(Photo: Patrick Brayer)

He started out as Prince Charming, roused her from thunder, I mean slumber.

Dick Barnes (California’s greatest poet)

They say you can’t believe a dream, and then they turn right around and tell you that life is but a dream. As in all good stories, even mocking truth, it depends on who in tarnation ‘they’ are. I woke the other day fresh from a dream wherein  I was backing a big yellow school bus out of our driveway here on 5th street.  I felt huge anxiety at first but then was amazed at how it just floated effortlessly. I somehow knew instinctively that I was waiting for a primered old Ford that would be coming westward like a flat grey nickel, and when I saw it I should go the opposite direction (to where no one knows). Sure enough there it was, so I floated out, but it was at an impossible angle and the only option was to follow the Ford in anti-obedience. I decided then  to just circle around the block, hanging a turn north towards the San Gabriel Mountains, and then swing back, since I didn’t know where I was going in the first place. Circling around, then pointed east in my loop, I came to the front of my daughter’s elementary school, which is across the street from our house on the far side in real life. When I got there there was a dirt shoulder which is not there in reality, but was wide enough to park the bus, so I thought I would just leave it there so as to not block our driveway. Leaving it in front of a school seemed reasonable.