Friday, December 5, 2008

In Which a Dream Leads Me to Whatever is Next

So during the most isolating days of this winter, I take a sleeping pill before bed. Not always, and not any more- these days I sleep like the dead- but sometimes all alone on the hill (surounded on all sides by hundreds upon hundreds of acres of wilderness) I struggle with the age old fear of laying awake listening to phantom footsteps. Considering I can get trashed on my aunt's non-alchoholic wine and derive manic energy from a single green tea bag, you can imagine what prescription dose of Ambien does. Knocks me completely off my feet, I trip ballz to use a spankin' brand new term i picked up in north carolina. Then I crash off to a turbulent sleep, wake up every hour on the hour, and have zero dreams. Except one night I do have a dream. Despite the episodic sleep and the light dusting of narcotics, I return over and over to the most vivid one I've had since the age of the lost in the woods on a snowy day nightmares. I'm sitting in a cafe in India with David Hughes and arguing over Global Warming. And I wake up with this picture in my mind- utter clarity- of David Hughes.

David was one of the head coaches of at AQ when I went to school there, but he taught for the rodeo and spent his semester eating Dahl while I ate nutella & raclette, he ate frijoles when I ate....lamb? whatever they eat in New Zealand. You get the picture: I probbably only spoke with him on a few occasions. Then he went and started New River Academy which is seeing enormous sucsess, and we kept up one of those deep-running facebook relationships where we occasionally comment on one anothers photos.

So I wrote him about the dream, just for fun, and he wrote back and I wrote back and before I knew it I was driving to New Hampshire (they have cell-service there!) steering with one hand and answering David's questions about education philosphy, and an hour later I had a job offer at New River Academy. There is an immediate opening, for the spring 2009 semester in Chile, and what do you know but they need an english teacher. I hung up the phone and floated out of the car kicked around the streets of Hanover for a few hours, thinking, well I'm glad I had that dream.

2 comments:

Nick Best said...

You Rock my socks off M! Best luck in Chile. Who caers if you don't have friends there. The big thing is that you have firends (prety kick ass friends) out there rootin for ya! Go mold young minds and paddle your cute ass off! And what ever you do, STAY SINGLE but also hook up with as many Chileans as ppossible. Look forward to readin more!
NB

Grunder said...

You hadn't heard tripping balls? Man, you're behind the times.