grip is tight on the edge.  My balance seems more precarious then it did earlier, speeding along in the car.  My eyes seem locked on the water, far below, but a sound makes me turn, and I see a young boy, stealing off, my wallet in his hand.  I give chase, catching up with him just as he slips inside some sort of house or shelter.

My wallet and identification are easy to get back.  The boy is young and easily persuaded, both by my size and by the intensity of my demand.  I have no intention of leaving without my identification.

But here the dream becomes less clear.  Somehow, after my wallet is recovered, the boy disappears and I find myself talking with several people.  They are some of the adults who have made the decision to stay behind, and now I am with them, listening to their stories with a mixture of concern and pity.  I genuinely feel for their situation, and want to help somehow, yet know that I will only be drawn in.  If I stay too long, I will miss any opportunity I have to catch up with the others.  I must begin swimming soon.  The feeling of running out of time, mixed with the feeling that these people are in need of help, pulls on me in two very different directions.

My conversation with these people seems to become more and more of a conversation with one woman in particular.  So much, in fact, that I eventually find myself drawn into a room with only her.  We are alone, we realize, and without a word, find ourselves hugging.  The closeness of this contact is not lost on us.  We are both more then a little frightened by the uncertainty of what the future holds.  The feel of the woman against my chest seems like strength for decisions that must be made alone.

But I find myself, even at this moment, at odds with myself and my own emotions.  I can feel the comfort of the hug.  I find myself lost in the intimacy of its embrace.  But at the same time, I feel myself detached.  A part of me watches the embrace from some far off position, as if I am really standing on top of the cliff itself, seeing everything all at once - the large boat pulling away from the dock, the hope of the people as they climb into the smaller crafts to give chase, the uncertainty of the crossing, the cold, dark blue of the crashing waves, the look in the boy’s eyes as he tries to escape my chase, my own look of fear in the moment that I realize my identity is missing.

From this vantage point I watch everything.  I am on the cliff, but without the sound or feel of the wind.  I see everything, but hear nothing.  The distance is too great.  I can see the woman’s lips move, she is saying something, but I cannot hear her.  I realize that I am seeing myself undress the woman, but at the same time, notice that I am fully clothed.  She is exposed; I am not.  This woman, who I cannot even hear, mouths words to me that only my eyes can hear.  The silence roars all around me, and I watch myself go through motions that seem impossible to witness.

I watch her, both from my vantage point and through a reflection in my own eyes.  They seem different images, and I wonder how this can be.  In the reflection she is lost in a moment that seems eternal.  But from my vantage point, high on this cliff, I see that I am already walking away from the bed, and the woman, and the moment.  I see with clarity the real reason that we have been brought together, and I see with as much clarity the briefness of our moment.

But what I see more then anything else, from this vantage point, is that inside, she is no more lost in the moment then I was the moment we first embraced.  Somewhere inside she is not lost, and it is only her eyes and her words that give the illusion.  Her body, it seems, is looking in the wrong direction for answers.  I am no answer, only a comfort.  Her eyes need to close if she is to see inside.  Her lips need to stop moving, if she is to hear herself speaking.  I realize that we are all lost and detached, all of us, all at once, and I quickly stand up and look around, thinking that I will see her, sitting up here somewhere near me on this cliff, watching everything herself.  She, too, will be watching her own life unfold.  This is what I think.  Like me, she will be watching reflections, only they will be reflections of me and of my desires.  I will see myself through her eyes.  But there is no one there.  I see nothing.

So I leave the woman and the cliff’s edge.  The dock is now empty, except for me.  I step into the water and begin to swim.

Imaginary Keith still lives here.  It’s a fact.  And I’m as curious as everyone as to why he hasn’t been talking.  Could it be his dreams?  Can dreams have the power to silence? 

This morning I sat on the edge of the bed, watching my friend as he dreamt about hitting someone on the head with what looked like a bowling pin.  The sound of the pin connecting solidly with the stranger’s head made me wince.  But whoever it was he was hitting just kept coming on strong, and it was then that I saw that Imaginary Keith was trying to protect someone.  He was giving it his best, swinging away with that bowling pin, and as I looked closer, I could see Imaginary Keith cringe each time the pin made contact.  My friend has never been much of a fighter.

Eventually Imaginary Keith just grabbed the hand of the mysterious someone (a woman at this point) and took off running, dropping the bowling pin so he can concentrate on both escaping and some serious mathematical computations that he has begun to perform in his head.  Just what are the odds that they will escape, he thinks.  And what are the odds that the woman would actually have been attacked?  As they race through the streets, dodging people and jumping in and out of buildings, Imaginary Keith does the math.  He arrives at an answer just as the two of them jump a second story balcony rail and fall into a grassy area.

.25%, he thinks.  Not even a 1% chance that this will end badly.  Why are they running?  Why was he hitting someone on the head?

Imaginary Keith stops dreaming after that.  My friend may dream randomly, but he usually wakes like clockwork.  It’s 6:00 a.m.

“Keith?  Was I dreaming?”

“Yes you were Imaginary Keith.  You were on the run.”

“I can barely remember.  Did I get away?”

“You didn’t have to.  There was nothing to run from in the first place.”

“But I think I was scared.  I can still feel it.”

“Yes.  But it’ll pass.”

“Keith?”

“Yes?”

“I wish she wasn’t dead.”

When I picked up the phone the other night and reached back across twenty five years of silence, I had no idea what waited for me on the other end.  Time moves so slowly we cannot see ourselves growing grey, yet passes so quickly that the transformation is almost sudden.  It is one of the paradoxes that makes time such a mystery, and one of the reasons that life can feel like a dream.  I sometimes think it is my own mind, an uncrossable bridge, that spans the gap of this paradox.  That it is only in thinking that we lose sight of understanding.  In a dream, time is meaningless, and it is only after we awake that things become confusing and we find ourselves trapped on one side of the paradox.

“Keith, do you think it was an accident?”

“I don’t know what to think.”

“She was too smart.  I think she knew what she was doing.”

“I know.”

I just wish I could have seen her.  I had something I always wanted to tell her.”

“I know.”

A list was made of the people who I might have called that night.  The night I began poking at things with sticks.  It was a good list, made by a friend, that somehow added to the mystery and the fun.  Life, let’s admit it, is a guessing game.  Everything from mindless entertainment to higher education revolves around the concept of learning or relearning something hidden from us.  Babies play peek-a-boo at the same moment that scientists try to unravel the universe, but take away time and they are surprisingly the same game, a way to lose ourselves in the excitement and complexity of discovery.

“Imaginary Keith, what would you have said to her?  It’s been so long.”

“I know.  But I always thought that the moment I saw her I would know exactly what to say and how to say it.  That it would all come to me when we were face to face.  I don’t know.  I think I wanted to apologize to her for being the way I was back then.”

“Oh.”

“But I don’t know what I would have said.  How does one even begin to apologize for being a boy?”

“I don’t know.  I don’t think you have to.”

“You don’t have to.  But maybe sometimes you should.”

If I ever decide to attend a high school reunion, it would be to visit with three people.  In my mind, the others might only be a distraction.  Everyone except the three seem to have had little meaning to my life, and it is hard to imagine how this could have changed in twenty five years.  Maybe I am wrong.  But of all the people in my class there were three who did have meaning.  Three who had an enduring impact.  Cindy S. and Scott W., both of whose names made it to the list, and another girl, Valerie, whose name did not. 

Funny, almost, that it is Valerie’s name that was left off of the list.  Valerie - the girl who returned to high school after leaving early and attending college for a time.  The girl who seemed to pass quietly through life, would become valedictorian, and who I would date for a time my senior year.  The same girl who once told me to stop the car in the middle of a desolate, backwoods road, so that she could push back against her rigid, moral Church of Christ upbringing.  So in the dim moonlight, on a small bridge above an even smaller creek, the two of us drew close and slowly danced.  An innocent but important act in my mind, a sin in hers.

“What was she thinking about as we danced that night?  Do you think she remembered it, Keith?”

“I’m sure she did.”

“For so long I was always sure it meant more to her, that dance in the moonlight.”

“I know.”

“But now that she’s gone, I’m not so sure anymore.  Now I’m the one left remembering.  I’m the one left to wonder.”

As I listened to the news of Valerie, and heard the story told as Valerie’s own mother had told it, I heard a story of sadness and mistake.  A woman who ended up, somehow, as a person who drank too much.  A woman who somehow made the mistake of drinking so much that she accidentally falls asleep in her car, parked in the garage with the motor running, before she has a chance to open the garage door.  But those are the mother’s words, repeated to me by yet another.  Words that seem to only say that there is no way for a mother to be able to understand what has happened to her only daughter.

But as I listened, I could only wonder.  How could she do it?  What turns had her life taken that led to that garage, where she sat looking for the strength to end?  As I listened, I couldn’t help but think that Valerie passed from life in exactly the same way I remembered her living it, dying so quietly that twenty five years would pass before I would hear the sound.

Night ended and morning began with a technicolor dream where small things like puppies and squirrels went wild, and inanimate objects came to life with the desire to kill.  The first to attack was the largest, starting off as a huge german shepherd / wolf dog mix, but ending up as a crazed woman with gnashing teeth and a machete.  With son in tow, I ran as far as I could before turning to fight off the inevitable attack.  My only weapon - a small jackknife I had in my pocket.  I killed the dog / wolf, only to discover after the act that it was really the woman.  I got up, took my son by the hand and began walking away, covered in blood.  People all around just sat and stared, like they couldn’t believe what they’d just seen.  No one said a word.

But then it began to progress.  First it was other animals.  Small dogs, cats, wild birds - they all began to snarl and become vicious.  And then other things began to come to life.  Things that shouldn’t, like balloons and pictures on the wall and stacks of paper.  The two of us ran, turning and fighting when there was no other choice.  Everything that attacked was small, but dangerous enough to inflict serious injury if ignored.  It was the sheer numbers of these things that was overwhelming.  They were everywhere.  It was as if everything ever created was somehow coming to life.  You could even hear it happening, as the objects sizzled and popped just before coming to life.  Everyone was screaming and running and being overtaken all around us.  As we passed through one building, I could see that it was a pre-school classroom.  A giant snake, one of those made out of colored, construction paper rings, had come to life and was slithering around the room, covering at least two, maybe three walls.  I stopped to cut off the head, releasing some children that were being squeezed in its coils.

We ran out the door . . .

Wait a second, did you show up expecting replies to your comments, only to find my own yesterday manifesting itself as sheer madness?  Oh.  So sorry.  But that’s later today.  Once I get rolling.

But you know, the dream wasn’t all that bad.  I mean, in the dream, my back wasn’t even one bit sore.  It was nothing like real life.  Getting out of bed this morning - now that was the nightmare.