A Dream and the What If, July 25, 2014

In this dream - and it was merely a dream likely fueled by Atripla (*sticks tongue out) - we were together, many of us, all friends.  We had been having a party, drinking, laughing, playing, but nothing out of hand or too crazy.  We were our present ages, though I saw no one directly, looking through my eyes only.

Then, was it a fire or a flood or something else?  Personal items were lost, we were dirty.  Because we were on a hill, and the destruction fell away around us, no one was hurt.  There were drag queens and gay men and all types and orientations.  No one felt the seriousness of what was happening, except me.  But my concern proved to be only for me.  I kept begging for help, but everyone just wanted to keep driving around in a tiny car and taking swigs out of that one bottle, never emptying.  “If you had done your job, none of this would happen.” There was lots of finger-pointing, blaming.  Not my fault, not my fault.

 I lost my wallet and keys and that was all there was in my world.  Find them.  I had to find them.  The world was ending, or so it seemed, and the only thing I wanted to focus on was finding my wallet and keys.  I was over it and the others and the entire scene. I wanted to take my belongings and go.  I was angry that no one else would look.  I would have to get new credit cards, update my automatic billing information with the new numbers, and hope against hope that none of my bills would be late.  Why won’t you help me find these things so that I can leave?  You can keep sloshing around in this tiny apartment on a hill or in that tiny car with that bottle, looking down on the carnage, hiking up your skirt over muddy shoes, wigs askew, shirts torn, telling me nothing matters - or rather, not telling me, but making me feel that’s what you think.  I am frantically searching under cabinets, around the two huge parking lots that have appeared, covered in sludge and thick mud, with police keeping everyone away.  No, they have not seen my wallet either.   I don’t like my new American Express number.  What the hell?

 Then, I decided to look one more time in the place I had left everything.  I think that’s where I looked - or at least somewhere in the apartment.  There they are!  I grabbed my wallet and keys and smiled.  A sense of immense relief washed over me.  I could leave.

Still dreaming, I reflected on what had happened.  Just as I was becoming okay with the idea of replacing everything, and was coming to realize that I had blown the whole thing out of proportion - after all, these things are only keys and cards and other stuff - and just as I stopped pointing fingers at those damn non-helping (my interpretation) friends, everything fell into place.  I had put the scene into perspective. What I had imagined being important really was not, at all.  Where was I going?  What was I to do with those cards and things in my wallet in a world destroyed?  When disaster struck, none of us focused on each other.  I went to my silly things, while others kept moving, ignoring the scene.  They seemed to think that movement and turning away would provide an escape, manifesting bliss as ignorance. 

The only direction we did not run, the only way our thoughts did not turn, was toward each other.  It seems that we each wanted to save ourselves first in the manner we each thought best.  In our world today, we rarely consider first how we might lift up those in need so that they don’t become enemies in future conflicts.   Yet, in hindsight, we always think, “What if we had only …”