johnnyfive

i just awoke from one of those oh-so-very real dreams that shadows my waking life in tangible reality. for a moment, my very familiar surroundings became foreign and i couldn't place a sight, sound, smell, or tactile sensation. my memory seemed to be steeped in the short term, choosing to heed only the false reality percieved in my dream.
(paragraph break for clara)
in the dream, i was somehow kidnapped by an old friend, randall berry. who we referred to as "the hippie sherlock holmes" due to his noodley stature and gait , and also for the thoughtful way he'd stroke his slightly post pubescent goatee. so, randall kidnaps me, handcuffs me, and strips me to my tighty whiteys. i am then forced to endure his drug -riddled delusions on life and philosophy in general, until i somehow escape three days later.
the town i escape to is a town i have never seen or been to, yet it is a conglomerate of every single town i've ever set foot in. it seems to be a milange of each community i have ever visited, melding certain ambiances of each into this nocturnal ghost town.i make my way through the town, around dusk, clad only in my undies and with shackles hanging from one wrist (i suppose i somehow freed myself, or at least one hand, but i have no recollection as to how). i make my way to my home, but it's only familiar in the way that the alex stumbles across the crippled man's house (labeled "home" with a lit sign) after treatment, in "a clockwork orange".
when i arrive at the house, i find most of my current friends and/or aquaintences having a party. they are playing instruments, the rooms are colorfully lit, and there is snack food in bowls everywhere. i find a good friend of mine, joey, and begin to expound on my ordeal.
joey cuts me off mid-sentence and asks me where my cord for my bass is, because they can't jam until nicci gets on the bass. i'm flummoxed that he isn't in shock over my kidnapping, so i get vehement and storm to a phone and dial the police.
at this time, an ex girlfriend that still tugs at my heart approaches me and asks me where my weed stash is because she wants to get her new boyfriend high. they say they've been looking for it while i was gone and tore through my room, but to no avail. again, i am in dismay at the total lack of sympathy for being kidnapped for three days by the hippie sherlock holmes. doesn't anyone understand?!?!
so i call the police and say something that sounds like charlie brown's teacher in the "peanuts" cartoons and leave the house to make my way to god knows where.even though i am on even ground, i find myself having to claw my way forward as if i were on a steep inclination or rock climbing. i am using a wood handled butcher's knife as a pick ax and it digs satisfyingly into the asphalt, which is behaving more like wet sand at this point.
all of a sudden, my exgirlfriend is behind me holding a phone (and it's not a cell, but one of those beige rotary ones). she informs me that i shouldn't go to my car, because she's called the police and told them that my registration was expired. she adds that all of this could have been avoided had i offered my stash to her and her new beau, then she storms off into the other direction, disapating into the night.
thinking that i am now a wanted man, i continue to make my way to wherever on the side of the road, in the bushes. i'm under a large and robust fig tree when i hear crazy tom asking me for directions. crazy tom is this very, very obese man with tourets syndrome that come in the coffeehouse and talks very, very loudly to himself. in fact, his vociferous loquations are poetry and performance art at it's best, albeit he might have no idea he's doing so. he came in just the other day and said out loud to himself, "you gotta live today! it's not five minutes from now!".
so anyway, crazy tom is hovering over me crawling under the fig tree and his shadow is introducing a whole new level of pitch to the darkness that had already engulfed me. he's asking me, in his raspy and hurried voice, for directions to happiness. confused, i ask him if he's looking for a resturaunt called "happiness", but he replies indignantly, no, he is in fact looking for...happiness. i tell him that happiness is not a place, but an emotion, a feeling, you can't find it, it finds you. he casts a cubby, calices index finger at me and curses me with a laundry list of unintelligible curses and says that i'll never find it crawling under wet bushes on the side of the road.
then my phone rang, it was 2:30pm, and i was feeling as if i had just been unplugged from the matrix. rain was pitter-pattering outside and my room was as dark, with dashes of daylight spitting between the creases where my curtains meet.
in the shower, i tried to focus and remember what was real and what was dream. my dream seemed so real...that's the best i can do to describe it. i usually don't remember my dreams, so i tried to analyze what may have made this particualr nocturnal breech of consciousness so memorable, so vividly memorable. then i remembered that last night i had come home at four in the morning after a doubleshift and ate three day old seafood lo-mein and chased that nastiness with a very, very old growler of ale (growlers are 64oz. medicine like bottles that a local brewery will fill with fresh ale of your choice for eight bucks, but they're only good for a couple of days). i think i food poisoned my dreams.