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The other night I stumbled into a combination donut shop / coin shop sort of place, and was handed four, foil wrapped silver dollar proofs as part of my change.  I couldn’t believe it, and just stood there, staring at the coins.  What were the odds of this happening, I thought.  And what would happen if . . .

I ordered more donuts and handed the girl another twenty dollar bill.

“You don’t have to buy donuts, you know,” she said.  “I can just sell you silver dollar proofs at face value.  Actually, I can do better then that.  I can give them to you at 80%.  We’re mint brokers.”

It’s too bad that I’m such a procrastinator, because procrastinators are the kind of people who will never understand their dreams.  We’re just too lazy.  We wake up and tell ourselves, every single time, that we’ll remember the whole thing later on.  And everyone knows it doesn’t work that way with dreams.  Even procrastinators.  But we keep doing it, and we keep forgetting.

So I’ll never really be able to explain just what it is my subconscious thinks a mint broker is.  My best wide awake, two day’s late guess would be that they’re something like a Wal-Mart, except with coins, and not all that other junk.

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I wish I was one of those people who could pop out of bed and immediately write everything down.  If I was one of those people, I might be able to tell you about the mint brokers.  I could probably tell you a lot about alien fighting and looking through plate glass windows.  I could explain in detail how a person might will himself to fly without moving a muscle, just like I could speak volumes about the politics behind the battle of good versus evil.

There are a lot of things I could do if I weren’t such a procrastinator.  Knowing more about my dreams would be just one of them.

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I’ve started to feel the mild aftershocks of having lived the last two years with my “fuck off” attitude.  Maybe that’s putting it a bit harse.  Maybe it’s only been a “what the hell” attitude.  Whatever it’s been, I’ve begun to feel the slight tremors as I encounter people who’ve existed on it’s fringes.  I knew that they would appear one day, but I hadn’t given it much thought.  Blame it on the attitude, or just call it wishful thinking.  Either way.

I bump into a woman who lives next door to a customer who received less then satisfactory service to a waterfall problem, almost two years ago today.  Nothing is said, and I get the feeling that she knows nothing of my past working discretion, and yet, I walk away with a strange feeling.  She might not know, but I do. 

Then, the very next morning, another old customer, this time a satisfied one who had passed our company’s name onto her son.  But, of course, the timing couldn’t have been worse, and her son’s job fell through the cracks.  Nothing was done.  Nothing happened.  As far as he knew, one day he was talking to me, listening as I suggested improvements for his front entry and landscaping, and the next I had simply disappeared.  But, of course, I hadn’t disappeared, because there I was, sitting in plain sight at a restaurant two years later.  This time I know that she knows, and I wonder what my face looks like, as we exchange pleasantries, avoiding all mention of my disappearance.  Does my negligence show?  Do the newest lines around my eyes scream guilt or pain or forgiveness?  Is my smile genuine, or do I hedge my bet, holding back, feeling for some firm ground?

I sometimes think that the world would be a better place if we all had the opportunity to watch ourselves.  We hear our own thoughts, but we never have a chance to see us as others see us.  We like to think that we cut a swath through the world, but maybe we’re just another obstacle in everyone else’s way.  It’s no wonder that self awareness takes us by such surprise.  That when it happens, it feels as stiff and unfamiliar as a pair of new shoes.

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An organized dreamer could give you a detailed, blow by blow account of the action and drama of my Mexican artifact, murder mystery, train ride thriller.  It seems a large gang of ruthless villains were going around Mexico, killing all of the railroad employees so that they could take over the trains, which in the dream, would give them a free and easy way to transport millions of dollars worth of artifacts out of the country.

But, like I’ve said, I’m no organized dreamer.  The procrastinator is never organized.  Organization, by definition, precludes the very idea of putting off anything.  An organized dreamer, for example, might be able to tell you just what kind of artifacts one would find aboard a hijacked, Mexican steam engine.  But because of my laziness, I am forced to rely upon imagination.

For arguments sake, let’s just pretend that there is a network of railways going all around Mexico, all steam driven, and that they are being systematically taken over by a gang of killers who are stealing trainloads of artifacts.  And for arguments sake, we’ll also pretend that everything is being shipped to a black market in the United States, because as we all know, everything in America has a price tag.  (This may very well border on what is known as lucid dreaming.  But I’m not quite sure, being a procrastinator and all.)

I wish I could tell you exactly what happened, but it’s so hard to remember a dream from two or three nights ago.  But I do remember a few of the highlights.  I remember being forced to make a decision - do I stay in Mexico and fight the battle against the murderous thieves, possibly saving the lives of hundreds of unknown railroad employees, or do I get on the train with my son, all of the other passengers, and a waitress named Marla who I worked with fifteen years ago (I have no idea where she came from), protect all of them, and fight only a small part of the larger problem? 

I can tell you with complete certainty that I did get on that train.  I also remember that no harm came to my son or Marla the waitress (I think I may have gotten a kiss).  I know that there were plenty of tense moments aboard the train, and that I had to do some unmentionable things.  Things that I didn’t want my son to see.  I know that one employee was thrown to his death from a boxcar, tossed before I could get close enough to help, and I remember listening for the sound of him, expecting a dull thud as he hit the ground.  But the train was moving too fast, and the man simply disappeared.

It took a long time for the sound of the steam engine to fade from my ears.  Even after I woke up, I could still feel the train lurching beneath my feet, and the hot, dry desert air on the back of my neck as I leaned out against the wind, looking for the man who was gone without a sound.

It’s not just the days that are filled with unexpected twists.  It seems that the nights are full of surprises as well.  It seems that Imaginary Keith is more complicated under the hood then I originally imagined, but more on that in a minute.

First up, the daily report.  And like any good news program, we kick it right off with a taste of bad news.  In the business world, it seems that there has been a great seed mix-up, unleashing a whole string of events.  One of our customer’s lawns, newly installed by us this summer, has come up spotty and ugly, infiltrated by some broad-leafed grass blade that is just bold enough to cause me both grief and economic set-back.  So seed has been shipped off for purity tests and Imaginary Keith will be rerouted this afternoon to console a worried customer and make an assessment of the situation.

Warranty work looms on our horizon - the bane of any small business’ existence.  But it’s always something, and you eventually become callous enough to take the constant hammering.

And in an unusual turn of events, my accountant has decided that she will make a guest appearance right here in my home / office tomorrow morning at 11:00, so that she can personally see to it that everything is shipshape on my computer.  This was decided just moments ago through a flurry of emails.

The whole thing has caught me a tiny bit off guard.  First off, I don’t ever recall my accountant ever volunteering to make house calls in the past.  I agree our copies of the software may be slightly different versions and that a disk can’t simply be burned and passed along, but in the past, I have always just been handed a list of line items to enter into the accounting myself.  To say the very least, this house call business has me a tiny bit suspicious.  What is she up to?  I can’t help but wonder just which of my bottom lines I’m paying top dollar to have watched.

But that’s not the biggest surprise.  The big surprise came last night, when I checked in on Imaginary Keith, still fast asleep in bed.  I’ll tell you what, if I hadn’t seen it with my own two eyes I wouldn’t have believed it myself.  I thought he was incapable of such an act.  I sat there for a moment, watching him in astonishment.  I thought he’d given that up years ago.

Can you believe it?  Imaginary Keith, the man we have all come to know and love, was lying there in bed . . . are you ready for this . . . . lying in his dreams.  Lying!  And not little tiny white lies, but big bold-faced whoppers.  One right after another.

From what I could gather, he was having some sort of dream about owning an old convertible Cadillac, which he never has, and that some people had snuck up while he was away and were stripping the car off all its valuable parts.  And in the dream, Imaginary Keith has caught the people in the act.  I walked in and saw the dream just as Imaginary Keith lets the air out of the thieves truck tires, so they can’t escape, and has gone to fetch a park ranger to help with the arrest.

I know, a park ranger makes no sense at all.  I couldn’t figure that one out either.

But then somehow the park ranger is going to arrest these people, and the scene moves somehow from the side of the Cadillac and into this large, underground house along a coast somewhere, and there are no longer just two or three people to arrest, but a whole household of young couples, all in their mid-twenties.  And there are children running all over the place, and everyone is discussing who will go to what jail and how they will get there and who will look after the children when they are away.  Someone gives Imaginary Keith a tour of the house and he becomes so caught up in the architecture that, for a moment or two, he forgets all about the arrests and the fact that everyone is about to be shipped off.

And then suddenly Imaginary Keith is sitting down in this soft, comfortable chair, talking with the young couples, and I see him begin to lie.  He starts telling them about a trip he’d just recently made to Seattle, and how the car broke down on the way and they had so much trouble.  And he tells them some stories about when he was twenty, and about some of the trouble he got into.  And he laughs about how the Cadillac isn’t really a Cadillac at all, but one of those fiberglass kits that you build and put over the top of an old Volkswagon.  And he just keeps talking and talking until everyone in the room is smiling and not thinking at all about going off to jail.

As I stood there in the room, watching Imaginary Keith dream, I knew that these were all lies.  I knew that none of it was true, but that didn’t bother me much because, after all, Imaginary Keith was dreaming.  No one has any control over things when they’re dreaming, I thought.

But that’s when I caught something familiar in the corner of my friend’s eye.  Something that I’d seen before, but just never in a dream.  That’s when I saw the thing that surprised me so much.  Imaginary Keith was lying, but he knew he was lying.  Even as he dreamed, telling all of those stories about cars breaking down and trips to Seattle, he knew that not a single bit of it was true, and yet he just went on talking and smiling like it was all the truth.  He didn’t even flinch, telling all those untrue stories.  As a matter of fact, he seemed to grow braver and braver the more he lied, as if the lies themselves released in him some sort of hidden strength.  I watched as the twenty year olds in the dream bought into everything my friend said, accepting everything without question.  I watched them laugh and become friends, forgetting all about their earlier troubles.  I watched the little children come up, one after another, and stand in front of Imaginary Keith, waiting for a turn to sit in his lap and listen to the lies.

But finally I had to turn and leave the room, because like it or not, I couldn’t take it any more.  As much as I hate a liar, especially someone who seems to have perfected the art of lying in his own dreams, I found myself being drawn in.  I couldn’t help it.  I found myself leaning over, looking past the lies and into those laughing faces.  I found myself becoming lost in something not true, and knew that if I didn’t leave the room quick, I too would somehow end up forgetting everything.

It took two years, but Imaginary Keith finally had a sex dream.  I watched it unfold last night, prepared to shield my eyes in case it became too embarrassing.  In the morning, Imaginary Keith woke up, obviously excited.

“I had a sex dream last night.  The first in a long time.”

“I know.  I saw the whole thing.”

“You did?  That’s gross.  You’re too young, you should have looked away.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Well, it was about me and two women.  I’ve never had a dream like that before.”

“Obviously a dream based on pure imagination.”

“It was great.”

“Great?  Are you forgetting that I saw the whole thing?”

“Oh yea, right.  Well, it could have been great.  It was almost great.  I mean, it started out great, let’s put it that way.”

“For crying out loud, I saw you complaining in the dream.  You blew the whole thing.”

“Well geez.  That one woman was gripping and grabbing too tight.  It hurt.  She ruined everything.”

“It’s your dream.  You ruined it.  You know, I’ve never known anyone who complained about sex in their dreams.  What’s wrong with you?”

“Ummm, I don’t know.  Out of practice?”

“I think you better stick with nightmares.  You’re much better at them.”

Last night I had a dream that I was talking to someone like mad, paying no attention to anything but the sound of my own voice.  I don’t remember what I was saying, but I do remember that it suddenly dawned on me that the person was actually trying to get away, dangling half in and half out of their doorway, trying not to be rude.

I couldn’t believe it.  It’s not like me to talk on and on.  As a matter of fact, I’m usually the one in the doorway, trying to get away.

In the dream I just stopped talking, turned, and walked away, not stopping until I was back in the real world, awake and quiet, confident in my silence that I wasn’t bothering a single soul.