Dream

Posted on June 13, 2003 in Dreams

I’ve been sent back to Catholic school. The nuns have sent us to attend mass just before Easter. The deal is that if we do, we only have to go to school for two days the following week. I’m kneeling in the back row of the dark church. There’s some kind of ceremony going on involving chocolate Easter bunnies wrapped in silver or red foil. Kids are passing them down to some adults who take them up to the front of the church and give them to some kids in the front rows. A kid next to me takes his bunny and hurls it all the way to the front. “The nice thing about chocolate Easter bunnies,” he says, “is that they can break into a million pieces and you still can eat every bit.”

The kids like me. Some of us sneak out to grab something to eat at a place called “El Portico”, where they serve scallops. On our way there, I split off with some kid named Rico who takes me to another chapel where the priests pray. The priests sleep in beds before the altar. I sit on one of the beds which is unmade. There are shoes on the floor, an open Bible perched like a tent, and an uneaten apple. As Rico prays, I tell the priest that I am married. “I had a Greek Orthodox wedding,” I say. “The Church recognizes the bans.” The priest agrees and he explains to Rico that this is true, though that can change from pope to pope.

We leave. Rico wants to go back to the church. We reach a street corner on busy Highland Avenue. I tell him that I am not going back. I’m an adult. My mother sent me back to the school so that she could interrupt my marriage. Rico heads left back to the church and I go to the right, down Highland Avenue towards my home. I try to remember my wife’s name and wonder why she hasn’t been returning my phone calls. I remember an old telephone number, the one we had in Palo Alto.

I look up. I’m apparently somewhere near Perris Hill Park, but the scenes have all changed. There are monorails overhead and whole rooms that move. I’ve bisected Highland Avenue from a new direction, after having walked down it to get to this point.