Excellent Night; "What's Molly Dreaming Now" November edition

I'll start with the excellent night. Some girlfriends and I went to a concert last night, and not being one who does live music a whole lot, I wasn't sure what exactly to expect. I like live music fine enough, I like concerts, but I very rarely feel like that, for me, they're the emotional events that so many other people - heavy concert-goers in particular - experience. Too often, when I see a band or an artist perform, I feel like I could have had the same emotional experience at home, listening to to them on my stereo/iPod/Pandora. The only thing that ever makes it more personal for me, is if the artist is a good storyteller, or my proximity to the stage, or if I get to meet the artist afterwards, like I did with the Indigo Girls once. (Yes I did have a witty quip for Amy Ray, and she liked it!)

The band before last night's big act was no different from what I normally expect, which made me nervous for the act I had come for. But one of my girlfriends, for whom this was her third time to see the big act, assured me that they would be way better. They were. Largely because their music bloody rocks, anyway, and because they know that spectacle is important, but is nothing if you don't have a good delivery. And they had great delivery. Plus, you can tell they just really enjoy being up there; they love singing these songs with each other. As a performer myself, I love that, too, so it's relieving and joyful to see they do. At some point, near the end of the show when people were still rocking out, it reminded me of what people used to describe Heaven as to me as a kid: a non-stop party where people were just in ecstasy to be in the presence of God. That was definitely ecstatic and their music is so positive and powerful, it felt Heavenly; and the energy was such that no one wanted it to end.

It turns out last night was their last night of the 2007 tour and people from all up and down the East Coast had turned out for it. The lead singer solicited city call outs from the audience. That was really great. People like to represent. I hope one day I can draw folks from miles around! I decided I wanted to be one of the back up singers when I grow up. One of my friends and I kept trying to mimic their hair-whipping and we paid for it afterwards. After two extra-strength Tylenol and a mostly full night's sleep, my neck still hurts. The show overall left me pumped: I wanted more of their music and felt like I'd been jumping on a rainbow!

Now for the weird dream: it was brief, but strange. Maybe it was inspired by yesterday's post. I dreamt that Honey and I needed to get from point A to point B, presumably in Texas for some reason and that it was a 5 or 6 hour drive. Honey had BabyDog with him, and I was still in some medium-large city. We were supposed to leave a little bit before 2PM, he was impatient and we must've been in separate cars. I had to stop by a casual friend's house for something and he kept telling me I needed to help him lure his stoner friend out of the basement. I did my part, and by then it was 4PM and I surmised that Honey was already en route to our destination. I called him on his cell and told him I had one more thing I had to do and I'd be on my way. Why all these delays, I don't know; I know they were mandatory and I resented them.

So I'm at a movie theater with one of my girlfriends from the concert last night. We step into an elevator. It's one of those elevators that has a window in the primary door that closes you in, as well as window in the outside door, so you can see everything. I press the floor number we need, and as we go up, I see that my favorite scarf is stuck in the outside door of the third floor. And for some reason, it's being held there by escalator teeth. And for some reason, I can reach through the doors and loosen it. I do that on my first trip up, but it's still stuck. All I need is one more go of it. The third passenger riding with us gets off at 4, and we go back down to one. We press 3, and when we begin to reach the scarf I begin to pull, but as the car comes level with the third floor, there's a group of sadistic, educated-looking, European men standing and sitting there. Severely standing and sitting. They were waiting for me. One looks like Adam Ant, another like Bill Nighy. The others, I can't recall: just that they look angular, European and mean. They say nothing, and as I reach for the scarf, evil-Adam Ant shakes his head and draws up a sheet of paper that looks like a scantron and a pen. I let go of the scarf and he teases with his pen as if to say, "which bubbles will I fill in?" He circles the number 96 and 10 and then lifts his hand with a gesture for the number 3. For some reason it becomes apparent to me that my friend and I are supposed to travel up to floor 96 and floor 10, 3 times each as some punishment for crossing evil-Adam Ant and evil-Bill Nighy and their gang. All I wanted was my scarf! I don't know why they thought it was bad that I wanted my scarf!

So, I push the button for the first floor, and by this time, my girlfriend and I are clinging to each other, scared and whimpering. The moment we hit the bottom floor, we remember, this building is only 14 stories tall. How do the evil English guys expect us to go to 96? But we daren't just get out at the first floor, because these guys just materialized out of nowhere to begin with and they're sadistic: somehow, they know I hate elevators and love my scarf! So we began our journey, deciding we'd just do the ride to the 14th floor several times anyway. What sucked was that other people could get on and off as they pleased as we were forced to continue riding. And the worst part was: I really needed to get on the road to meet with Honey and this was another, inescapable delay. And I was almost out of power on my cell phone! Argh and yikes! Damn you, Adam Ant!

So ... any thoughts on what the dream means would be greatly appreciated. Put your divining caps on!

Memory Museum

There are at least two new movies that I know of which were filmed around the town where I spent my adolescence. Luckily, they're both movies that I'd want to see anyway, with fantastic actors and directors. Last night, I got onto Apple's movie trailer site and decided to watch their trailers. The second shot in the first one, one of those outdoor shots that helps establish the physical realm in which a story unfolds, made tears well up in my eyes. I paused it. My dog, who always rushes to my side when she hears me sniffle, did not fail in her habit.

The image was of a sunrise over a mountain that overlooks my hometown. But it was shot from behind the mountain - or rather, from the side that does not face the town. I watched the rest of the trailer, scanning the horizons of the panorama shots to see if I could recognize any other geographical features. I only spotted one other which I thought I could place immediately. But either way, it was such a treat to see all of it; I still recognized the undulations and vegetation of the Southwest Texas desert floor. After I watched the whole trailer, I showed it to Honey and paused on the second shot. I explained to him where the camera was in relation to the highway connecting my town and the next, roughly how far out from the town the shot was taken (maybe 7 to 10 miles), where the town was in relation to the shot and what time of day it was, based on where the sun was. He gave a polite, "neat."

I've blogged before about my hometown and how I haven't spent more than 48 hours there, since the summer after I graduated from high school, in 1994. I haven't even seen it at all since we scattered part of my childhood dog's ashes there during an 18 hour trip in 1996. (At Christmas that year, we decided to scatter his ashes in every place he'd ever lived. This meant we drove around the state of Texas, from the Gulf Coast where we lived at the time, to the Panhandle, where both my dog and I were born, to the Big Bend and back to the coast. For those keeping track, that's about 32 hours of road time alone.) There are times in my life, when things get hectic and scary, when I retreat to my hometown in my dreams. In the past few years, each time I'm there, I convince myself that I'm actually, physically visiting the town and when I wake I'm crestfallen. As a teen I hated the isolation of my town; as an adult, it can be alluring. Lately, I have not been having those dreams. Nor have I had any dreams about tornadoes or aliens - other common themes which tell me that I'm stressed - in many, many months. But about a week ago, I dreamt I was on the road which drives right by the mountain described above. I don't know why; I haven't been missing my town or feeling too stressed. (Well, I can think of something in my life from which I'd like reprieve, but you good folks shan't be privy to that today. But the dream was still surprising.)

In any event, I think seeing my town's mountain inspired my train of thoughts when I woke. Touring the terrain of my childhood. All I could think about was the inside of my grandparents' house in the Panhandle. They moved further in-state about 5 or 6 years ago to be closer to my aunts and uncles and parents. The last time I visited them in the Panhandle was shortly after New Year of 2000, almost 8 years ago! Not that I wasn't aware of it, but I hadn't meditated on this thought in a long, long time: I'll never see that house again; certainly not from the inside. So I took a tour of it in my mind. I felt the fresh summer air from their porch, went inside to hear the whirring of the window air conditioning unit, looked at all the family photos and Grandpa's paintings on the walls, smelled the gas from the kitchen, placed my hand on the stack of books and magazines that Grandpa kept on the corner of the kitchen table ... I laid in bed tracing the terrain of their house for what felt like 10 or 15 minutes. I was kind of surprised by how much I remembered. I remember it as well as, or maybe better than, the two houses I lived in growing up. It was the constant. Then I toured what I could remember of the church we attended till I was 12 - with a brief stint out while Dad pastored a church for a few years in the mid-80s. That, I remember more in chunks: the yellow-white brick, the arched breezeway on the east side of the west wing, the L shape of the building and that the only two sets of stairs were located on the ends of the L, the brown carpet in the hallway, the library on the east end of the building, the kitchen that was right across from that, the playground just north of the parking lot where, when I was a kid, we had the old cab of a semi-truck to play in (all the kids loved pretending they were truck drivers); the vast field across the street from the church where, in 1982 on Mother's Day, I saw my first - and so far only confirmed - tornado; that field is full of houses now. Progress.

Sorry I've been absolutely awful about blogging anything this Fall. And I'm sorry my first post in over a month was pretty self-indulgent. And, I'm sorry I haven't really been cruising other blogs a lot (or at all, really) in the last 6 or 8 weeks. I'll try to be better on all counts.