In dreams
A candy-colored clown they call the sandman
Tiptoes to my room every night
Just to sprinkle stardust and to whisper
“Go to sleep. Everything is all right.”
— Roy Orbison
She says I woke her up the other night, moaning so loudly that our sheepadoodle, Riley, bolted from the bed and skedaddled to the guest bedroom. I don’t remember the dream, if it was pleasant or terrifying. I seldom recall dreams, but the ones that remain in my head upon waking seem to be mostly pleasant. For example, I often dream that Paul McCartney and I are best buds. I have his phone number and he, mine. I go to parties at his house, where we play music together. All are in vivid color and have great sound. These dreams make sense to me: I became a bass player because of Paul. But other dreams defy logic.
The night after the doodle bolt, in my dreams I encountered a girl I knew through 12 years of public school. I never had any type of romantic feelings for her. I have not seen or thought of her in the 58 years since we graduated from high school. Yet somehow there we were, face-to-face at an unknown social function. We hugged and said, in unison, “Are you married?” Then there was a filmic jump cut to us in a relationship, but somehow it included her bedridden father, who used to set up Lionel trains at Christmas. I put this dream down to eating a footlong hotdog with too much mustard just a bit too close to bedtime. But what possible culinary catastrophe could explain my recent nocturnal phantasm of being trapped at a Mormon conclave?
Some believe that sleep offers respite from the cares of the waking world. I’m not one of them. The current state of global affairs makes sweet dreams near impossible. So I think the nightmare that caused Riley to flee was spawned by my trying to cope with the entire range of depressing events that plague all of us in 2025. Troubles are piled higher than meatballs at an Italian wedding. There’s little I can do about the political morass this country has become, nor can I stop the military madness in Ukraine and Gaza. So, while I’m awake, I try to tackle things I might be able to control. Like driving.
I’ve been tooling down roads for 60 years and used to feel supremely comfortable behind the wheel. I’ve probably logged a million-plus miles on the highways and byways in the U.S. and Canada. I’m used to sharing interstates with idiots, to having drivers camp out in the passing lane at 40 mph, to being backlogged behind a backhoe on a rural road. But currently, roads are under construction or closed in whichever direction I need to travel. Even when roads are open, drivers tailgate and weave in and out of lanes at speeds well beyond the limit. They cram the huge SUVs they really don’t need between my Honda Fit and the subcompact in front of me, burning gas that costs more per gallon than all the meatballs at the aforementioned Italian wedding. Were it feasible, I’d never drive again. Now, that’s really a dream.
But as things stand, I think it prudent to apologize to Riley in the fervent hope that she won’t change the lock on the bedroom door.