I realize this is a common affliction so I've never put too much thought into it until this morning, but I never remember my dreams. Sometimes I remember having had dreams throughout the night but I can never remember specifically or with any detail what those dreams were about. I've woken up in a cold sweat after having had a particularly bad nightmare and I've even woken up in tears after a particularly sad dream but usually after I'm actually awake I can't remember any of the details about what happened in them. No so last night.
Allow me to share my dream with you. It begins with me frantically running around my house donned in hundreds of campaign buttons pinned to my clothes. Strewn about my house are hundreds of picket signs all stacked neatly against the walls. I can hear the sounds of thousands of what I think are protesters outside in the streets. The harmony of what sounds like protest chants fill the air and I can feel the rhythmic thud of thousands of feet beating the street like a heartbeat. I can't really make out what they are saying but I still chant along humming the tune like you do when you don't know the words to the song. "Hmm, hmm, yea, hmm, hmm, yea, we won't ever, hmm, hmm, yea"! My body is on fire with excitement and all I have to do is pick the right picket sign with the right slogan, and open my front door and join in the festivities. I look for the appropriate protest sign with which to march but they are all facing the wall. I turn the first one around and it's blank. I turn another one around and it's blank too. What the fuck? I turn around the rest of them and they are all blank. I'm confused but this doesn't deter me though because the chanting is still going on outside my door and the adrenalin is still rushing through my body. I figure that I can borrow a really cool picket sign from someone on the street after I get out there. I was almost ready but before I hit the door I ran over to the full length mirror to see if all of my buttons were on straight only to be shocked again. All of the buttons I had pinned to me were blank too and not only that, the chants that were almost deafening right outside my door only moments earlier were starting to fade into the distance. Now, I'm a little freaked out but still undaunted and eager to join the crowd, I dash to the door, swing it open and...nothing! Not a single soul to be found and the silence was like I was in a vacuum. I look up and down the street to find the crowd of protesters and see no one. I frantically run to the top of my street, look both ways and still see no one or hear anything. Where did everyone go? Where were the protest chants that beckoned me? Where were the thuds of thousands of feet pounding in time with my heartbeat? I was completely alone standing in the middle of the street.
Now, I know this sounds like the beginning of one of those zombie nightmares where all of a sudden creepy dead people start coming out of the gutters and digging themselves out from their graves but it was nothing like that. It was just quiet. I looked around again and at the end of one of the streets I see our town's City Hall with a huge American Flag majestically waving in the wind atop the old building. As you can imagine I slowly start to walk toward City Hall and when I finally get there I can see that one of the two huge front doors is open an on the other door is a sign with an arrow on it pointing inside. As I enter City Hall I can now see a flight of white marble stairs and at the top of those stairs, illuminated by what seems to be the light of the heavens is a single voting booth. I walk up the stairs to the booth and of course, you guessed it, there was a ballot and a pencil waiting for me when I got there. I don't remember seeing anyone's name on the ballot or any measures for that matter. All I remember was standing at the booth with pencil in hand and then all of a sudden I'm back at the bottom of the staircase looking out the front door. I can hear people outside now. It was the same chanting I had heard before. I could feel the thud of a thousand feet and feel the collective heartbeat of an army of protesters. Reinvigorated, I run to the doors of City Hall, swing them open, anticipating a 60's style, old fashioned, Berkeley protest but am stopped in my tracks at what I see. Instead of an angry mob of protesters holding picket signs and yelling at the top of their lungs, I see a huge row of fold out tables set end to end running down the middle of the street as far as the eye could see. The tables were covered with red, white, and blue table cloths and decorated with miniature American flags. The entire community was sitting around the tables laughing and joking and eating barbecue ribs and corn on the cob and drinking National Bohemian from red plastic cups. The sound of Ray Charles singing his unique rendition of "America the Beautiful" was being piped through speakers mounted atop the street lights. It was the great American small town scene, a sight to behold. Strung from one street lamp to another was a banner that read: "HOPE RESTORED".
I suddenly awoke from my dream feeling as rested and invigorated as I've ever felt in my life. I washed my face, brushed my teeth, put on some clothes, and walked down to City Hall with my beautiful girlfriend and cast my vote for Barack Obama. GOD BLESS AMERICA!
No comments:
Post a Comment