Nightmare!

It was one of those dreadful nights you wouldn't wish on anyone. It started out okay. We watched "The History Boys"--one of those Brit schoolboy flicks with a good few laughs along the way and a good few poignant moments as the band of engaging ruffians grow up. We should have quit when that one finished. Instead, we slipped "Zodiac" into the DVD player (we had run out of Netflix, and picked up two movies at the local video store in the afternoon. Mistake.) "Zodiac"--which had great reviews when it came out, remember?--was the interminable story of the attempt to track down the killer of its eponymous title, with more tedious detail than anyone could possibly want to know and, after hours of teasing and hooking the viewer with the promise that one day this monster would be found, concluded with the revelation that he never was. Not really. We had to be satisfied with the exchange of a signifcant stare--indicating, presumably, that this was indeed the guy, though the case was unindictable. Ah, well. Give this one a miss.

And so to bed, much, much later than our usual time. Then the bad part started. I spent half the night, it seemed to me, embroiled in this dreadful dream--that also never ended. Coincidence? I don't know, but it started out with us going to a conference in a strange city in a foreign country--Spain? Mexico? It seemed somehow Latin--and parking the car at the outskirts because, well, you know why: it's impossible to park in the inner city these days, and taking the tram from there. Anyway, the conference was long and deadly dull on a topic that had no conceivable interest to us and it went on and on and when finally it ended we took the tram back to the area where we had parked the car...

... and found ourselves walking along a narrow path behind a crowd of impossibly slow fellow conferees until I gave Ellie the high sign and we managed to jump ahead which was when we suddenly realized that George the dog had been with us all along and had disappeared but then he happily reappeared and went ahead tail wagging for some reason off-leash which worried us of course but we didn't have one to put him on...

... and then we found ourselves in this strange kind of civic building with shopping mall attached and everything was closed and empty and we couldn't find our way out the other end and by this time of course we were totally lost but we finally did see "light at the end of the tunnel" in the form of big glass doors but the only way to reach them was down a steep slope of very fine sand with footprints sinking three feet deep so we looked for another way and found some concrete steps...

... but when we got down to the bottom of the steps a line of uniformed cops was barring the exit even though one of the doors was open a crack and we slipped through but one of the cops stood in our way and stopped us from getting out into the street until another friendlier one finally stepped in and let us pass with something like a shrug and a smile...

... and then soon we found ourslves in a strange house looking down into a kind of Dickensian parlor filled with the kind of things that fill a Dickensian parlor all for some reason in high color and high contrast and George the dog who was also in high contrast seemed to recognize this place because he began to bark excitedly though we ourselves still hadn't the first idea where we were and a portly old gentleman in the parlor looked at us askance over his newspaper as we walked nervously down the stairway into his parlor and slipped out through his parlor door and out of the house still hopelessly lost and kept on walking through the streets feeling, well you know how it feels to be lost in a strange city...

... and then when I woke up in our little cottage in Laguna Beach that feeling persisted and I found I couldn't stop looking for the damn car even though I was awake and aware that it had only been a dream. I just couldn't stop looking for the longest time until I finally got up to take George for his morning poop walk.

So riddle me that one, friends! I checked in with the Buddha a little later, to see what he might have to say about it. But he just kept saying, Breathe. Bring the attention back to the breath. I guess it helped.