A Real Dream, A Win, A Loss, A Dreamy Reality

Last night I had a curious dream about my planned radio program interviewing survivors of the Japanese internment camps:

Ira Glass (the host of NPR's This American Life) has agreed that my piece is brilliant, and wants to air it. I arrange to meet Ira in person. [Since he is a radio personality, I don't actually know what he looks like. Nonetheless, my sleeping brain was able to generate a face for him. His voice in the dream was just like it is on the radio, but I don't recall the physical appearance constructed by my subconscious.]

Before my article is aired on This Amerian Life, the House of Representatives agrees that the piece is of significance to American history and society, and therefore calls me to Capitol Hill to receive recognition and testify on the importance of this issue. The representatives convene in an outdoor tennis stadium, with bleachers on only one side of the court. I am not unsatisfied with the lack of grandeur of the venue, but it's crowded (since we have 435 representatives), and 100 guests of my choosing are in attendance to behold the honors that the House has wisely decided to impart upon me.

While my friends and I are walking down the bleachers to find a seat, who should pass us by--none other than, you guessed it, former house majority leader, Tom Delay! How did I know it was Delay? Actually, much like my knowledge of Ira Glass's appearence, my familiarity with the former majority leader's visage would not allow me to pick him out in a line up; I knew it was he because he was wearing shorts and a t-shirt (all the other congressmen were suitably dressed--haha, get it? SUITably.) I remember thinking "Wow, he MUST be important if he can break the dress code here...that must be Tom Delay."


Tonight at Alvin's I won one game of "Carcassone," then lost a game of settlers (to Pam!) While driving home on the 605, this monsterous fog drifted in from no where. It was very surreal and dreamlike.

The fog refracted all the tail lights on my side of the freeway, making it look like red mist--a rather unsettling vista for a SoCal boy unaccustomed to fog and the optical illusions that it's capable of producing. On the opposite side of the freeway, the water particles were refracting headlights, which produced a white, glowing effect that, contrary to the horror of the sanguine spectacle directly in front of me, was pleasing. So pronounced were the color contrast and the effect it had on my psyche that I considered exiting the freeway to drive in the soft luminescence of the other side, but I knew that I would suffer the crimson curse irrespective of the direction in which I traveled.

Then, as swiftly as it had appeared, the fog disappeared, and I had a newfound appreciation for the beauty of a clear evening sky.