dream lover

Do you have one of those annoying dream-friends, the kind who tells his dreams all the time in painful, teeth-gnashing detail? Doesn't it just get your knickers in a bunch the way he thinks that the disjointed, fractal, irrational narrative going on in his head should somehow matter to the poor, beknighted souls unfortunate enough to drift into dream-range?

Well, tough luck to you, because I am that guy.

So. Last night, I am in this class with an improbable assortment of people - some I knew in Peru, some from planting, some from university, my wife - and I am joking around not paying attention (as I am want to do) when Dan Archibald shooshes me from behind, saying "quiet, this is an important math test we're getting back here". My soul shrinks, shrivels, and explodes in a poof! of grey dust.

I hate math. I don't do math. The last mathematics-related course I took was Algebra One in eighth grade. I know, I know - that's odd. But my dad was the principal and what with the compromising photos and all, things were "arranged". Yet here I am, sitting in a crowd of my trans-era peers, being handed back a paper with a big red "50%" slashed boldly across the top. I slap my hand down on it hard, so no one will see, and stumble through some concealeatory joke or another before the balding, bleary-eyed teacher cuts in, beginning to mock those who did not do well - suggesting that perhaps we ought to drop the class before it's too late. He's really warming to the subject, and I find myself wanting to throw a book at him.

Instead, I squirm in place, nervously suggesting that "I'll see who's laughing in English class", but no one is really listening and it just comes off as pathetic. Down the row to my right, Matt Simmons (archetypal high school cool guy) flips his perfect hair and laughs and jokes around with Jeremy, already thinking of something else.

What can I do? Where can I go to reclaim my dream-ego and feel again that I matter, that I am worth the air I'm sucking? I do what any dream person does in a situation of such insecurity: I start flying. Up, out of my seat, into the wide, wild blue. I loop, soar, cruise to the tops of impossibly high fruit trees, picking the mangoes and mamays no one else can reach. This is incredible! I am really, really flying!

Somehow, though, no one seems to care. In fact, they don't even notice. Matt and Jeremy are playing video games (which I condemn as morally worthless - mostly because I suck at them) and Michael's doing gymnastics off of forty-foot high tree branches (which, lets face it, is more dangerous and cool than flying).

And I wonder: do I really have to spend my whole life enslaved to the insecurities of my youth? Is my life hereafter doomed to be just a series cyclical, compensatory actions - exercises in futility? I mean, it's not my fault. All the math teachers I ever had were impatient, snarling harbingers of hatred, who didn't have time for someone who didn't quite get it on the first pass. I was probably more of an Einsteinian type, anyway - uncapable of 'rithmatic because I was too busy working out the formula for the universe. But there I go again - compensating. Or self-indulging in endlessly-reductive reasoning, justifying mySelf and drowning out my personal demons through the creation of internal Pathos at any cost.

It may be that I am just truly bonkers, or at least skating on the edge of it. The bottom line is, I think, that I have not yet learned to love myself and until I do I'll be stuck in weird-dream land, incapable of striking out into the real and difficult business of Living; that is, the loving of other people. And even though when I write that the bell immediately strikes and a banner begins to flash saying "Life is a Journey, not a Destination" under a cheezy eighties poster of a marathon runner in short shorts, I can't help but wish for respite, and a little more self-love than I have, today.