A true dream in China

True dreams. Whether programmed in by man or God there have been times I’ve been aloud to peak up the future’s dress and I must admit, I’m a bit of a perv about those things. Can’t ever get my fill. For five months I had been studying mandarin in a small school on the eastern coast of China. I wanted to devour everything eastern in order to better define what it meant to be a westerner. Like many Americans I suffer from a bout of a poorly defined national identity. Truth be told I was a poor student. I was more interested in the streets, the life the common zhung guo ren led. I picked up conversational Chinese fast but my written skills fell to wayside having no intentions of ever attempting to read a paper (U have to learn about 32,000 characters before you can read a news paper) . The term had ended and I was going to get kicked out of the dorms. I knew I wanted to travel on but I had no idea in which direction, east or west. Although originally I had planned to travel south west to India I had been recently fascinated by the Japanese students that shared the dormitory with me. They had this indescribable class, everything they did they did well. The more I talked to them, we spoke in Chinese ‘cause that was the only common language between us, the more I wanted to see Japan. I went online to find an airline ticket to Tokyo and found the price was 1000 bucks and so immediately gave up all hopes on visiting. And so, a couple of nights before I had to pack up and leave, I had a dream. Only until recently have I been aloud to remember my dreams. For a period of about 20 years I was cut off entirely from the dream world. When I was five I had a gift, I was lucid dreamer with complete control. I would literally choose what the dreams would entail, fall asleep, and fall into a world of my own making. As the years past however I was cut off entirely from this gift and given only darkness. There were times though, rare and beautiful, that I was given remembrance. I called them True Dreams because someone or something had pushed back the curtain in order for me to grasp their significance. I was dancing a wild rhythmic rampage of sufic glee. I could feel the smile , that true smile so rarely enjoyed, saturating my soul. Music, that was familiar yet foreign, played while thousands of dragonflies swam above my head. In the distance sat Mount Fuji ringed by clouds. I awoke knowing it would be a day. I dressed and went to work. At the time I had a job teaching Chinese children English. My co-teacher, a Chinese girl that had tried to sucker me into matrimony, asked me why I was smiling. She said she had never seen me smiling so broadly. Enigmatic as always I replied, “Because God spoke to me last night”. After class another American teacher at the school, of whom to do this day I still believe to a CIA agent, told me that Phish was going to be playing in Japan at the Fuji Rock festival. I was, am, a big fan of Phish shows. They are one of the last gathering places for Gypsies and the energy they hold can be felt in body and soul. I couldn’t contain my glee and so I burst out laughing. God had truly spoken to me and all I could was laugh. I returned to my dorm room and found a note on my door. One of Japanese friends had wanted to see me and so walked to his room thinking nothing yet expecting everything. He told me that he was going home to Japan on a boat that cost 100 dollars and wondered if I wanted to come along. He said I could stay with his family until I figured out what I wanted to do next.. And that was that. In one day my course had been set with all the hows and whys presented before me. One of the most memorable things about that 3 day concert were the hundreds of dragonflies that swam above my heads. I wish God could tell me what to do now. I’m as lost as a lemming who can’t find a cliff.