Dream

I am in an open sided building, a combination of upright posts and corrugated metal on a concrete slab. There’s a little kitchen area, I’m making coffee on a rusty propane fueled two burner stove. It’s morning, the grass is wet. Fields stretch out around me, I’m not sure what’s growing, it’s grassy, wide blades, about knee high, it looks a little bit like sugar cane though I know it is not because it’s soft, not sharp. It is that bright green of sugar cane though, that shiny color you see after the rains, when the sun comes out.

I am squatting down on the edge of the field with a coffee cup in my hands. There is some kind of animal resting in the grass, something that I should probably be nervous about startling, it could go skittish and attack me, but I’m not at all afraid. It’s golden brown, maybe some kind of wildcat, or maybe a sort of large fox, it’s a dream, I can’t say for sure. The critter turns and looks at me, sniffs the air a little, and does nothing. I drink my coffee, we look out over the fields, it is morning, we are both waking up.

There is a meal ready in the shelter, but first we say hello. There are two lines of people, so many different kinds of people, facing each other. It’s when I know I am in Hawaii, I see a woman who’s tall and has long hula dancer hair, a little frizzy, black like mine. But they’re not just native Hawaiians here, they’re from everywhere. I watch the line — they are all embracing each other and saying something I can hear as they do, then they go to the next person opposite them in line. I hesitate and then, I go join them. And they all take me in, they hug me, all those people from everywhere and as they do, they say the same words to me (which I’m not going to repeat because it’s my dream and I want to keep them), and then, when everyone has exchanged this greeting with everyone else in the group, we go eat.

Later, I am in a glass elevator. I know that I am going to some kind of hall, some fluorescent lit room where there are round tables under white generic tablecloths. It will be badly lit, there will be food on generic white plates and everyone will have the same thing. I know this while I look out the glass elevator at the green fields as I go up and up and up. I turn around to face the doors and the elevator starts to close in on me, I can’t lift my arms, I’m starting to panic. I push my arms out and wake up, the blankets wrapped tightly around me, what passes for daylight leaking in through the curtains.

The words of the greeting appear in my head and all my panic is gone. I am awake and I know that I am not in Hawaii anymore. But I can still see myself so clearly, sitting at the edge of that field in complete companionship with an unknown animal, we watch the sun pop over the Waianae Range and then, I go to the kitchen to make more coffee for the farmers who have been up much for longer than I have.