Maybe I Need Some Fresh Air

Serenity. I am sitting next to the fire place at Panera Bread Co. I have my hot chocolate and my laptop, and I'm just sitting watching the snow fall outside.

So I keep having the same dream. I have had it three times this week and twice last week. It's kind of a troubling dream but fantasic in its own respects. I leave. I just pick up and leave.

My dream always begins with me trading in my car for an old blue pick-up truck. Just an old chevy with some character and a tiny bit of rust. I quit my job, the stuff I don't sell gets locked up in a storage space that I return to from time to time, and I leave my parents a letter. It explains that I had to go and that I'll be back in two years. I cancelled my phone and won't have a permanent address, so I said I would write... but I never would put a return address on the letter.

I throw my duffle bag in the bed of the truck, take one last look and then just drive. I go west as young men do. I spend my first year in southern California. I walk into a bar/club with a help wanted sign on the door. The sassy lady that owns it looks at me a little suprized, like I didn't belong in that place. "Can I help ya?" "I'm just looking for work." She pauses, "You just get into town?" I nod. She just walks away. Then I give a rather impressive speach about what a hard worker I am and how much I need the job. She likes me, even though she doesn't want to hire me for the bouncer postion. (can't blame her) So she teaches me to bartend. She asks me my name and I tell her. Then she asks, "And who did you used to be?" So for the next year I would surf in the morning and tend bar in the evening. Everyone called me "Preacher" on the account that the owner thought it was funny that I used to be a minister and now was a bartender. But she grows to respect me as I befriend the regulars without getting caught up in the nightlife scene. And when it came time for me to leave, I just walked into her office and with out saying a word she already knew. "Time to move on, I guess, " she said without looking at me. "yeah..." She gets up and gives me a mother's hug. And I left.

After a long bit of a drive I pull up the lane to a ranch in Colorado. I tell the Rancher, a strong man with white hair and black suspenders, that I'm lookin' for work. He tilts his dirt colored hat up slightly so he can get a better look at me. "Well boy, what can you do?" "Anything you teach me, " I reply. He just spits and says, "Is that so?" I spend a year and a half at that ranch. I snow board in the winter when there isn't as much work to do. In the summer I live above the barn with the other ranch hands. And the reason I stayed six months past my two year mark is because of my encounter with the Farmer's daughter (funny I know) who visted from Denver. Nothing dirty. I just found a woman more stuborn than I am.

The dreams are very detailed and I'm leaving out quite a bit, but they always end the same. I pack up my army dufflebag and tell Chuck's daughter I'd be back for her. My fellow ranch hand who I sold my truck to drives me to the airport and I leave for home. I sent a letter to my parents to ask for them to pick me up. I haven't spoken to any friends or family in two and a half years. I have no idea what has gone on in two years. But when I arrive at O'hare Eric is there to pick me up. He almost doesn't recognize me because I've been hardend by the sun and hard work. (and my cowboy hat is covering my face.) But he drives me home where my family and some of my friends have been waiting. I take over the teaching minister position at PCC as they are happy to take me back. I plan to marry the daughter, but the dream always ends with me staring out a window felling astranged from everyone I know, because there is no way to explain what I experienced in those two years.

I keep having this dream.