Easter Parade

It has been almost an entire month since everything went down, the fire, the loss of a job, the failed attempt to get a sweet apt that has now transformed into a house in seriously less than 24 hours. I have written three songs that are directly related to the event that sent this month into a tailspin that I haven't shared with the girls yet because we lost almost all of our equipment in the fire as well as my home, so we haven't had a rehearsal space or the time to do it.

It is remarkable how busy I have managed to be while jobless and homeless.

We move into the house tomorrow/saturday and if you put a gun to my head and asked me what I thought about the whole thing, the most I could offer would be a shoulder shrug. I constantly feel like the room is spinning and a lot of that probably has to do with my sunny disposition.

I have only slept one full night without a nightmare since the fire. It seems I was either traumatized by the event or my stress haunts me even in my dreams. Probs both.

Last night I dreamt that I was driving around with JP. She picked me up from a coffee house on campus, but it wasn't WSU, it felt more like Iowa or Wyoming, there were dirt roads and the coffee shop sat on the corner in a rhombus shaped building that felt more like a saloon. I was half expecting tumbleweeds to go rolling by. But they didn't. JP picked me up and we drove around the dirt roads and had a bird's eye view of the whole thing, like I was floating above my body or something and we drove and talked and then spun back around and ta-da I was back in the coffee house with Alex Hill and George Wagner. The former I haven't seen in maybe two months, maybe more and the latter has not made an appearance in three times as long.

Regardless, I was in this coffee shop/saloon and it was mid-day and silent like right before a tornado touches down. And then it did. A proverbial tornado touched down. I heard what sounded like a parade coming from down the street. You know, the marching band honking in the distance, the cymbals crashing. It sounded like a Gardner White President's Day sale commercial. I peaked outside and stretched my neck so I could see down the street and there it was a big pink float, like a towering wedding cake for Paris Hilton.

And then suddenly the facade began to melt away and blow into the breeze, chunks of cray paper flying behind the vehicle in a great trail with enough consistency and matter to look like water from a faucet. It melted quickly, this float and disappeared into the breeze revealing a military vehicle, much like a tank with a little room on top that men were shooting guns from, probably AK-47's or something.

Just like that, an innocent parade turned violent and I felt like I was actually on the streets of baghdad. There was a ring of flashing light around the "float", gunshots at the people lining the streets. They fell like dominoes, one right after the other and suddenly my legs were moving underneath me and I was holding a small child and running to a getaway van (like in the movies). I was running and Alex was still there but George was not, but a black man was and so was this woman whom I'd never seen before. We hopped in the back of that van and he drove, the black man.

Maybe a 1/2 mile down we made a stop and I was alone. The van was standing still, the keys dangling from the ignition like someone had just jumped out. The sun danced off of them, so I squinted my eyes and looked through the other window. I was standing outside of the van that was now a big truck, like the kinds I've seen in movies used to transport troops in war zones. The canvas top was flapping in the same breeze that tore up the float.

My mind began to wander. Would they have opened fire if the float hadn't melted? Where did Alex go? Where is the child? Where am I?

I walked up to the building we were parked outside of and climbed the fire escape. I thought I heard voices and figured it must have been Alex and the rest of out little caravan so I moved towards them. But as I go closer to the top of the steps I heard other footsteps from down below me. I looked down to find a man who was tall and wearing a uniform. I knew that he was not one of us, I have no idea how, but I knew. And with the gun that appeared in my hand I shot him in the head. Blood shot out and so did brain matter and pieces of skull and his body collapsed underneath him.

I jumped off the the fire escape and into the van that was a van again and drove. I was alone now and headed towards no where, only to find where every single person I have ever known had disappeared to. It was the strangest thing. I literally saw everyone, distant relatives, people I knew from church growing up, my parents, my sisters, people I have known who have passed away, people that never, ever cross my mind, people I haven't thought about in years. They were all there, riding plastic sleds down a dirt hill to a big old church that, from the outside, looked like a funeral home on stilts.

The inside was just like the church I grew up in, but reupholstered and warmer feeling than what I remembered as a young child. There was a lot of beige. And there was a minister preaching about God's grace and so on and so forth and I kept wondering, where are the fucking tanks? Have they passed us by? Are they on their way? I walked out the front doors trying to follow the sound of a man shouting.

On the front steps there was a man preaching to the people coming down on sleds and the others perched on the hill like they were on a sunday picnic. He was yelling and carrying on about how good God was and Jesus and The Holy Ghost and I grabbed him and turned him towards me and begged him to be quiet. And he looked at me like I was crazy and suddenly he was gone, vanished under the grip of my hands on his shoulders.

I turned and the hill was empty and the sleds were gone and so were the people that were just on them a second ago. I ran inside the church and no one was there, the beige and warm mahogany was gone. The light pierced through the stained glass windows and projected their beautiful images on the dull gray now resting below them.

I felt that damn breeze again coming in from the doors and I stretched my neck once again to see what lay beyond me. There it was again, the "float", barreling towards me.