The Metrocard Dream

I was running up Broad Street in Athens, Georgia. For some reason I had a metrocard in my hand.

Suddenly, in this way that could only happen in a dream, there was this gust of wind which tore the metrocard out of my hand. The metrocard did not fall on the ground. It disappeared completely. Still, frantically, I got on my hands and knees and began searching through the grass at the edge of the sidewalk. There were all of these things that, at first glance, appeared to be metrocards. Each time I would pick one up, it would turn out to be a coupon for a sale or something equally useless. I finally gave up, but still felt frantic about the lost metrocard.

I was with my Father. We were watching something on the television about dreams. There was a burning ship on the screen. I told my Father that my dreams always looked like that. He went 'shhhhhhhhhh' in the manner of someone who doesn't appreciate their TV program being interrupted.

I was in my Aunt Kathy's house, in one of the blue bathrooms upstairs. I had gotten out of the shower and was toweling off. Aunt Kathy came and stood at the door, which was sort of half open, and told me that she still misses my Grandmother terribly. She started crying talking about it. Then she told me that my cousin Logan is drinking again. She said "He came in the other night, and I knew he'd been drinking. But I don't know, I don't even really have the heart to tell him to stop. He's sad about Mama too." Throughout this, I was still toweling off, and was mostly preoccupied with my Aunt not seeing my privates.

I was in front of the Baptist church where my Dad had been the minister. I was talking to some people, I think about the lost metrocard, when my friend Wendy came running up the street. She looked frantic and pale, and her hair was colored blond. She never really said what the matter was.

I had started a new job, in a mental hospital. It was my first day, and I was about to be trained. It was very dim inside, and there were no patients. The woman who was doing my training was older, with a great roll of white hair on her head. She explained that since I didn't know very much, we would start with basic stuff. Later, I was standing in a sort of breezeway. A group of my new co-workers walked by beneath me (I was on a sort of second floor). There was an opening in the bottom of the breezeway, and they called up to me to come down. "You mean jump?" I said. "Yes, jump" they said, like I was being slow.

I was walking in this neighborhood in Atlanta. There were large, fancy houses on each side of the street. On closer inspection, they turned out to be frat and sorority houses (with Greek letters on the porticoes).

Throughout the entire dream, I kept returning to the same stretch of Broad Street, searching through the weeds for the lost metrocard.