In your head ...

When I was in second grade I had a dream that I was on an airborne school bus and when I looked out the window on the way home from school, my teacher was flying around with a red cape and at some point hoisted another school bus over her head. That was almost 30 years ago, but I can still see her tiny thin frame wrapped in a shiny unitard, a squiggle in the distance. A sky so pale blue it was almost white. And I don't need to lie on a couch and fall into hypnosis to know that this dream meant something about her super human place in my life: teacher of cursive writing, introducer of multiplication, director of spelling tests.

I love dreaming, the whole brain in free fall. Seeing old friends on a cruise ship and the endless search for doors. A crowd of cats that all look the same, and I must figure out which is mine. Spitting chunks of molars the consistency of oatmeal into my palms, experience telling me all the while that this is a dream, this tooth thing, and in this dream they will grow back. Understanding that I must bludgeon a person to death, but my movements feel slowed to an under water-ishness and the bat I'm using fails to do damage.

One time I had a dream that I was in a car in a parking garage with my unemployed friend. We were speeding backward toward the ledge, we couldn't stop the car, and then we shot through the railing and I woke.

We were both kind of a mess at that point and I think that dream was telling me a lot of stuff I already knew about co-enabling.

A few weeks ago I realized I wasn't remembering my dreams anymore. My disappointment was further fueled by Chuck's recall of his own. Every time he started a sentence with "I had this dream ..." I was actually jealous.

There are always writers somewhere talking about the importance of dreams in their work, and I'm not sure who said it this time or what I was reading. I decided to keep a notebook next to the bed, vowing that every time I woke fresh from some scene, I would scribble it in my notebook. The notebook stayed empty far longer than I was comfortable with. And then it started to work.

I'd have a dream and using the light of my cell phone, I'd jot a few lines and then go back to sleep. These are funny to reread. Notes to myself from the great beyond. Seeing a videotape of yourself drunk. I'd remember I wrote something, but not remember what I wrote. The jotting became almost a part of the dream.

Here are excerpts from my notebook:

* A man explains the health benefits of milk and orange juice as digestive aids. He calls it "Radioactive."

* I kept using the word "rojo" to describe someone's hair.

* Steve Martin was there. I told him I loved "Shop Girl." "The book," I said, regretting that I'd not read more by him. "And, we'll, the movie, too," I added.

* (Two of my friends) were in this one set in a sort of house thing. They were getting ready to take a trip. I think (Half of the couple that is a boy) was chewing tobacco. (Girl) and I were good friends. She was confiding in me about something. Someone mentioned Christina Aguilara.