Joseph, I Need You
I’ve had crashing dreams the last two nights.
On Tuesday it was a dream about being in a car with my friend Justin Fountain from high school. It was snowing like mad and there were huge banks on the sides of the road, but we were passing people anyway. We had a Jeep Cherokee; we had four wheel drive. Some guy stuck his head out the window and yelled at us. He was crazy looking, with a scraggly beard and yellow teeth. Then we were spinning. We went sideways and I was heading right at a tree. My door, my face, myself. All right at this tree. We’re going to die, I said. Then, suddenly, we lurched forward and back on to the road. Straight forward, impossibly. I remember thinking (in the dream, of course) that it must have been an angel. I suggested we pull over for a minute. So, naturally, we pulled over and onto a two-track and down a hill and got stuck in the snow.
Last night it was a motorboat. A fast one, probably faster than any I’ve owned. My little sister was driving—Karissa, who’s eighteen. And Chad (my brother) and I were sitting in the back, talking. And Karissa was driving right for the shore, fast as came be. So she started trying to turn and at first I was thinking, all right, we’ll make it. Then, all of a sudden, I realized we couldn’t possibly turn fast enough. We spun sideways, and I’ve never seen the shore rush up so fast. We were going to hit it, full broadside, in a spray of foam and gas and boat parts. I remember clinching the side rail as hard as I could, as if maybe that would save me, and Karissa frantically leaning on the wheel. Then we hit and spun and bounced impossibly back out into the lake.
So what’s all that mean?
