egg foo yung, vegetable soup, hookah, and port wine...

yesterday morning i had a few bites of cantaloupe before i rushed out to work. i grabbed a large decaf coffee, drank it on the bus, and grabbed two more from Dunkin Donuts so i wouldn't have to leave during my break to grab one. (i had not dressed for the drastic drop in temperatures from sunday to monday)

on my way home, i decided to stop at my local chinese food shop to pick up some dinner. i get a small shrimp egg foo yung for the protein, and a vegetable soup for...the vegetables. they're freshly steamed and so good. so the first substantive thing i ate all day was at 6 pm. i saved the soup to eat around 8 to let my system work a little less hurriedly.

at about 8:30 danny and i fired up my new hookah (thanks, danny/shane/jenn) and had a nice session with our friend, citrus mint. danny likes the heavier flavors like double apple and elephant dung. that's not a flavor...yet...but if it was, danny would love it. i, on the other hand prefer sessions that do not require The Lung Brush afterwards. i'm sure they're all equally bad for me, but that's beside the point. citrus mint is light and airy, like damaging smoke should be. not like the smokestack i live a couple of blocks from. i like to think that citrus mint is actually cleaning out the bad, wicked smog...and the leftover inhalations from years of playing in bars.

anyway, we had a good half hour smoke, and danny went to bed. i had some catching up on shows to do, some stuff to write, and baseball trades to work out, so i went and poured myself a glass of port. my brother brought it down to the wine party on saturday night, and only he and i drank any, so there was a good bit left. my little port glasses were in the running dishwasher so i grabbed a regular wine glass. i pulled the cork and my other roommate, shane, popped into the kitchen to tell me something. i poured and answered...answered and poured. however it went, i ended up with a half full regular wine glass full of port. i knew immediately that there was now a drop on the bottom of that large amount of port that had my bedtime on it.

i spent the next hour with my glass, and as expected, the bottom of the glass was amplifying the call of my pillow. i got ready in a hurry, and was pretty nearly asleep when i got in bed. all of this is pretext for the night to come.

i don't usually remember my dreams. i don't even think i dream all that much because it's not just that i don't remember what i dreamed. i don't remember dreaming. when i do remember it, and even more so, when i remember what i dreamed, it's never a nightmare. it's never running in place, flying, falling...all the dreams normal people dream. no, i dream about things like hunting an 150 foot long, two story alligator with a shotgun. or about kittens that climb up stucco, art deco colored walls, across the ceiling, and back down the other side, all while saying "wallz, wallz, wallz, wallz". no meow. no purring. just walls.

i don't recall what i ate/drank the nights before those dreams, but i did this time. and while these dreams don't contain any wacky animal antics, they're pretty weird.

i had four. i remember two. the last two. and i remember each time i woke up thinking i have to remember that. apparently i have room for only two dreams in my short term memory.

the first was me at a basketball camp. the ones where they drill you on all the fundamentals of the game. you work...you work hard. and at the end, you play a friendly game against a team of your classmates. well, i had only 3 fellow camp members. two i do not recall. i'm sure i knew them at one point during the dream. or imagine i do. the third was John McCain. yes, he of the imminent GOP candidacy. he wasn't bad. not great. but nobody really stood out on the team. we just sort of drilled layups, free throws, the weave. and Coach Knight was unbelievably calm. yes, Bobby Knight. the coach i dislike the most in all of college/pro/park/alley basketball. Coach Knight just said things like "nice" and "good pivot" and "way to go, heldman/mccain/nameless guys". i think we were in the final gym from hoosiers, too, but i'm not certain about that. it was massive and well lit...and completely empty except for the five of us.

dream two was me and my friend, tristan vass. probably because i saw her new pics on facebook last night. and it involved a bicycle, on my part, probably because both my roommates have recently had their bikes in many pieces while building/rebuilding them. that doesn't explain why there was a baptist retirement community living in the grade school i went to in the city...why i figured out that i could stand my bike on its back tire, climb to the top of the front tire, and get on the roof of a 50 foot tall building, or why the old people who were coming and going...slowly...in the evening from John Palmer Grade School and Retirement Home were berating Tristan for all the boys she was making out with. Oddly, Tristan was just standing there next to my amazing bike, but each fogey had a story about another boy she was seeing. when i came down from the roof and amazingly advantageous listening post, Tristan confessed to me that she had a problem. She then was magically whisked away by the dream and i was left to bike through my old Chicago neighborhood, weaving this majestic bicycle through the pothole-ridden streets.

as i recounted these dreams, it came to me that perhaps i was the only one that might find them weird and odd. maybe others dream like this all the time...inexplicable places, people, and times converging into some mixture of foreign film and reality tv. maybe it's because i remember so few. but i know one thing. when it comes to mixing egg foo yung, vegetable soup, hookah, and port wine...well, i'm gonna do that more often.