Parenthetically Yours: Dream Weaver

July 24, 2008

Dream Weaver

I just woke up from a ridiculous night of dreams. But first, the back story.

I flew to Seattle last night. Five hour flight. We left Nashville at 4:45 p.m, squarely between lunch and dinner. When we landed, it was 7:40 in the Emerald City. That’s 9:40 back home. Short story, I was hungry as a hostage. We all were. So naturally there were problems getting checked into the hotel. By the time we sat down at a table, it was 10:10. To my body it was past midnight at this point. The better parts of our temperaments won out, though, and we stayed fairly jovial throughout. But we were hungry. Crazy hungry.

When you’re Crazy Hungry you crave things you’d never consider putting in your mouth. Last night I would’ve devoured a cold Mediterranean pasta salad, cherry tomatoes and all. That may not sound shocking to you, but when Katie reads it she’ll drop her fork and pass out (I don’t know why I’m assuming she’ll be holding a fork). Cold, vinegar-y pasta salad makes me shudder. The damp, squishy pasta, loud tart flavors…I’m getting a little nauseous just describing it. The truth is that it’s not the taste that does it for me, but the combination of temperature, texture, and taste. The three T’s (yeah, I just made that up). If you have a 3T combo of cold, squishy, and vinegar—well, that a recipe for vomit, not a salad.

But I digress. I would’ve eaten it last night. Crazy hungry makes you crave bad food too. I’m on a bit of a healthy kick lately…cutting down on breads and sugars, making better choices, taking vitamins/supplements every day, etc—but all I wanted was deep fried bread and melted butter to wash it all down. I settled for a cheeseburger and garlic fries. Hit the spot. That is until around 5 a.m.

That’s when I woke up from this dream. I swear on the grave of Duane Allman that I’m making none of this up. I was with the band doing a show in some far away place. It seemed foreign but everyone spoke English so it had to be Canada. (Eh?) While we were there, two older ladies who were driving us around wanted to show us this incredible phenomenon that their town was known for. The next thing I remember is we’re in this beautiful field overlooking a waterfall and a serene, picturesque lake. The only other people that were gathered for the event, which happened every night at sunset, were the families of around 200 little girls (between, say, 5 and 12 years old) dressed in their prettiest, frilliest, girly-est pink princess dresses. They all had little white dogs too. Small ones. Scotties, shih tzus, pomeranians, yorkies, pugs, etc…but they were all white. We sat around for a few minutes waiting for sunset and right as the sun began to hide itself behind the curve of the horizon (directly behind us, opposite our view of the lake), the far edge of the lake caught fire. I was both beautiful and frightening. Then we noticed the fire was moving toward us. At this point all the little girls and their dogs lined up like they were getting ready to take a group photo with the lake of fire as the background. Their parents seemed calmly oblivious of the fire blazing closer and closer as they watched their daughters with pride. Then, before any of us could react, the fire engulfed the girls and dogs. I was freaking out but couldn’t do anything. It all happened so quickly. My heart was racing, some of the guys were crying, but the parents started clapping as if it were a masterpiece performance. Then as quickly as it started, the fire burned out as the sun fell completely below the horizon. There were the girls, completely unharmed, along with the unsinged puppies. They were clapping, jumping up and down, hugging their parents, celebrating. I looked at the two ladies who brought us to see such a thing and they said, “Isn’t it beautiful?”

Canadian do things differently.

(rw)

Posted at 10:41 AM in Dreams, Food and Drink, humor, The Road, Travel | Permalink